Ceefax

I bet Diamondgeezer writes about this tomorrow, but did you know that it’ll be Ceefax’s 30^th Birthday?

It’s amazing how long the service has been going, but I can understand in some ways why it still gets 20 million users per week, even in the age of broadband etc.

Happy Birthday, Ceefax.

Shit-pit

As regular readers will know, the local council is spiffing up its offices for the CPA (Corporate Performance Assessment) next month. The outside walls have been sandblasted and pressure-washed, bits have been repainted, paving slabs replaced, so forth, so fifth.

I’m not sure quite what all this prettifying has to do with corporate/council performance as the CPA is more to do with making sure that information is accessible and understandable, and that there are policies in place for relevant things like housing, social services and the like. But that’s not something I get to care about.

However, you’d think that any organisation worth anything would have figured out that if you’re cleaning the walls of the building, it’s a better idea to clean the roof first so that the shit from the roof doesn’t wash down your nice clean walls come the first rain-fall…

Paranoia and Persecution

One thing I’ve noticed about the UK (and that I get reminded of at inopportune moments) is that you really have to work at being self-employed and so on in the face of epic levels of bureaucratic shit. As most people know, I’m an IT contractor, and in the last week I’ve been taking a whole shed-load of flak lately regarding the Conduct Of Employment Agencies Act.

Currently, no-one I deal with actually seems to know a bloody thing about this act, except that they’ve now got to comply with it. Apparently as a contractor I can opt-in or opt-out of this act, but no-one can tell me which is the best option, and the only company that I was recommended to contact about it turned out to be approximately as useful as a fart in a tornado.

I think that what’s frustrating about this is that it’s supposedly something important, yet no-one knows a chuff about it. It’s bad enough having to go through all the guff of tax, NI, companies house, customs and excise and the countless other hurdles and hoops that bureaucrats hurl into the path of the self-employed, without then having to deal with even more shit that is utterly mysterious and – ultimately – pointless.

Lookalike

Is it just me, or is there a serious resemblance between Edwina Currie and the photo of Rihab Rashid Taha in this story about the fact she’s likely to be released from US custody?

I bet they’re never seen in the same room…

One of those days

All morning waiting for the British Gas engineer – arriving sometime between 8am and 1pm, so that was nice and precise. Turns out, the utter tossers at BG had sent not an engineer to check the meter, but a moron to read it. Not what had been arranged at all. Cue Lyle the Orbital.

They’re now going back over the call-tape (anyone want to bet it’s been “mislaid”?) to see what the tosspot actually said. We’ve already established that while he was calling the person an engineer, he was actually intending to send a meter-reader, as the customer gets charged for an engineer visit, whether they find anything or not. British Gas are in a win-win on that one, they don’t lose money, and instead it means that customers don’t actually save a frigging thing unless their bill has been overcharged by more than £100 in the first place. Yup, roughly £100 for an engineer visit. It’s no fucking wonder most people simply end up accepting being overcharged by the tossers.

So – can anyone recommend a better gas/electric supplier?

It’s Back

Welcome back little Blogroll, with your red stars for updated sites. It’s been odd while you were up the creek, but now you appear to be back, and so I shall now have to find new things to complain about.

Shouldn’t be a challenge.

Nightmare Site

I’ve just booked a thery test with the Driving Standards Agency. Jesus christ, what an utterly nightmarish site. Just to start with, it’s an IE-Only site – not for any good reason, just that whoever created the abortion didn’t know any better. To book the test then involves no less than three new pop-up windows (which should be forbidden as of October 1st when the new Disability Discrimination rulings come into law – I’m not sure they will be, but they certainly should be) and quarter of an hour of my time – and that’s on a serious internet connection, rather than dial-up. An utter piece of shit.

Still, it’s all booked now, so there we go.