Chavs on Facebook

Why is it that whenever a chav dies deservingly someone goes and dedicates a facebook page to him? They are always the same, "You weren't bad you were just misunderstood". Well actually no, he was bad and it's bad parenting and inbreeding.

Crash a car or get killed by their intended victim and the parents and family go and start a facebook page rather than keeping their heads down. The latest is for Tyler Juett killed breaking into someone's home while armed. I just hope the scrote didn't have a chance to pass on his chav genes.

Good decision by the CPS to drop charges against the intended victim this time.

Sainsbury's Again

Just seen an advert from Jamie Oliver advertising their Basics range. Now, all well and good you think.

Now, why is it that if I go and buy a bag of Class 2 own brand carrots packaged to 1.5kg they cost more than the Class 1 lose carrots in pence/kg? Why do they even stock these class 2 carrots and why do people buy them? It just doesn't make sense.

Another thing is some of their olive oils and HP brown sauce. It's actually cheaper to buy three small bottles adding up to (say) 1.5l than it is to get a single 1.5l bottle. Why do they even stock the larger bottles? What idiots buy them?

NICE and cost benefit analysis

Interesting programme on BBC tonight about the cost of prolonging life.

Bearing in mind that everything has to be paid for, and rare drugs cost a lot of money, the question then becomes how much should the country spend per year of productive live saved?

Apparently it's about £30,000. That seems like a lot of wonga to me. There are rare cancer drugs that cost (say) £100,000/year and might give an additional life expectancy of 1 to 2 years. Let's face it, it's not worth the cost to provide this kind of care for someone who is going to die anyway with no chance of reprieve. This sounds heartless, but we're all going to die, £100,000 on a child of 2 with an additional 80 years life ahead is nothing. £100,000 to prolong the life of a dying person for a year or two is not worth it.

We're all going to die, I'd rather die in comfort, with fantastic medical support for palliative care than have heroic efforts spent on giving me a few months extra life.

We need to enhance the quality of death, not prolong life at all costs. It's done with dogs all the time, would you spend 100,000 to prolong the life of your beloved dog? Or would you rather spend 1000 to ensure the last couple of months were pain free and a good death?

Francis Maude MP

The MP for Horsham certainly sounds very hard done by. Let's look at it without emotion.

He owns a house in his constituancy worth around £500,00, fair enough, he's earned or inherited it.

He's bought a house in London worth around £500,00 again, can't complain about that, he's every right to have a house in London if he wishes.

Then it starts to get more interesting. He rents out his house in London (what's a £1/2M house going to rent for? £1500/month? give or take) and decides what he really wants is a flat, a couple of hundred yards away, and thinks it's ok for the British taxpayer to fund this new flat.

I've got one thing to say to this guy, it isn't! You have two properties, you have a property in London which you can use as an MP, you don't need a flat funded by poor people while you rent out your house which you could have used. 

This from the Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5304772/Francis-Maude-claimed-for-second-London-home-MPs-expenses.html

"He claimed £18,112.50 in mortgage interest payments for the year 2006-07, £1,790 for council tax, £2,237 for a service charge and £820 for cleaning.

A further £9,801.78 was claimed for mortgage interest payments from April 1 to Aug 31, 2007.

The senior Tory MP then submitted a claim for the mortgage interest payments for the remainder of the 2007-08 financial year, which came to £13,070.96.

In a note to the House of Commons fees office he said he knew there was not enough left in his ACA account to cover the payments.

The fees office paid out £6,748.52, up to the maximum of his allowance."

So, he has an income from his house (remember he owns it outright) of (what?) £15k - £20k he's got capital gains on the house in London, he then gets an additional £21k from us because he thought his house 1 min walk away wasn't good enough.

Nice work if you can get it! Talk about pigs snouting in the trough!

Then when the crap hits the fan he offers to pay the capital gains back to the governemnt. Well it's too late, you shouldn't have done it in the first place. If you were on the 'social' you'd be in front of the beek facing a prison term, an offer to just pay it back and all would be forgiven wouldn't happen.

Do the honourable thing and resign now!

Chiropractors

Well, today Simon Singh lost his preliminary hearing on a defamation case brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) because of an article he published in The Guardian (since removed from their web site).

Fortunately, the original BCA advertising material has be archived in case they attempted to change it. Here is what the BCA claims its members can do.

"There is evidence to show that chiropractic care has helped children with the following symptoms:

Asthma, Colic, Prolonged crying Sleep and feeding problems, Breathing difficulties, Hyperactivity, Bedwetting, Frequent infections, especially in the ears"

Well very nice claims, no frigging evidence to show how cracking-bones is going to cure any of these things. This just stinks of the BCA shutting down a world renowned science writer to cover their arses. The judge was probably one of the worse that Simon could have asked foe. Mr. Justice Eady, who has ruled some strange rulings in the past - Max Mosley has the right to privacy when he is strutting round shouting in German brandishing a whip with a few prostitutes, a gagging order on the husband of a wife who ran off with a celebrity, well you can Google for yourselves.

Frankly we might as well give up on science now and let the lunatics run the asylum. Just wait until the homoeopaths and the mad Prince get a hold of this, all opposition to quackery will be shut down and we'll go back to rubbing in spit, mud and leaches.

Catholic Church has Lost It

This kind of thing just makes me so angry.

Everyone knows about the press reports by now, but just in case let's do a quick review. In Brazil it's illegal to have an abortion unless the mother's life is at risk, and it seems the Catholic Church doesn't even like the last bit.

A 9 year old girl was raped by her stepfather over many years and was pregnant at 9, with twins. Her doctors went to court so that they could perform an abortion because they deemed that her uterus and body were not capable of bringing to term twins. Now you'd have thought this was sensible hey. Oh, but you forget the Catholic church's role in all this, and the right-wing christo-fascists in the US.

Do the catholic church show comfort and support for the girl and everyone else concerned? Do they heck! The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, "the law of God is above any human law.". So what does he do? Excommunication for the child's mother and her doctors! Just how frigging heartless can you be?

Now, you'd have thought the guys in the Vatican would be a little more politically astute, but no! What do they do, they support the bloody idiot of an archbishop of theirs. From the BBC news http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7930380.stm "A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication in Brazil of the mother and doctors of a young girl who had an abortion with their help."

There is no hope for this organization, but then they are lead by a former member of the Nazi party and it's good to see he hasn't lost his dictatorial and extreme fascist views.

"Sieg Heil"

Night Swimming

I was listening to REM tonight and I thought their lyrics just about summed up the experience.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday

It's all true. I have been swimming many times at night. The first I remember was camping with my parents when I was about 16 and we were partying together in a club in N. Wales and my parents said "goodnight" I think I'd dropped hints that a few of use were going to go for a swim.

It was great, swimming off the coast in the sea for about an hour before heading back to shore and going to bed. I was caught out the next day when Mum found my footprints covered in sand over the kitchen floor.

The most memorable swim was at an Open University summer school in East Anglia, a couple of us had obviously been eyeing the lake up all week, and come friday we goaded each other to swim its length. Well after a somewhat boozy night we both ran down to the lake side, stripped off and went into the water. Damn it was good! If I'd known how good it was I'd have done it every night. We swam together about a mile up the lake and a mile back to our clothes and got one hell of a bollocking from our course tutor the next day. Yes, he grassed us both up "just in case anyone else reported us". I think it was the best swim I've ever had.

Other swims I've had at night was in lake Fraser in northern Canada - damn it was cold, but ones ardire keeps you going when following a woman lol, lake Lucerne (don't tell anyone I was under-age when I did this swim) when I went on a school visit to Europe, river Severn a few times, always at night under the moon.

I've done a few others, but these stick in my mind as being special. REM just got the mood right, it's cold, dark, scary, and others do not understand.

Thanks to my parents for making sure I was safe in the water.

Any other swimmer will understand the lyrics.

Sainsbury Horsham - Again

Really I don't know why I bother going there any more.

A week ago I bought a can of shaving gel because I knew I was almost out. So what happens when I come to need it? Yep, it didn't work, nowt came out when you pressed the button. So, as I am going to a retirement party I use soap to shave with and of course cut myself - not the best start to a Saturday.

So over to Sainsbuy's we go. I bought a bottle of wine for the retiree (one of my clients) and then went to the customer service desk to get a refund on the gel. Really it's a total misnomer, they should call themselves "We're here to tick off customers in any way we can" desk. A simple matter you'd have thought except when I asked for my money back I got "it's not one of our brands you need a receipt."
For goodness sake!
"Rubbish, I bought it here I want my money back, it's broken".
A 'manager' wandered over and said I wasn't going to get my money back because I didn't have a receipt. So I asked him who he was "Manager of the fruit and veg".

Great, so a manager who looks after a few potatoes isn't going to give me a refund.
"Can I see the real manger please?"
"I can get the duty manager"
"ok"
Then the guy who looks after the potatoes turns his back on me and starts to deal with another customer. Now this isn't on!
"Excuse me, I have a train to catch, can you get the manager please"
"Sir, I'm dealing with another customer, could you wait"
You have got to be kidding me!
"You were dealing with me first, now would you get the manager please and finish with me before being so rude"
So he wanders off, pulls out what looks like a DECT phone and starts speaking to someone. Then the duty manager comes over (Tim I think) and tells the girl on the customer service desk to give me a refund.

You know, it cost them less than two quid. It should have been done with a smile and a "I'm sorry it didn't work sir, here's your money back" I'd have been more than happy and been telling my mates down the pub what good service I had from them - after making exagerated claims about blood spurting from my lip and losing almost a pint. As it is I'm now writting another bloody blog about how shit they are.

Compare this to Waitrose, I had a duff bottle of wine but didn't realise for a few weeks because it was in my wine rack. I took it back and had a "I'm sorry I can't get a refund on this, we've stopped selling it. Can I get you a replacement?"
"sure"
We went to the shelves and he took a really nice bottle of wine and said "Is that okay for you Sir?" Now THAT is decent customer service, I should shop there more often if they opened late.

Really it isn't worth my £5,000/year to be treated like crap at my nearest supermarket.

CD WOW! and the BPI

This has been an ongoing saga for many years now and is basic exploitation of members of the EC.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/21/cd-wow_loses_parallel_importing_case/

"

That offence is called parallel importing and involves a breach of copyright. CD WOW! had previously promised to a court not to engage in parallel importing.

"This judgment confirms that CD WOW have not only consistently flouted the law in their business practices, but have flagrantly ignored the undertakings that they themselves gave to the Court that they would trade legally," said BPI general counsel Roz Groome.

The case, which has been running for six years, centred on CD WOW!'s sale of CDs and DVDs for significantly less than High Street prices. The company sold its CDs from a warehouse in Hong Kong, where CDs are sold for less than they are in Europe."

What happens is that a store can purchase goods from outside the EU (say the USA or in this case Hong Kong) pay for them to be shipped from wherever, and sell them at a profit in the UK at a much lower price than the producers want to sell their goods to stores in the UK.

What do the producers use to beat the retailers? Copyright law. Now these goods are not pirate goods, not stollen all they are is cheaper than are usually sold in the UK. The same thing happens with jeans imported from the US because the producers want to rip-off EEC citizens. In the US they wouldn't get away with this kind of abuse of copyright laws, so why is the EC allowing it here?

There is no wonder that people pirate their music, or designer goods when this kind of price fixing is happening. In the modern world there is no excuse for selling at different prices into markets that are protected by enhanced copyright laws. Write to your MEP and object.

Strange pricing structures

I run my own business, and I know just how hard it is to get new clients, it's much easier to keep the ones I have happy than to recruit new ones.

This brings me onto mobile phone companies' pricing structures. I've got to the end of my contract with 3 and wanted to renegotiate my contract with them. On the whole I've been happy with the service, I'm a non-demanding user really. My requirements are for a phone I can make/receive calls, send/receive SMSs and it has to be able to synchronize both ways with my email and calender.

3 have some fantastic deals going for *new* customers, but they totally neglect their current ones. None of the deals are for existing users. I needed a new phone, would have been happy with something similar to what I have now, and wanted their 18month 1/2 price contract as they offer new customers. Oh no! Go into the 3 shop and it's "brand new customers only sir!". Best they could offer was a non-smart phone and 6 months of an 18 month contract at 1/2 price. So I'm paying for their new customers out of my pocket.

No wonder 3 have one of the highest churns in the industry.

I'm off to Orange tomorrow to sign up for an SPV.

One fraud slagging off another

AstroStar Astrology and More: The Fate of Sylvia Browne

Eat your heart out Sylvia lol

"I do predictions that can be checked every 2 or 3 days and have unarguably predicted all major dramas well before CNN posted them on their site. Again the dated printed process involving my books makes my predictions of the 911, the Asia Tsunami, the Kobe earthquake, Hurricane Andrew and Katrina, to name a few, totally unarguable"

So why hasn't he claimed the JREF prize?

Who the heck is Dr. Turi and what was his PhD in?

I posted a response to the blog, bet it doesn't get published.

"just a quick question, if he's so good, then why hasn't he claimed the JREF prize? He's even get to design his own test protocol.

It's amazing how one fraud is slagging off another lol Come on, put Randi out of his misery, claim his prize and get fame and fortune
forever."

Amendment: According to Wikipedia - In 1993 he received a metaphysical Doctorate from the Progressive Universal Life Church based in Sacramento, California.

Obviously this is a very well regarded academic institution. From their web site 'Order our ministerial certificate now and become a legally ordained minister with the right to use the title "Reverend".' http://www.pulc.com/products.php shows you can purchase your PhD for the sum of $150 What a worthy reason to call yourself a Dr.

Fraudulent Psychic Tries to Pull Website

Yes, it's that old fraud Sylvia Browne, maybe getting too much heat from people like Randi, she's now trying to get a critical website pulled. http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/

Come on Sylvia, you're nothing but a liar! You promised to take the JREF challenge, put your money where your mouth is!

Rev. BigDumbChimp: OH NOES!! Sylvia Browne threatens suit of Stop Syliva Browne

This fraud charges $2100/hour for psychic readings! Yes, you didn't mis-read that, that's per hour, not per day. If she can work for 7 hours/day that'll be $14,000/day for fraud. Nice work if you can get it.

If Google Ads place adverts relating to Sylvia here, please free free to click on them, each one costs her money.

Follow on from Sainsbury's

Thanks for all your emails regarding the incident at Sainsbury’s, it’s nice to know the Blog is actually being read by people. Some as far away as America and believe it or not Russia.

The comment “we expect this from the police here, not from kind englishmen” was telling. Ok, the writer has never been to the UK, but it seems we have a good reputation in Russia, which is nice to know.

In the Manager’s Office

Something just occurred to me. When the manager took me into the side office, he seemed to want me to agree that I was asked to go back into the store and went voluntarily. This makes me wonder if there is some legal nicety that was overlooked by Sainsbury’s.

It’s not ‘asking’ if you are grabbed and told to come back inside. The manager just didn’t grok this and kept insisting I had been asked to come back inside. This is total crap, if you’re asked it implies you have a choice. “Would you like to come back inside?” “Errr, no thanks, bye”. It did seem to be important to him that I had been asked. It’s not asking if the only acceptable answer is ‘yes’ and you are then forced. That is an arrest, an illegal arrest in this case and unlawful imprisonment. If a policeman had behaved in the same way I’d be making a complaint to a senior officer by now.

Assault by Sainsbury's

On Thursday 25 May I was between ‘meetings’ and walked over to my local Sainsbury’s store to purchase a bottle of champagne for one of my clients who was retiring the next day. I was expecting to be gone about 20 minutes or so before having to start work again.

I swung by the “end of shelf life” section and picked up a couple of quiches on the way to the wine section, and chose a bottle of Lanson then carrying my shopping to one of the Quick Sale tills at the end of the row of checkouts. Paid for my stuff with my cash-point card, shoved the Sainsbury’s plastic bag into my rucksack and headed out back to work.


Our local Sainsbury's Store Horsham

When I went out through the exit, there were about ½ dozen people milling around going in and out (Is Thursday still pension day? They all seemed to be quite elderly), and I walked out hearing a beep-beep sound and glancing behind saw the lights flashing on the sensor barriers but kept walking (I really did have to get back to work, and didn’t want to get involved in a fight with a shoplifter). I got out into the car park intending to walk through the car park and back home when I was grabbed by my wrist having my arm and shoulder twisted and jerked back. There was a member of Sainsbury’s security staff yelling at me “Oi! Come back inside”. ??WTF??


Where I was assaulted by their staff under the porch

There were a number of things he could have done such as approach me quietly saying something like “Excuse me sir. I think we’ve left a security tag on your shopping, would you mind coming back in so it can be deactivated?”. Instead he chose to assault me, in public, in a humiliating way.

Naturally I resisted this ‘approach’ and was yelling “Get off me you little shit” (well he was only about 5’4”) he just kept trying to drag me by my wrist back into the store yelling at me “Little shit? You think I’m a little shit? You’re a big shit!” and threatening me “Go on, hit me so I can punch you. Big shit”. Is this REALLY how Sainsbury’s train their staff to address a member of their clientele?

Eventually, an off duty copper came along and broke up the fight, and reluctantly I went along inside the store with him and a couple of other staff. The security guard was continuing to insult me (“Big shit” etc).

From where I was assaulted looking into the store

When I asked “is this an acceptable way for your staff to address a customer?”.
A couple of the other staff looked at each other “I didn’t hear anything. Did you?
“No, I didn’t hear a thing”.

What a disgusting attitude for Sainsbury’s staff to take. Of course they heard.

I attempted to leave the store a couple of times and the security guard and a couple of other staff moved to block my exit and prevented me from leaving (unlawful arrest and detention?). Eventually – when the mouthy security bod wandered off – I went with the assistant manager to a small office and threw the receipt at him showing I had paid for the goods.

I was then allowed to leave the store and the mouthy security guard was STILL insulting me as I left.

I examined my shopping later in the day, and there was indeed one of these coiled security tags stuck to the bottle of champagne that the till operator had (I guess) not deactivated. The entire incident smacks of lack of staff training.

Not only was I assaulted both verbally and physically for helping to increase Sainsbury’s already vast profits (no, not really – and there is no wonder their profits are so small) but the entire incident was because of Sainsbury’s cock-up in the first place. None of this should ever have happened.

I’ll spend my hard-earned money in Waitrose from now on I think, even if it is the other side of town. I have never had anything but first-class service from them, wonderfully polite staff, and staff who know what they are selling. Oh, and as a bonus, I’ve never had more than one person in front of me in the queues for the tills either.

The only reason I used Sainsbury’s in the first place is that it’s a 5 minute walk from where I live, now I'll get more exercise at least.

Phones for You, 3, Nokia - repair saga

I recently bought a new cell phone, it's a lovely phone built by Nokia (a 6680) on the 3 network. I dumped my previous provider Orange because they took almost 2 months to do a simple phone repair. Now my new phone is giving me trouble, and the fun begins.

I specifically bought one based on Symbian because the Orange Microsoft one kept hanging. Nothing new with Microsoft there I suppose. Now the Nokia keeps rebooting itself or turning itself off for no reason, sometimes in the middle of a call.

When I bought the phone I was told that 3 would give me a three day turnaround on repairs. Great, anything has to be better than 2 months. Right? Well, 3 have now said they do not support the Nokia! Right, back to Phones 4 You, their service is 28 days, they won't give out a replacement phone, won't even unlock an old phone I have so I can just swap the SIMs. This is a terrible service. I would never recomend Phones 4 You to anyone after this.

Now, I have a contract with Phones 4 You, the next time it happens I'm going to be right back to the store and demanding they fulfill the contract they agreed with me when I took the phone. They did clean the absolutely spotless battery contacts as per the repair script, so I have to wait for it to happen again before I can complain in 'anger'.

I'll keep you informed. I feel an email to Watchdog coming on all of a sudden.

What is it about spammers?

Do spammers really think that ticking off a blogger by messing up his posts is going to generate more business?

It's bad enough by email never mind this as well now. I'll leave the spam on the previous post, just so everyone can see what tossers they are. Rather than having an open forum, I've now closed it such that only registered members can post. These morons have already screwed up email, the rest of the internet is now game for them as well.

Been busy the past few months and kind of forgot about this

Let's try and keep up with it this time.

I'm trying out Flock as a blog manager so with the combination of new technology it'll give me something to play with

Wetherspoons

Ok, it's not my favourite pub chain, but JD Wetherspoon has announced that they are going to be making all their pubs none smoking by the spring of 2006. Some 60 of them are going to be non-smoking by spring this year. Fantastic news!

I was in the one in Horsham this Christmas, and it was awful, the small non-smoking area was packed out, and there was a fug right across the main open plan bar area, it just wasn’t healthy. I complained to the manager about him not having the ventilation system working and he said it was going full blast and he’d had lots of complaints about it not just mine.

So kudos to the Mr. Martin. Maybe they will lose a few smokers, but people I know will frequent them more often, people who have been known to walk out of smoky pubs and get a few beers in to drink at home rather than put up with not being able to breath all night

The first day

as in the rest of my life.

A quick update first, I was made redundant just over a year a go, and have applied for hundreds upon hundreds of jobs since then. I've almost now given up on getting a full time job now and am going after setting up my own business.

I do voluntary work for a couple of local charities, which I’d like to continue, and see this as a niche market not targeted by any of the bigger consultancies.

Unfortunatly I'm about to be made homeless, and with no car, no income, loads of stuff, and nowhere to go things could start to get more interesting.