Junk Mail

Oh my God I hate junk mail. I have had to ring up Virgin Media three times. They had our hose down as the house and two flats. I swear I have told BT before that I don't want any of their crap. I usually find that ringing the number on the junk gets best results. It was actually quite frustrating ringing Virgin as they were so reasonable and polite. Sky is another major offender.

Choice Worse

I previously blogged about my joy at making a hospital appointment using the NHS's new CHOICE GOOD system. Well it seems I am in luck, my appointment doesn't seem to have registered with their system, as they've sent me a letter to ask me to do it, so maybe I can go through the whole thing again, yay!

Thoughts On British Gas

British Gas have to be the most incompetent fuckwits I have ever had to deal with. They cannot even keep their own appointments. My flatmate waited in last week, took a day off work, and they didn't turn up. Today we arrive home to find one of those notes to say they came but no one was in. Well what a fucking shocker, maybe that's because you were A WEEK LATE.

A few months ago we had some problems with our boiler. They first needed to come round and assess the situation. Someone then came round to fit a new expansion vessel. He arrived in the afternoon and when he saw the boiler said that it was an all day, two person job. He went away and left the expansion vessel with us. In the mean time a private firm came round. They informed us that the expansion vessel wouldn't solve our hot water problems, and that they didn't think the expansion vessel that had been left with us was the correct model. Over a series of long phone holds and eventual conversations I tried to persuade various people on the phone that we needed a different part. I don't even need to tell you what the outcome was.

40 Limit

What the fuck is it with drivers that stick at 40? National speed limit, you get stuck behind them at 40, 40mph limit, they stick at 40, 30mph, built up area, lamp posts, still 40. THAT PEDEL MOVES YOU KNOW.

Sam Branson, Model, Green Ambassador For Kiss FM, and Full Time Knob

He flies a lot, he has no idea what his carbon footprint is (though he thinks people should know), he thinks that an expedition to the Arctic is "green", his favourite "green habit" is jogging, to keep fit, which he needs to shower afterwards, but hey, he has a solar iPod charger, he's "willing to adapt" and he plays the guitar.

What a twat.

Fixed Variables

Kai has previously blogged on this, the practice of charging/paying a fixed amount each month for a variable bill. How does this make sense? Who benefits? Do the companies hope that eventually you'll start over paying and forget about it? I suppose it might be argued that the customer benefits as their bill is buffered. I was pretty shocked at my latest BT bill which stated that unless I contacted them they would more than double my monthly payment. How did they get it so wrong in the first place? My bill is very little over my fixed monthly line rental. I called and asked why I couldn't just pay the actual bill each month, well I can!

Choice Bad

I've long believed that choice is a bad thing, choice is an opportunity to be unhappy, to feel hard done by, to regret your choosing. Choice is also an opportunity for mediocrity, to be a jack of all trades but master of none. I much prefer a pub offering four superb dishes to any restaurant offering a confusing plethora of options, as I'm sure Gordon Ramsay would agree. And so it was that I found myself confronting the NHS's Choose and Book site. It's always made me laugh hearing politicians tell us that patients want choice. Do they? Do they really? All I want is the earliest appointment at my local hospital. But to do this I had to login to the "healthspace" website using my reference number, birth year and ridiculous password. What did this give me? A phone number for Guy's Hospital! Which I called, and asked for the next available appointment. I'm so happy. I love choice me.

Oh, I almost forgot, When I first visited the site I was greeted with the following:

We are sorry, but the web browser you are using is not compatible with the online Choose and Book service.

We apologise unconditionally for any inconvenience caused by this problem and can assure that we are working to make sure that future versions of the Choose and Book online service work in as many types of browser as possible.

So I tried IE, same message, so I had to use IE 8 in version 7 mode just to login. And I had to do all that just to find out that I had to call Guy's.

Red Light

I recently heard some cyclist spokesman say that cyclists run red lights for safety. Yeah right.

From Behind

I had a cyclist run into the back of me today at the lights. A very apologetic Frenchman by the sound of it. He didn't have any breaks. I hate to think what might have happened if I wasn't there.

Mirror Mirror

Unusually I clipped someone's wing mirror today. My rubber grips are slipping off the ends of my handle bars, so it wasn't a hard knock, but the plastic of the mirror broke away. The guy was actually winding his window up as I slowly reversed to apologise and offer him my details. He wound the window back down and started muttering about fucking bikes. As I was apologising and checking the damage I noticed that the mirror had already been broken and taped back in place with electrical tape. Usually people calm down once they realise that you are appoogising and that indeed cyclists are human too, but this old boy was still muttering about cyclists not having insurance as I cycled off, having fixed his mirror. At least as well as it was fixed before I arrived.