I’m not actually putting house moves into the Shitopedia. In fact, seeing new places and having a change of scenery can be an inspiring thing to do and enrich the soul. What I do have a problem with, is the several months of being “on hold” that goes with it. A certain British telecommunications company seemed to have a lot of trouble with the concept of moving house. At one point I considered whether I was their first customer to venture the idea. Maybe other users of telephones and broadband prefer being manacled to their homes for the security it gives them. Why see the world when you can spend £60 a month chatting to your gas provider or playing bingo online?

The best bit was when the woman on the telephone sighed audibly at the suggestion we shouldn’t have to pay for a service we don’t receive and that the contract we signed might work both ways.

Likewise the banks shuffled nervously like birds on a wobbly telephone line.
continue reading "Moving House"

The only way to truly ruin a day is to have to deal with an irate customer or hair-splitting client. In one weekend job I had an indignant customer who complained because the assistants didn’t know how to give a refund in pounds to a customer who bought an item in France – before the sale – and would like another item in exchange, that is only available in a different store so please could you order it for me and I’ll pay the difference. !!

Fast forward several years to office jobs where fussy clients think they’re the only person giving the firm work. They ask for records from decades ago just to give the office junior the opportunity to do battle with spiders and layers of dust amongst the badly labelled boxes in archives. They’ll ring up every hour making you put other people on hold, just to see how you’re getting on.

Finally, I moved up a bit in the world and had to start having to deal with “stakeholders” – a term I objected to out of hand. It goes in the same hellish category as “blue-sky thinking”, “top-down structuring” and “putting speech marks around everything”. Stakeholders are people who like to get in the way of you doing your job. They nit-pick and have an opinion and organise useless meetings until you start up your own company just so you don’t have to consult them ever again. Thank God for that.

Last night we watched Derren Brown, sois-disant Mentalist (mental might be the word) or illusionist, who had trailed his Channel 4 show, The System, as a foolproof way of beating the bookmakers.

He purported to show a single mother, whom he had e-mailed anonymously with five horse racing winners in a row, then was to invite her to Sandown where she was to back a certain horse, the “sixth winner”, with all the money she could muster. She had about £1,000 left from her earlier winnings, borrowed £1,000 from her father and, if maths are right, must have borrowed £2,000 (which she could ill afford) from a loan company.

Brown had her hand him this £4,000 for him to stake for her on Moon Over Miami. Which lost.

The untold hurt she must have felt must have been appalling. I have never in my life seen a show with such a rank, vile, bullying element – not even the dreaded Big Brother.

The denouement was that, of course, the ticket he had handed her had the winner’s name on it, and she collected.

But what he did was unforgiveable, utterly.

The System actually involved contacting some 7,500 or more ordinary people, sending one-sixth of them the name of one horse each in a six-runner race. All losers were then deleted and the “winning” group then divided again into six groups, again given one name each of a further six: so of course, eventually, there were a handful of six people with Five Winners In a Row.

All the “winners” were filmed betting in their fifth race, without yet meeting Brown. Only the winning ticket, the lady featured in the show, was asked back to the appalling torture-fest which was the final game.

The credits said that “all losers were offered their stakes back”, but does not make it clear whether they accepted or not.

This was television at its lowest point. For shame, Derren Brown; for shame, Channel 4.

What has happened to Pluto?

And I don’t mean the lovable dog belonging to Mickey Mouse.

How many people does it take to demolish a planet?

Only 424.

Turned to a dwarf

Pluto has been downgraded to the status of a dwarf planet and no longer counts as our ninth planet of the solar system.

This was decided on the last day of the International Astronomical Union in August 2006, late and after most of the delegates had left.

Alan Stern, leader of the NASA New Horizons Mission to Pluto, said: “Less than five per cent of the world’s astronomers voted. I’m embarrassed for astronomy.”

I am obliged to the Observer Book of Space, published with the Observer newspaper on 11 November 2007, for all this information, as well as for a piece on the 1974 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence message sent from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

This was, in brief, a numerical message which would form a picture explaining who we, human beings, are. It included a representation of our solar system.

With nine planets.

As it should be.

Let’s Get Together

Surely we can find more than 424 people who wish to BRING BACK PLUTO and reinstate it as a planet, returning it to the fold.

Join me in the quest by joining the Facebook Group, Bring Back Pluto.

My father, an American born in 1901, insisted that we four children learn the names of the planets from the sun outwards and he was only 29 when Pluto was discovered. He would tell us how exciting that discovery was. In his memory, I hope to re-instate our ninth planet to its full glory.

After all, in his lifetime he learned of the first flight at Kittyhawk and of the first discoverey Pluto and watched the first men walk on the Moon and even worked in the space industry himself. From horse and buggy, to space travel in one man’s lifetime. BRING BACK PLUTO to honour him and all those who have lived in that amazing 20th century.

• For those wishing to know, Pluto the Disney character was named after the planet on its discovery.

In this day and age of transparency, when even the smallest parish councillor must declare an interest if an agenda item is in any way connected to him; and when professionals such as lawyers, accountants and the like must at all times be aware of any potential conflict of interest, why does this care-fulness not extend to the top?

Alastair Darling, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, stepped in a few weeks ago to urge the Bank of England (over which, incidentally, his boss Gordon Brown surrendered control during his days in the same post) to rescue the ailing Northern Rock bank, an ex-building society.

Only this past week did he have the gumption to admit, very very quietly, and in the middle of other news so it was “buried”, that he has a mortgage with…. guess who?

Yup, Northern Rock.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Supermarkets are crap.

These huge aircraft carrier sized warehouses, with their “buy one get one free” and “rollback” offers, provide little to refute any claim that their only concern is the bottom line – above anything else – like customer satisfaction; paying fair prices; and avoiding monopolised markets.

Loyalty Cards

Just to make sure I buy everything from one place, you offer me a penny for every pound spent. That is not loyalty, that is a bribe.

Price Fixing

Due to their size, and enormous buying power, supermarkets can, and do, tell their suppliers how much they will pay for the goods.

Imagine this: apples are buy one get one free – great, you think – but what you don’t realise is that the supermarket has told the farmers producing the apples that, for the duration of the offer, they will pay half price. “Try shifting 2,000 tons of apples to anyone else… before they go off” is their attitude, and it works, effectively holding suppliers to ransom.

Shifting Shelves

Last time I came into this supermarket, the cereal was here, now this aisle is full of Shrek biscuits. You’ve moved everything!

Supermarkets move things around regularly so that you might “impulse buy” something when you nip in to get bread and milk. Another example of the disdain with which they regard their ‘loyal’ customer.

The 5 O’Clock Rush Hour

Not the supermarkets fault, but if you experience the frustration that is entering a supermarket at work chucking out time, you’ll know what I mean. The supermarket becomes heavily congested. It would be quicker to bake bread, than buy it at this time.

The same is true on Saturdays, and, in particular before a holiday which will see the supermarket closed for a day (like Christmas). People cannot seem to grasp that just having one day without shopping will not completely empty their house of food, and instead head to the supermarkets to empty the shelves as fast as they can… all at the same time. Don’t ever try to go into one on Christmas Eve – you’ll just go berserk.

They Aren’t Actually Any Cheaper

Honestly. Try this:

• go to a market for fruit and veg – it will be cheaper, better quality, fresher, and probably won’t be stuffed with preservatives;
• go to a proper butcher for meat – it will be tastier, won’t be wrapped in cellophane, you’ll be able to choose how much you want, and it will be cheaper;
• get your milk from a milkman – if there still are any -  it is far more convenient,  and they usually pay their suppliers a fair price.

What is more annoying than people braying on about how busy they are?

Not much.

Living in a city can be a demanding experience. There is an underlying feeling of running out of time that’s driving everyone to scurry around cramming in as much ‘Warmest regards’ crackberry sign-offs between crayfish and rocket sandwiches as is humanly
possible.

Maybe I’m just bitter due to the fact I am not as in demand as many of the people I seem to come across. I am not “absolutely chock-a-block”, “on 60 plus these days” or “missing holidays this year”. Some of these people are earning vast sums of money and will retire when they hit thirty, many are simply not.

I understand if you want to work yourself into the ground in the hope of promotion, good for you. If you’ve got an interesting job it would be good to hear what you’re doing. Barking out meaningless figures of how many hours you sit in a chair and stare at a screen surely isnt something to be proud of.

Comments that annoy me -

Q “Wow, you’ve had ANOTHER holiday?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Lucky old you eh? Alright for some!”

- Holidays are fun, why are you proud to not have any?

Q “Off home are you?”
A “Umm, well yeah”
Q “Nice of you to drop in and see us! Ha Ha”

- Well I’ve worked a full day and achieved a lot of stuff, but you’re right, you are going to sit here for another couple of hours, good for you!

Why on earth does every news broadcast use meaningless outside broadcast shots to fill up space?

For example, any crime story on the BBC has to have a reporter – or better call them commentator, for they don’t report – outside Scotland Yard (New Scotland Yard for overseas readers). There, the triangular metal signpost turns relentlessly: in the foreground, the “reporter’s” head in closeup, meaninglessly mouthing more mis-information and non-facts.

The same has been true of all the reports of the McCann case in Portugal. There, the police are not permitted to comment, but this does not stop the BBC (and other news teams) from posting a “reporter” outside the courthouse, the police station, the original holiday village, yet again telling us there is nothing to tell us.

What a waste of money.

And while we’re on the subject, why oh why do the news stations insist on putting their weathermen and women outside in a garden, on a roadway, up a mountain in the pouring rain/hurling wind/settling snow/whatever? What is wrong with a decent weathermap in a studio, complete with isobars, fronts and wind directions.

Get rid of puffy cloud-smiley sun graphics, please, and save money and time!

At some point in most of our working and/or business lives, we have the joyless experience of attending a conference or other “networking” event.

Networking, done properly, need not be a dirty word. The problem begins when people start firing business cards at you at the beginning of conversations which inevitably lead nowhere. Here’s an idea for you, next time, wait until you ascertain whether or not it is likely that I will EVER need to speak to you in a working capacity before thrusting your card upon me.

I have got bags and briefcases which are busting at the seams with such cards. I’ve never needed one of these cards yet.

The primary offenders often wear lilac or pink shirts with an equally lilac tie – complete with a huge windsor knot. They have nondescript “business solutions” roles, and find it difficult to explain what it is they actually do.

If I want your card, I’ll ask for it.