Aisha Braveboy for Maryland Attorney General

I've received an email suggesting Aisha Braveboy for Maryland Attorney General, and inviting me to donate to his (or maybe her, I'm a bit hazy on the gender of USian names) campaign.

Naturally, this email has convinced me to stump up a pound for this worthy cause, so I've emailed back asking how I can make this donation.

Hopefully, Mr Braveboy (or Mrs, or Ms, or Dr, or even Miss) will read my reply with a warm feeling that even us folks in the Old Country are supporting his or her campaign, and are willing to kick in a quid for his or her (our language really needs a gender-neutral pronoun) electoral campaign, even though I'm very unsure about the exact duties and responsibilities of an Attorney General. Perhaps my next email should ask for details of the intended policies of the candidate.

It's something I do for selected spammers. If they're willing to waste my time with their irrelevant nonsense, then I'm willing to waste their time with requests for clarification.

Currently, a company that I buy things from perhaps once every couple of years, is sending me weekly offers of stuff I couldn't possibly want. Their last offer was a special price on an antivirus. It isn't spam, by some definitions, because I have actually purchased from these people in the past. Each week, I reply back to the salesperson asking for some clarification, or further details. I'm hoping that he'll get fed up with this and stop sending me emails.

You might be wondering why I don't just ask them to stop sending me emails. Well, I did. I did exactly that, and found that as a consequence, when I logged on to their web site (which i do occasionally to check prices), I no longer had an account, so couldn't see prices. When I phoned, I discovered that removing my email address from their spamming list, also meant I was removed from being able to usefully visit their web site, So I asked to be put back on. "But can you stop sending me emails?" I asked. Computer says no.

At least I've persuaded them to stop phoning me up while I'm in the middle of some muddy field with an offer to buy a discounted copy of Microsoft Word.