2012 Idiot Tax

Posted: Thu 29 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Stupidity, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

In yet another case of “There’s one born every minute”, the BBC has a story today about the fact people are already getting taken in by sites selling tickets for the London 2012 Olympics. That’s despite the fact that tickets won’t be going on sale until 2011…

As I’ve said before, the people who pay money to sites like that really just have more money than sense, and deserve to be taken for a ride. It’s like an idiot tax – if you’re an idiot, you will pay.

According to the story, “it is illegal to sell fake 2012 tickets in the UK, Olympic organisers said.” . But what happens if you’re not actually selling fake tickets? By that I mean that you’re advertising tickets – but not actually supplying even false ones.  Sure, it’s fraud etc. – but technically, it’s also not selling fake tickets. It’s ‘just’ taking money from morons.

I’m forever being told that I’ve got far too cynical a view of people and their stupidity. But still I see stories like this and I’m still amazed that no matter how low my expectations, people still go lower than them.

All You Can Eat

Posted: Thu 29 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Own Business, People, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Seeing this story on the BBC about Taybarns (an all-you-can-eat restaurant whose business is growing during the recession) I was reminded about something I was going to write during my time down in London staying at a Travelodge, and again saw the other weekend when we stayed down in Berkshire. Buffet-style catering – and particularly buffet-style breakfasts.

Personally, I try to stay pretty sane in ‘all you can eat’ environments. From what I’ve seen at Travelodges and the like though, I seem to be in the minority in that aspect.

I lost count of the number of times I’d see people with plates piled high with food for breakfast and/or going back for second, third even (on one memorable occasion) fourth helpings. Obviously some people were just hungry, but others were doing it out of greed, and some kind of misplaced “Well I’ve paid for this so I’m going to get every single penny’s worth out of it” attitude.

I don’t understand that attitude – no, that’s not true. I can see the way some people’s minds work. I just don’t like it, and it’s not a mindset that will ever sit with me. I’d rather have the food I want, not necessarily what I feel I deserve, or that is mine because I’ve paid £x for it.

There’s more to this, I just haven’t yet got it straight enough in my head to be able to get it written down properly.

Stating the Obvious (Yet Again)

Posted: Wed 28 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, News, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Monday’s verdict from the inquest into the death of three men in an RAF Puma helicopter was a perfect exercise in “No shit, sherlock”.

Apparently, “the pilot was attempting manoeuvres beyond his capabilities“.

Which is pretty obvious when you think about it. After all, the helicopter crashed.

The news coverage though was even better – and how they didn’t end up with a really rude answer, I don’t know.  It’s another of those situations where I’m glad I’m not involved in this kind of idiocy, because my response would’ve been rude, insensitive and many other things.

At one point the reporter asked “So was the helicopter flying too low?”. Of course it fucking was, it ended up flying into the ground.

Self-Assessment

Posted: Tue 27 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Security, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Over the weekend, I completed – and sent off – my Self-Assessment Tax Return to Your Friends And Mine at HMCE.  The deadline for receiving them is October 31st (i.e. this Saturday) so I’ve only just scraped it this year, having been really really good with it last year.

I know, I could do it all online, and have ’til January 31st to fill it in etc. – but I still don’t trust the online system. I wrote about this a couple of years back, and my feelings are still the same. Mainly, I’m happy to spend the money and use the Special Delivery stuff to get the tax return in – it just means I’ve got a signed confirmation that the Tax Return has been received where it’s been sent.  I’ve been bitten by that before, the entire “Oh no, we haven’t received it” from HMCE. Of course, if you say you haven’t received something from them, it’s a case of “Well we sent it, so you must have received it”, but it’s not the same thing when it’s time to send stuff to them.

Basically, when it comes to sending documents to HMCE, it always pays to be paranoid. Always assume that they are either :

  1. Vindictive
  2. Inefficient beyond the dreams of man
  3. Both

and you’ll be OK.

It’s because of that – OK, it’s partly because of that – that I still don’t trust the online submission of tax returns. Yes, you can be pretty sure they’ve received it – but when it comes to HMRC, “pretty sure” simply isn’t sure enough. I feel the same way about HMCE’s online submission as I do about the people who store all their important data/files with Google, Amazon or some other internet cloud-based server – in other words, “Expect it to get lost. Expect it to get hacked.”

My tax return is on paper. Yes, I know it’ll end up being clocked in to the HMCE ‘System’. That’s fine. But letting their system be the only place it’s held? Sod that. I’ve got a photocopy of the tax return. I know where the figures came from, and I’ve got them recorded. I expect HMCE’s copy of the document to get lost, edited, hacked or mislaid. If/when it happens, I’ve got my own hard-copy backup.  If you’ve done all the calculations on-line and not printed out the results (or even better, screenshots) and/or received confirmation from the system of those figures, what proof have you got of what you filled in?

Even if it’s simply that the electronic version gets corrupted, if HMCE also have it on paper then there’s some way they can recover the information without me even needing to be involved. If they only have an electronic version, then lots of people are going to be screwed if anything does happen.

So while I can, I’ll stick with doing my tax return on paper and sending it in to them. When they eventually go to “Online only”, I’ll still make sure I’ve got a printout of the entire thing, along with all the figures I’ve used to calculate it.

Call me paranoid, I don’t mind. Frankly, I’ve been kicked in the nuts by HMCE too many times to not be paranoid. And that’s not paranoia – that’s just common sense.

BNP at the BBC

Posted: Thu 22 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, News, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Despite all the protesting – and perhaps in spite of it – I don’t have an issue with the BNP’s Nick Griffin appearing tonight on the BBC’s Question Time. In fact, I think it’s quite amusing that the anti-fascist movement are the ones trying to stop someone they don’t like from being able to speak.

One of the taglines here on D4D is “I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. This is a perfect example of that. I don’t like the BNP’s policies, nor most of the people who represent them. I feel/felt the same about UKIP, which (in my opinion) was just a posher version of the BNP when you got right down to it.

But I do think that Nick Griffin should appear on things like Question Time. In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s essential he appears.

After all, if he’s silenced and/or censored, you don’t get to see what a vile knobsock the man is. If he’s allowed to speak, people can hear the BNP’s policies and realise what hate-filled shit it is (And let’s face it, the BNP really should be supported by the Daily Mail) and decide not to vote for them.  Yes, there’s the chance that some people will hear the vitriolic little pig-fucker and think he’s “Got the right idea” but there we go, that’s freedom of choice for you.

But let Nick Griffin speak out on behalf of his party – he’ll fuck things up for himself and his party far faster than any censorship can do it.

Aviva

Posted: Wed 21 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Domestic, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Interesting to see today that Aviva (ex Norwich Union) has been named by Lovemoney as “Britain’s worst insurer”.

We’ve never used NU / Aviva for insurance – they’ve invariably been the highest quote around for any insurance I requested. The one that always sticks in my mind was their quote of some £1,000 a year for £25,000 of contents-only insurance when I lived in Manchester. I ended up using More>Than, paying £350 for £60,000 of cover. Go figure.

My personal experience of Norwich Union this year has been abysmal for a number of reasons which I’m not going to write about here. Well, not yet anyway – it’s still a rant waiting to happen. It’s just that it’s folded in to the general crapness of this year’s fun.

So it’s no surprise to me that regardless of name/brand, they’ve been named as ‘the worst’.

Scareware and AntiVirus

Posted: Mon 19 October, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Geeky, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Today the BBC has been carrying the story about “Millions” being taken in by scareware scams, where pop-up ads on web pages tell people they’ve got a virus and to download ‘this antivirus software’ to fix it.  At best the ‘antivirus software’ is useless, and the person’s credit-card number is sold for use in credit-card fraud. At worst, the “anti-virus” actually contains viruses (virii?) and trojans that make the computer less secure, rather than more.

Now of course there are lots of idots out there who will fall for this kind of thing. But to my mind, it’s not just those people’s faults – both PC Manufacturers and ISPs need to take some of the responsibility too.

It doesn’t take a lot to get decent anti-virus software. Go to Grisoft, and get the free AVG anti-virus software (free for personal use) and job done. There’s plenty of others too – Kaspersky, Avast, so on, so forth.

But people still have to know about these, rather than using the clusterfuck shitpieces like Norton, McAfee that come with most PCs and that people never use – or just assume that it’s installed, so Everything’s OK. Not knowing that they need to subscribe, and make sure it’s updated regularly (for which read daily, rather than monthly)

So why don’t the ISPs supply a free antivirus like AVG, Avast or Kaspersky on the CD you invariably get? Why don’t PC builders install a free anti-virus with the PC rather than the paid-for POS software? (Of course, we know that PC Builders like Dell etc. must get some whacking kickback fee for providing paid-for software, which is the reason)

If computers were provided with free anti-virus that didn’t require any further financial investment or effort from Joe Everyday-User, there’d be a lot less problems of this sort.

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