Rebrand
Posted: Thu 17 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism Leave a comment »Ah, those fond memories of Oldham.
And now I see that they’ve also rebranded, and redone the logo. Amazing what £100,000 will get you, isn’t it?
Mute
Posted: Sat 12 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »Isn’t it amazing that you can still confuse some people by just turning their phones to silent when they’re out of the office, and the bloody thing keeps ringing?
Even after [cough] years with mobiles, some people just still don’t know how to silence them. Thankfully, some of us do know how to do so…
Doing the Maths
Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m quite amazed by the scale of the scam in this story, about a couple who claimed benefits for no less than sixteen children – all while living in what’s described as a “one-room property”. I don’t know if that means ‘one bedroom’ or was just a unit in a hostel, or somesuch, but either way it’s awesome to be claiming to have eighteen people living in that property.
After all, I assume that they were also claiming some kind of housing benefit for living in that property – so any decent piece of joined-up work would enable the Tax Credits people, or the Benefits Agency (or whatever the hell it’s called this week) to possibly think that the claim might be just a weeny bit fraudulent.
How were they able to claim for so many children? Because the Tax Credits Agency doesn’t (or, one hopes, didn’t) require parents to provide a birth certificate as proof that the children existed.
It’s the final paragraph of the story that drives me crackers, though.
After the case Sarah Bamford, of HM Revenue and Customs, said: “This case is the result of many months of intense and thorough work by a dedicated team of tax credit investigation officers, determined to see that these fraudsters were brought to justice.”
© BBC News website 2008
If the system had been in place initially, there’d have been no sodding need for the investigation, because they wouldn’t have been able to make such a massive fraudulent claim at all. Fucking jobsworth self-serving HMRC doublespeak dickwads.
GPS Question
Posted: Thu 10 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 7 Comments »A question for those of you who have a GPS system.
Where do you put it in the car?
By which I mean where on the windscreen, of course.
When I’m using it, the GPS/Satnav goes down on the bottom right-hand corner of the window. There I can see it without having to take my eyes too far off the road, and it doesn’t obstruct my view. To me that makes sense.
However, I notice that a lot of people seem to put the SatNav in the bottom middle of the windscreen, directly above the centre console of the dashboard. To me this just seems like a really awkward place, causing you to move your eyes right away from the road, and also blocking the view of a certain bit of road.
So I’m just wondering what other people who read this do.
Losing Weight in 2008: Update
Posted: Wed 9 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Health Leave a comment »Well, to be honest so far I’ve done absolutely sod-all when it comes to increasing my levels of exercise or decreasing my weight this year. I know, I’m a slacker.
There’s been a whole bundle of reason, but they all really come down to one thing – I couldn’t be chuffed to do it. Now, with spring and summer coming up, I might just get round to it.
Way back, we did sign up with a leisure card thing for the nearest large(ish) gym in Dereham, but the experience we had there was so crap that neither of us has actually bothered to go back since. Maybe we should do, just to give them a fair crack of the whip. But well, maybe not.
However, I do plan to do a visit to the other big gym in the area (it’s on my way home from the current contract, and also close to the large Sainsbury’s store where we do most of our shopping, so it’s at least vaguely convenient) tonight, and see how that goes too.
Then, of course, I just need to build up the motivation to actually go, and/or do something else as well…
Ferndale Lodge
Posted: Tue 8 April, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism Leave a comment »Just under a month ago, I ordered a couple of things from Ferndale Lodge for Herself’s birthday, which should’ve arrived in plenty of time.
Except, of course, one thing didn’t. One delivery came nice and quickly, all sorted – and on the delivery note it said that the other item had been “despatched seperately”. OK, still two weeks before Herself’s birthday, so it should still get here.
Except, of course, it didn’t. Two weeks passed, and nothing arrived.
I emailed Ferndale Lodge on Friday, expecting some kind of response so I could know what was going on. Nothing.
Having given them a fair crack of the whip at answering, I called them today and (eventually) got through. Turns out they were out of stock of this particular item, and just couldn’t be arsed to tell their customers. Their systems don’t integrate with the website, so if it’s out of stock, you can still order it, and they’ll just send it out when they get more stock.
Now it’s fair enough to put things on back-order, I don’t mind that. But all the same, it would also still be nice if Ferndale Lodge at least considered letting their customers know that, rather than just annoying them by ignoring the problem and hoping it’ll go away.
Supposedly, everything will now be delivered by the weekend.
I’m not going to hold my breath.