Scargill

They’re at it again…. the incompetents at Orange have well and truly surpassed previous levels of ineptitude this time.

I’ve just been told we’ve not had an Orange bill recently and I remembered I’d had something from them recently in email. I looked up the email and sure enough – get your bill online… so I tried – it wanted an email and password.   I’ve never used this before so I rang them up. Wrong department.

The right department then told me I had to go online – to get my bill. I said I had no password. They said register.. to register you have to receive a text message to your mobile and answer 2 questions you set when you signed up. I signed up YEARS ago and my mobile doesn’t work at home.

I range back and went through the usual raft of automated messages – at 14.4p per minute cost to me of course – I’m currently running at just over £1. All through this AS USUAL “we are currently very busy” – which in English means “we don’t employ enough staff because WE DON’T CARE!”   In the meantime I managed to find a message that told me I could ask for printed invoices – at £3 each!!! But I could only get these by going online – which of course I can’t do because I don’t have my password..

What a complete bunch of asses…… I’ve had to resort to writing them a letter!

Of course I don’t actually believe in runs of bad luck but sometimes… let’s see in the last couple of weeks, we discovered the new house needs re-wiring, our son-in-law is deathly ill in hospital, in our own home the heating system is bust and need replacing – some leak in the back of the oil boiler. We found out tonight that the place in Spain has been burgled… and just to round it all off I’ve just had my first Windows 7 blue screen.

What next… outbreak of nuclear war…… flue pandemic (oh yes we already have that)….

Don’t you get sick of commercial BULL?   We were told that WOLFRAM ALPHA was going to be the be-all-and-end-all.   I just tried a couple of simple queries…  “who is Peter Scargill”  – and “what happened in 1954” – both produced nothing but garbage – but in each case Google was spot on as usual. Everything I’ve ever tried on WA has failed miserably.

Anyway, I digress….   I’m sitting here in front of a calendar entitled “101 THINGS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD DO BEFORE SHE DIES” …  something Maureen must’ve picked up.. anyway, the BIG sign on the back tells you all about their GREEN credentials. It’s a company called Time Factory Publishing based in Indianapolis.

All of their calendars use forestry stewardship council certified paper….     they are powered by their own windmill, they recycle and suggest ways to re-use the calendar (I can think of a few).

All of which is GREAT until you look at the corner “printed in South Korea”…. and they’re selling them in the America!!

So assuming the best and they used electronic means to get the info to South Korea, the calendars are then travelling half way around the world to get to Britain. What’s wrong with “printed in the US” ??? Don’t we have any printers? GREEN CREDENTIALS? BULL more like it.

Of course in this case the goods were sold in America then shipped over here in the UK by a friend – but that’s another matter.

I hate to make an association between Aldi (who I’ve always thought of as somewhere to buy cheap biscuits) and good food… but next time you’re in – they have these little packs of “Del Continental” Sliced pork Choricitos and Pork Pinchitos  -  a grandiose name for chorizo on a stick.  1 minute in the sealed pack – in the Microwave… that’s it.. that and a glass of decent white wine… lovely.

p.s. I KNOW, I should say RED wine but I gave up on that stuff ages ago… I prefer white wine, full stop.

You have to wonder….according to the Telegraph (Saturday Nov 11 2009) “every child in Britain will have their personal details stored on a controversial database”

And so what about THEIR human rights? Not that I’d even dream of suggesting that our government is no better at keeping confidential records than they are, say, running the country, but it’s a well acknowledged fact that the UK government is TOTALLY incapable of keeping a database without some ASS leaving it on a train or losing the CD etc… they just can’t do it.

So really what is happening here is that they’re going to use tax-payers money to collect up all the information that sick people need to feed their fantasies,  then lose the information which will then become available on the black market for £99 for a DVD-full.

We are SO losing the plot on privacy…. and no-one seems to care.

I’ve a real problem with this.. they’ve taken the steel from the Twin Towers attack – and made a ship. Ok. personally I think the Americans should have built the world’s largest EVER building in it’s place – but maybe they’ve already lost that battle….   and so now it’s a ship instead.

And what happens if some enemy blows up that ship?  This looks to me like a fairly normal affair, surely it should have been the most advanced ship in the world to make SURE that such an attack could never happen? Terrorists (I should clarify that … religious nuts) have proven that America is not invincible.. .or at least had a first stab at it. SURELY if any symbol is to replace the twin towers, some special effort should be made to ensure they can’t repeat (with devastating results for western moral) such action?

Not content with insulting the majority of the UK’s small businesses,  Alan Michael Sugar (or cheap stereos as I remember him) has now managed to upset everyone else…(notice I didn’t use his title as I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME think why they gave him this – the guy is a disaster). Probably for the first time in history SMEs are in agreement with the TUC as he NOW has a go at women!

Apparently this is nothing new to anyone who watches “the apprentice” -  I watched 5 minutes of one episode and that was enough for me.  Sarah Veale of the TUC says that AMS has a “dated attitude that makes working life a real struggle for women” – well, and why not – he’s already made life difficult for our SMEs – whatever next?

The best possible outcome of this and about the only one that would leave AMS with any credibility at all (if that is possible) is for him to WALK. GIVE IT UP PAL.

So now, Ed Milliband is going to approve a new generation of nuclear power plants – and not before time.

But isn’t there something wrong here? Do older readers recall that it was generally socialists who used to go so far as to break the law, trying to break into nuclear power stations to SHUT THEM DOWN?

But then as we’ve seen recently with the expenses scandal, principles and honesty seem to be items that have long since disappeared from this government’s agenda.

I can remember when Bedlington had big signs up declaring it was a “nuclear-free zone” – I used to go around with an ink marker as a youngster adding “tell that to the Russians” at the bottom.

Children are to be banned from paddling during school trips under “health and safety guidelines”.

Apparently they are to be ordered not to wade into ankle-deep water until teachers first carry out a full risk assessment and put “proper measures in place”.

This has nothing, NOTHING to do with health and safety. It is legislation gone MAD and is more about covering one’s BACK.

Whatever next, no using the school loos without a biological inspection (looking in the matter, as it were)?

I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my LIFE!

So now, apparently, Kirk Cameron (apparently an actor) and a buddy in the states are about to release a whole load of “origin of species” books into US schools (good) but not before adding a prefix blaming Darwin for World War 2. You have to wonder how such a lovely country can raise such a lot of fruit and nut cases…. read on as they get ripped to bits.