Canine
Posted: Sun 25 February, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts 5 Comments »Following on from all the recent guff about ‘dangerous dogs’ , and the latest “No Shit, Sherlock” advice that children shouldn’t be left alone with dogs, I wonder how long it’ll be before some politician or other says
“I know, why don’t we have a licence for every dog and dog-owner in the country?”
You know, like we used to have.
In theory at least, it would actually be pretty easy to manage.
First, you make it a legal requirement to have every dog microchipped at birth. (well, by the age of 8 or 16 weeks) The chip would be read only, and loaded with a unique identifier along with (possibly) information about the dog, its breed, etc. If a dog were found, or needed to be identified, the chip would be read (using already existing equipment) and queried against a national database.
In the database, you’d have the unique identifier, again the information about dog breed, age, blah blah, and also the owner details, address, contact details. Similar to vehicle license stuff, if you move, you would have to register that information with DogBase, so that information was up to date. This should be free – there’s no point making people pay to change the details, or they just won’t do it.
Any dog could be checked at any time – particularly when out in public – and if that information is out of date, or the owner is incorrect, then the owner can be fined. If the dog is out of control, or whatever, it can be held somewhere, and the owner contacted.
Is it me, or does that make sense?
Organising That Health-check
Posted: Sat 24 February, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Health, House Purchase 1 Comment »So yes, the healthcheck that finally happened on Friday was an utter nightmare to organise.
It started off with being told that I needed to sort one out, and that the insurance company had engaged a third party who would contact me to organise an appointment at my convenience.
Yeah, right. What actually happened was that the company called me up and said “We’ve made an appointment for one of our nurses to come and see you at home on Tuesday at 4pm”. Which is hardly at my convenience. So I called them back and told them so.
Them : “But why don’t you want an appointment at home on Tuesday at 4pm? We’ve made all the arrangements”
Me : “Because I’m not going to be at home at that time. I’ll be at work. If your company is willing to pay me to take half a day off work to come and see you, I might consider it”
Them : “No, we can’t do that. But we don’t understand what the problem is with this appointment, it’s at your home at 4pm”
Me : “Amazing as this may seem to you, I work. Maybe I’m the only person you’ve ever dealt with who works, but there we go. So 4pm on a weekday is not convenient. I’m home for about 7pm, if that helps”
Them : “Oh no, our nurses only work 9-5”.
At which point I ended up going back to the insurers and telling them they could stuff their business. The people they engaged would have problems discerning between an arse and an elbow, and there was no way I was using them. So they promised to organise something else, a proper medical at a proper doctor’s surgery. However, it would still be organised through a third party.
And then I got another call about a week later, from the first third party, still trying to make a ‘convenient’ appointment for me on a workday at 4pm, and which for an appointment ‘at my convenience’ was strangely immovable. This time they got told to sod off.
When the second third party finally called, the first thing they said was “So, you need an appointment in Norfolk?”. At which I think I growled. The woman at the other end certainly seemed surprised. I re-explained the situation (actually, that’s probably more like re-re-re-re-explained, but there we go), and they finally discovered a surgery that was close to the workplace. Halle-bloody-lujah.
But all told it’s still taken four weeks to organise a poxy medical. But if my blood-pressure is too high (I doubt it will be, but still) I’m going to blame it all on the poxy fucking insurance company and their medical third parties. So there.
Right Place, Right Time
Posted: Fri 23 February, 2007 Filed under: News, Photography 1 Comment »While I think the story itself is more than a little hysterical, every time I see the image involved, I just think “Wow”. The photographer, Martin Rickett was so obviously in the right place at the right time. It’s just a brilliant shot.
Patronised
Posted: Fri 23 February, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Health 2 Comments »Ah, the joys of being patronised by medical ‘professionals’.
“Well, Mr Lyle, you’re really rather overweight, aren’t you?”
which really should get the response “Really? And there I was, hoping to climb Everest tomorrow“, instead of the one I gave, which was “Yes. And?“. To which the twat had no answer.
Health Check
Posted: Fri 23 February, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Health, House Purchase, Sweary Leave a comment »One of the real pains (and one I haven’t yet written about on D4D™ – believe me, it’s coming) with our house-buying process at the moment has been that as part of the entire mortgage malarkey, we’ve both been advised to get some proper life-insurance, that’d cover the whole amount of the mortgage should one of us suddenly develop a ‘critical’ illness or drop dead. Of course, that also means having to deal with another load of financial scumbags – insurers.
Back in Jan 2005, I got one lot of cheap-ass life insurance on Herself’s insistence (in fairness, she got some too) which became not-such-cheap-ass insurance when the insurance scumbag underwriters at Norwich Poxybollocks Union decided I was overweight, and whacked an extra amount on my premium. Not a lot, to be honest, but still rather more than the initial quotation had been. Bastards.
Since then, I’ve lost a fair amount of weight, although (as I’ve commented many times) I’m still never going to be 12-15stone without going through at least one limb amputation. That’s a fact of life. I’m not unfit – OK, I’m not fit either, but there we go – and… oh, chuff it, you all know the score by now.
Anyway, with the mortgage application and insurance guff, the scumbag insurance underwriters have – again – thrown a wobbly. And they’ve insisted that this time I don’t just pay extra, I have to have a ‘health check’ too before they might deign to take my money.
So while you’re reading this, I’m in a random doctor’s surgery, having a basic medical and healthcheck for scumbag dirtwad insurers . Whoopee Doo.