Of Course Our Politicians Deserve a Pay Rise!

If this government is to be believed, the country is in an economic mess because we employees have too many rights, disabled people have too many benefits and there's planning laws to prevent building on the green belt and the unregulated building of monstrous light-blocking, home extensions.

Then there's the fact we have far too many libraries for our country's level of literacy.

Nothing to do with the politicians and (as yet) unprosecuted bankers then...? Or that rather expensive war we've just had? Or the big corporations who make a mint out of Britain whilst hardly paying a penny in tax?
Or the refusal to stamp out health and benefits tourism to bring us in line with pretty well every other western country?

I really do resent the way these times are turning me into a political animal against my will, though I continue to have no party politics as such ('least of the evils' doesn't quite cut it for me). I just know injustice and hogwash when I see it.

Furthermore I've yet to see a single Tory action make a blind bit of difference to the economic situation in real terms. Where are the affordable business rates for shops? Where are the bank loans for small businesses? Where is the nationwide audit to find out what skills and services our nation is actually short of/which areas most need employment so efforts can be directed in the right places? There are only so many novelty shops full of pink fluffy nonsense that can be sustained.

I have no answers - the politicians are paid to come up with those. I am just a question machine. But let's keep on asking the questions until our 'public servants' are forced to come up with some acceptable answers and be accountable to their electorate as they should be. Plus if they want that 40% pay hike that is being bandied about, they need to earn it. I suggest the introduction of 'payment by results'.

As for the Andrew Mitchell 'Plebgate' affair, some of us were actually more bothered that this politician gave £16m of taxpayer's money (ie OUR money) to a Rwandan dictator mate for reasons, and presumably a backhander, known only to himself.

Or else, let's have a general strike so they listen.

Everyone Wants A Relationship With Me

Apparently customer service managers in banks are now known as Customer Relationship Managers. Conversely it's getting harder to google products and services without being required to 'register' on every website - a surefire way of scaring this potential customer away, unless the product is truly unavailable anywhere else (having first ruled out locally, in real life).
Which got me to thinking, how come the semantics get fancier and the customer commitment demanded gets higher as the service gets worse?

Shopping Around

I don’t want a relationship with my car insurer
I don’t want a relationship with my car rescuer
I don’t want a relationship with my zero interest bank
I don’t want a relationship with my patchy reception mobile phone company
I don’t want a relationship with my 1.5mbps home internet provider
I don’t want a relationship with my council tax department, gas provider or electricity supplier
I don’t want a relationship with my local supermarket
I don’t want a relationship with the company currently doing the best price
on Canon printer inks
I don’t want a relationship with the local Police
Or the fashion emporium I ordered one ill-fitting bra from five years ago.
I don't want a relationship with all the companies I've NEVER bought anything from, who won't take 'Unsubscribe' for an answer.
I particularly don’t want a relationship with the Union which sold me down the river when I was made redundant, but who won’t accept that our relationship is over.
A pox on your endless unsolicited newsletters lovingly e-mailed and mailed to me
Your advertising incontinence spilling out of magazines, leaving only glossy covers
And your multi-ways spreading my intimate details to all and sundry on the net, despite my wishes, the Data Protection Act, rampant identity theft and an imploding environment of mailshot waste.
Just call me a commitmentphobe
Though you’ve got to admit, the sex is pretty rubbish too,
And you’re always cheating on me with new customers
Showering them with all your gifts and favours, though here's news for you
For I've started cheating on you too
When you can't keep me satisfied
And my loyalty is rewarded with contempt in your eyes
I surf for new consumer partners who might add value and adore
And give me the customer servicing that has me coming back for more
For shopping is voting and I'm getting cannier who I elect
When I select.
One day, I'm hoping there will be wedding bells
When I find the company who offers lifelong heaven without any added hell
Meantime I think my local MP wants to sever his relationship with me
Making him work so hard on my behalf for his salary.

©LS King 2010

For the Binge Alcoholic In Your Life - Gifts From Argos

If a loved one bought you any of these gifts (click on picture to enlarge for grim details), would you see it as an act of love? Or would you see it as a sign that they wanted you dead, soonest? Would you check to see if any of the family had bumped up your Life Assurance cover recently?
Would you ask for the receipt and take it back to exchange for something more life affirming? A Breville sandwich toaster for example...?

My brand new Autumn Argos catalogue happened to fall open at this edifying page, this damning endictment of modern Britain as a national disgrace, where youngsters spend hours preening themselves to look flawless for the big night out, but seemingly care nothing by the early hours for being found unconscious in the street in their own vomit, undies akimbo. Or who stumbles upon them in that state, be it friend or foe.

Drunkenness used to be a normal-ish rite of passage, a phase, circumscribed by the high cost of drink, the refusal of the pub or bar to serve 'one over the eight', the long arm of the law who still had the power to administer 'tut tuts' or 'thick ears' accordingly, and the young drinker's own sense of self-respect. Then there was the sophistication of being seen to sip your Cinzano rather than turning potential mates off by witnessing you crassly glugging pints and necking shots.

This all now seems to have been swept by the wayside so that despite all their material advantages over previous generations, today's hardest drinking generation displays a worrying degree of often-exhibitionist nihilism, a devil-may-care, so what if I die? attitude. Some indeed are attaining their inner death wish, foi gras-ing their livers with booze, and not seeing middle age.

More and more older people are also drinking to excess or never calming down from their Uni days. Retirees too seem to be opting to take up alcoholism (usually alongside boredom in the sun as ex-pats) and eschewing the golf, ballroom dancing, community work and allotment-keeping of yesteryear.

Is life really so awful that an alarming number of people seek escapism in these excesses? Is life becoming more awful because an alarming number of people are seeking escapism via excess rather than trying to make it better and doing that much-missed community work?

Does excess really = happiness?

Or just numbing, dumbing down?

Funny how a page in a catalogue can lead to a whole train of thought. But lest anyone mistake me for a born again Temperance evangelist, I would just like to make it clear that shocked though I am at Argos promoting binge drinking, I am not against social drinking, only anti-social drinking. And if excessive drinking only killed the a***holes of this world, I'd personally bulk buy these aids-to-suicide for them, but fact is a lot of good people are being sucked into this toxic world and lost to it too, no matter that there has never been more psychological and other help available to them to help them face up to whatever demons are driving them to drink destructively.

I remember being a mess and unhappy with myself in earlier years, but never self-loathing. Where does self-loathing come from (if a person's not actually Hitler), and how do we as a society address this scourge (apart from trying not to indulge in behaviours that can only make self-loathing worse and offer no sense of achievement)?

Here endeth my lesson for Thursday...

Churchill & The Two-Finger Salute!

Last week I obtained 70 online car insurance quotations for 3rd party fire and theft, ranging in price from £279 -£1285 for my new (secondhand) Skoda, using a variety of price comparison sites. Can you guess which one I went for?

No more fully comp for me after Churchill (a major British insurer which prides itself on the emulation of British values) decided that its British values are incompetence, gross underestimation of both car and customer and trying to string the customer along until they either lose the will to live or die of old age. Yes their quotes may be competitive, but forget it if you ever need to make a claim. As for that legal cover you took out with them, forget about them employing it to defend your no-claims honour against a dangerous road surface on Britain's Deadliest Road - no matter that your car decided at low speed (and of its own volition) to aquaplane at temporary roadwork traffic lights in treacherous conditions.

So that my suffering and paperwork hell of the last four months since the crash has not been in vain I thought I would share with you several useful insights I have gleaned about car insurance companies when you need them - knowledge I found very lacking on the net when I needed it;

a. ALWAYS claim for whiplash injury, even if you only have it for a day as they will stitch you up big time on your car valuation. Not being in the habit of crashing, my mistake was trying to be totally honest and honourable, assuming they would behave likewise towards me, despite friends warning (and urging) me otherwise.
b. Always strip your written-off car of everything you can & claim the money back for any unused road tax on the disc/extract the stereo if it's any good. I only wish I'd had the means to lever my recent tyres off as well!
c. NEVER accept the insurance company's first insultingly low offer. This is regarded by them as an 'opening gambit' to ascertain how big a mug you are and should be regarded by you likewise. However do swat up on the value of your car and your insurance policy wording as you need to be sure of the moral/legal high ground before arguing with these people re what your entitlements really are.
d. Hassle them by telephone EVERY DAY or they'll let your claim drag on ad infinitum. Always be icily polite but insistent. It drives them nuts. One call centre supervisor, 'Russell', said he didn't like my 'insulting attitude' just because I kept asking to speak to the Customer Service Manager (CSM) and pointing out I couldn't afford to accept his 'final offer'. But as a friend remarked it wasn't up to 'Russell' to either like or dislike my attitude if I wasn't actually giving him verbal abuse or insulting him. In fact 'Russell' was being downright unprofessional by making personal remarks and trying to deviate from the point.
e. Always record names/dates/phone conversation details for future reference and keep all correspondence.
f. Finally like me, you will probably be forced to acknowledge that it is unlikely the spotty 17 year-old call centre operator will be authorised to go above a certain amount (usually an extra £100, which they will always insist is their 'last offer'). In addition they will try and lie to you that they have no Customer Service Manager (CSM), as to escalate your case affects their bonus. One 'Leanne' was so desperate to get rid of me, she lied to me that my written-off car had actually been fixed! Reaching a brick wall on one level dictates you move on to the next level.
g. Failing the holy grail of a Customer Service Manager, find out the Regional Manager's address and phone number, and if you get no joy out of him, the Managing Director himself. As a last resort there is the Financial Ombudsman to complain to (free to you, but it'll cost your insurers so it is not technically in their interests to allow things to escalate this far)
h. If you have legal cover and believe the accident was not your fault, insist it is used - Churchill denied me mine on the grounds that they didn't have 100% chance of winning against Oxfordshire Highways. Which kind of makes you wonder what are they doing selling legal cover if they have no intention of letting customers use it? And since when was any case a dead cert???
i. In Britain the Association of British Insurers stipulate that a final claim settlement should be enough to allow the insured to replace their lost vehicle with one of equivalent quality, allowing for regional/time of year price differentiations. It is as well to keep reminding the insurer of this industry-standard obligation as well as sending them at least 6 print-outs of equivalent age/model/condition cars as your own for the price that you seek.
Check out any insurance watchdogs, ombudsmen or regulatory and industry standard bodies in your neck of the woods.

And before you ask, after all that, my final settlement for the Rover was still pathetic. Too depressing to talk about indeed. And contrary to the whole point and spirit of 'insurance', I was left significantly out-of-pocket by the accident. I suppose I should be grateful not to have been in a worse accident, and I am - when the paperwork permitted me time to reflect and recover the will to live that is!

To sum up, God help anyone sick or elderly who needs to fight the same battle with today's insurer. Much though insurance companies undeniably need to protect themselves against fraud, they are bludgeoning the majority of us who are honest too, and perversely, actively encouraging dishonesty (such as exaggerated injury claims) by very dint of their renowned meanness and own brand of rip-offery.

But hey what else did I expect from a disturbingly obscene orgasmic animated dog?

Perhaps someone should report him to Watchdog...?

Other sites of interest;

Beware Car Insurer Tricks on Write-Offs

Fluxsposure - an Insider's Take on the Insurance Industry

Companies Who Do Not Wish To Sell Things

Every since the industrial heart was ripped out of Britain as a manufacturing nation and the Great was dropped off the front, we have been repeatedly told we are a nation dedicated to the 'service industry'

My response to this is; where is it then? Where is the service?

As both a private and a business consumer, my experience of at least 70% of British suppliers and services has been that their idea of service is an insult to the word!

Take my trade account with Laura Ashley (home furnishings store) for example. Great products, mouthwatering catalogues. However try and buy a 5L tin of their paint to cover a medium-sized room and it was 'Oh we don't do 5L tins' And they didn't have it in stock in larger than 750ml tin size either! The latest LA catalogue would come out and you would bound to your local branch for samples of their exciting new fabrics, but they wouldn't be there. You'd ring to order them but half still wouldn't be available 'yet'! If you ordered anything - a well-priced reproduction clock for a formal reception room example - which you wouldn't expect to be a made-to-order item like a sofa, it would take weeks, even months to arrive, yet every time you telephoned to chase it, not only would the person at the other end of the phone sound suspiciously like they hadn't a clue, but they couldn't even give you an ETA of when you might see it, as if the concept of stockcheck/delivery screens on their computers was entirely alien to them! Finally I gave up trying to order anything from them as I was so sick of having to shop for last minute stop-gaps while I waited for the real thing (aka their products) to arrive.

Some while later I received a letter from Laura Ashley saying regrettably they were closing the Trade Account arm of their business. I replied with a long letter saying why I had ceased to use it anyway and it was a shame they had such desirable products they didn't seem to want to sell to me!

Time and time again I have noticed this. A British company would rather chase after new customers offering incentive after incentive - expensive for them both in marketing and advertising (and the incentives) you would have thought - rather than pursue the saner and more cost-effective solution of keeping their existing customers happy and harnessing that wonderful phenomenon known as 'repeat business' and that other knock-on side effect, 'word-of-mouth' advertising by their impressed clientele. Customer loyalty is not only unrewarded these days, it is positively spat on by the likes of banks and insurance companies in particular who lower their interest rates and hoik their premiums up respectively to the poor sap who is foolish enough to remain doggedly faithful to them.

I recently lunched in a funky café in the heart of a busy city centre and was surprised to find myself the only diner there. After a while I realised why the café was so quiet. Every time a potential customer came in, they found out the café didn't take credit or debit cards. And yet they had the customer footfall outside that many a business would die for!
Die is probably the word though, with an expensive refurbishment, four staff to pay and NO customers, I'd give it about four months and deservedly so if it is that dumb. Not that most British restaurants/cafes like or wish to serve customers anyway of course.

On a business level I can find no one to repair aluminium sash windows and patio doors locally, yet every second sales rep phonecall seems to be from a company trying to hard-sell me Plant Hire. Everyone and their dog is doing Plant Hire in Oxford, yet I can count on one hand the number of times we need to hire equipment in each year, let alone would I open a dozen accounts with a dozen suppliers for the privilege.

The worst businesses bombard you with customer feedback forms as if you have nothing else to do, (no mention of remuneration for the 'free consultancy' you're giving by indulging them), then completely ignore every word of their customer feedback until the next customer feedback form or glossy catalogue arrives.

As for all the business websites that still annoy with pointless floating graphics (and an elusive 'Skip Intro' button) or making you sign up your entire personal details down to your shoe-size merely in order to browse lighting products etc, well they don't get many orders from me either!

On the rare occasions I find a company that a. sells the perfect product at reasonable price and b. makes it easy to order and obtain said product, I could kiss them. And if they also turn out to have decent after-sales service, I want to marry them as well!

What Is The Point Of Digital TV?

Primitive and painfully slow as the internet was when I was first introduced to it some 13 years ago - I could see it had potential.

Eighteen months after acquiring the TV digibox which multiplied my five terrestrial television stations x seven (to reluctantly abet my country in selling off the analogue signal which will eventually deprive me of TV altogether without a digibox), I still don't see the point of digital TV, bar for hard-core sports or home shopping fans.

For the rest of us the same few programmes are endlessly repeated, not unusually within the same day, and certainly within the same week. I can easily imagine that Friends in particular will be replayed on a continuous looptape on one channel until our speed-dating thirtysomethings are shuffle-dating ninetysomethings!

Other channels drown in home makeover show repeats that even I have managed to catch at least twice already as a makeover show fan. Talent shows proliferate, but so samey and formulaic it is often hard to tell (or care) if they are repeats or not. Cheap imported fillers such as Judge Judy go out several times a day, seldom a day under ten years old.

Low budget productions abound, but new television programmes, particularly quality drama productions are increasingly becoming a rarity as the television money pie is cut into ever meaner slices to accommodate all the digital 'new kids on the block'.

Conversely our lives get busier and busier leaving us with less and less television viewing time and the internet competes by offering YouTube and other viewing on demand, so does it not follow we'd rather watch something GOOD when we have the leisure time?

The best thing about all the digital repeats has been the opportunity to see the odd series that I missed as a small child - Upstairs Downstairs for example - which was superb! And the 1980s Sherlock Holmes series - again a poignant reminder of what television is capable of at its best.

Once in a blue moon the BBC might take a risk with a new expensive series - such as resurrecting Dr Who - for example. Or even a BRAND new concept such as the far-riskier 'Life on Mars'. The resounding success of these series is not lost on them, but rather than commissioning even more new series and taking even more risks to raise themselves head and shoulders above the competition, what do they do? Rather extraordinarily, kill the couple of geese laying these golden eggs for them with OVERKILL. Aside from the ridiculous levels of tie-in merchandise, there is now a digital channel almost devoted to recent Dr Who repeats and 'behind the scenes' documentaries about it. Having enjoyed it as much as anyone in the initial stages, I am now rapidly going off Dr Who, despite the undeniable charms of its star, David Tennant.

Yet presumably the rights to our television successes are then sold to multiple countries - as with the BBC's most successful series ever, 19th Century sailing saga 'The Onedin Line' - still generating revenue for them over 30 years later and hot in Yugoslavia!

The other annoying thing about digital aside from all the repeats are the ad breaks, which are at least twice as long and loud as those on terrestrial commercial channels. Oh and 24hr News actually encourages 'creation' of enough news to fill it, rather than quality reporting on real issues, aka 'News'.

Simultaneously the big slide with the terrestrial channels continues apace as they make less and less effort to differentiate themselves from their poorer digital cousins, ignoring viewer complaints about quality, messing with scheduling, and insulting programme makers by docking, squeezing or whizzing programme end credits, including cast lists, of the few decent programmes they still broadcast in the name of advertising the often far-crappier programme coming up next.

To sum up, although I have enjoyed some nostalgia on digital in the form of old films and series, some history programmes, and even a bit of low-budget such as 'Spendaholics', I have not seen anything worth seeing which could not have easily been slotted into the five terrestrial channels that I started out with.

Happy National Live-Near-To-Work Day!

My contribution to the petrol crisis is to introduce National Live-Near-To-Work Day on the basis that if work is more than an hours' commute, either your workplace is in the wrong place or your house is.

And while we're about it why can't we stick a few more carriages on all our (re-nationalised) trains, re-open the axed stations and reinstate the school bus system to minimise traffic? If the school bus was good enough for me, why isn't it good enough for today's precious little darlings?

Furthermore let's encourage every city and town to source as many of its goods and services locally as possible. It is ludicrous to have legions of salesmen and contractors chugging up and down the country farting fumes to offer services nationwide that could be provided more locally, greenly, and you would have thought cheaply, supporting their local economy into the bargain, (unless for extremely specialised products and services). Everyone and their dog for example sells office furniture and nearly all of it looks the same - why would anyone need to go too far afield for it?

And many of our continental cousins already have shared car lanes to encourage car sharing in the speediest most desirable lane of the highway - where are ours?
They also have more freight trains removing unnecessary haulage trucks off the roads. Where are ours?

Far from being an environmental purist, I rather enjoy driving, but I do feel we rely on our cars way too much and could try harder to reduce our number of car journeys. Being organised and getting as many errands done as possible on each journey also saves an amount of petrol I find.

The one positive aspect about being broke in the 'credit crunch' is at least it may force us to economise, automatically becoming greener and wasting less on every level, much though saving stuff and not consuming does not equate to 'sexy environmentalism' entailing the purchase of inflated eco-branded products.

My consultancy invoice is in the post Mr Brown! I think you'll find it's a fraction of what these overpriced transport infrastructure and economist fatcats charge!

*By the way I hereby decree this day a National Bank Holiday for househunting - for those who live an unsustainable distance from work!

A typical British railway line v a typical British road

All I Wanted Was a De-Tangle Comb!

I had to ask an assistant where the brushes and combs had gone to as all I could see was a sea of unidentifiable pink packaged 'goods' of no recognizeable use to man, woman or beast.
Someone should get this 'Chemist' under the Trades Descriptions Act. And where are the Packaging Police when you need them, if we're remotely serious about saving this planet? The contents of these gifts seemed to consist largely of packaging! Which begs the question, how much disposable income do they think we earn, proportionate to our intelligence in disposing of it?