What's with all those phony plastic cards? During the last seven days, both Financial Times and BusinessWeek has sent me silly plastic card that says "Subscriber Privilege Card" with my name on them, on an attempt to get me to sign a discounted subscription for €50 (BW) or €90 (FT). And in their sell-in letters they call me "Dear Executive" and so on. So I've obviously gotten my postal address onto some stupid snailmail mailing list that has been shared far and wide. That's no surprise; I am registered with on quite a lot of "businessy" places and there are many official records where you can get information about me and my business. But what's hitting me is that I assume FT and BusinessWeek are presumably looking for "execs" that please their advertiser, and they think sending out a silly plastic "privilege card" is going to help? I, for one, know that if there's one thing the average european exec doesn't need, it's more plastics. The black execy FT subscriber card sure does look elite, but so does my Monday Bar membership card, and the height my stack of plastics never used is approaching three inches now.