Being British

Following on from my Sh*tish Telecom blog where I mentioned the past honour of Britishness I thought I'd have a think about the state of Britain nowadays.

Now, this is not going to be a "bloody foreigners are ruining our country" type blog, because that's a very narrow-minded and sensationalist view, if anything the cultural diversity of Britain should be a good thing.

The problems mainly originate in politics, while immigration is not a bad thing, and in many cases people who come to this country either do jobs that the British don't want, or bring expertise into the economy, there are too many people let into this country who do no want to work.  In effect Britain has become a soft touch, and if you roll in from another country then you get given money, and a house.  I've lived in this country for my whole life, and I don't see anyone lining up to give me a house just for the sake of it!!

Then we move on to the lazy folks, those proud British souls who frankly can't be bothered... lets give them some money as well, they don't want to work, so someone's got to keep them.  I know the job hunting is hard, and if you happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself being out of work then you have my sympathy because I've been there and it's not nice.  However, if you simply want to sit around the house and not even try and find work then shame on you.  Why should the tax-payers subsidise people who refuse to work?  Women who decide to pop out a few kids so they get plenty of benefit money?  People who are not physically able to do a job, but someone are physically able to spend all day playing golf?

And my last target in this blog is the political correctness brigade... for you see we can't have "Christmas lights" anymore, we can't fly the Union Flag, we can't celebrate our national identity.  Why is this?  It's because we might upset people who've moved to our country... now pardon my attitude here, but if you move to a country then you accept their culture.  I'm not saying that you adopt their beliefs, but you don't complain about them expressing their beliefs, and it's not like the majority of foreign people who come to this country have even taken offence to anything... but we "might" upset Hindus if we put up "Christmas lights"... the Brits who come up with this stuff need to grow a pair.

This was once a proud nation with a great culture, and populated by people who could feel genuinely happy to be British.  It can be a great country again people, I know it can, but we (seemingly few) proud Brits need to take back the country from those who would try and force us from our own homeland...

Or maybe I should just move abroad.

Sh*tish Telecom

I've heard that once upon a time being British was something to be proud of, that our companies were world leaders, and that the very word British conjured up a dogged spirit and will to succeed.

So where did it all go so wrong?  Well British Telecom have to take a chunk of that blame.  We've asked them to do a relatively straightforward thing... to port three phone numbers from Virgin Media to BT, and install them in our new office unit.

The first two are done, although not without many, many phone calls and yelling.  You see we ordered the transfer on June 9th, and the sales guy who took the order placed it on the 9th... however when he was asked to verify the post-code (it was different as we were moving office) he did nothing with it for 8 days... consequently having told us it'd be done on June 20th he suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth when it transpired that they would actually be doing it on July 1st.

Despite numerous attempts from all of us they couldn't improve on this date, and so we were stuck with it.

Things, in the end, worked out ok.  The lines went in on moving day and we got up and running.  Then came time to port the third number.  This time the engineer arrived just 2 days after the order was placed... brilliant... although it turned out that in fact BT hadn't even asked Virgin to release the number by then, and so the engineer went on his way again.

What's followed has been a series of calls to BT (who say Virgin wont release the number, that the line has more than one number on it, and finally that a mistake was made on the order) and Virgin (who say that they've not received an order from BT).  Now BT have decided to ask what sort of line it is, it's a Centrex line, whatever that means.  Armed with this information they now think it should be ok... so why didn't you bloody well ask in the first place you idiots?!

So, in conclusion... BT Suck!!

Miscellaneous thoughts

Not entirely sure what this blog is going to end up containing, so be patient with me.  There are just various unclassified thoughts that I want to vent.

Lets start with the car... its leaking transmission fluid... I seem to have nothing but bad luck with this car, and even though it's under warranty still it's just a pain in the rump to get it sorted.  It's being picked up tonight to go back to the garage for them to sort it out.  In theory they should also give me a courtesy car to use, which they'd better do since I no longer have the option of driving to work.

Mondays suck... I mean seriously, whoever invented Mondays deserves to be tied to 5 horses (one on each limb, plus one tied to his balls) and have them run off in different directions!!

Skintness is not good!!  Everything is so expensive these days that it leaves no room for saving substantial amounts of money.  Now I know that I do myself no favours on that front really as I do like to spend a bit of cash on video games and fast food, but still... £550p/m on rent, £105p/m loan repayment. £40p/m on Virgin Media, £35p/m on mobile phone contract, £70p/m on petrol, £17.50p/m on road tax (if you average it out), £46p/m on car insurance, £12.50p/m on TV License... that's £876 of my £1200 per month gone, leaving £324 per month for food, drink, entertainment, clothing, etc... assuming that there are no extra charges on the above things like call costs.  In today's world £324 doesn't go too far!!

I don't want to live around here forever, I was talking to my Bro over the weekend and he was talking about wanting to move to Northumberland, but his missus has told her sister that they wont move.  It got me to thinking, I don't want to live here all my life.  Don't get me wrong Kent isn't all bad, but it's just not somewhere that I would want to spend forever.  However due to the above mentioned skintness I can't see any changes on that front in the imminent future which is kinda depressing.

Speaking of things which are expensive... weddings!!  I'm getting married on 4th May 2013, although following a recent visit to the future in-laws where even my fiancée couldn't remember the wedding date I may end up being the only one there on the day!!  We didn't want anything too traditional, AKA boring, and so we're getting married at Kent Life, which is a museum / farm type place, and it's going to cost us a fortune!!  Seriously the missus reckons £9k at least... that is a crazy amount of money to spend for one day... I know it's going to be the most special day of our lives, but £9k is scary!!  The last "wedding" we went to was a registry office ceremony followed by a reception in a working men's club, and even that apparently ran to around £5k... makes ours' seem better value for money, but still... putting the word wedding in front of a product seems to multiply the prices involved by about 73.

My boss is a tw@t.  On Friday he was asking if my car had a leak, and seemed briefly to be concerned over the fact that I may have a problem with it... then it transpired the only thing he was bothered about was the car dripping on the driveway... so now I've parked in the Comet carpark... happy?!

Radio 2 is crap.  Sadly I work in an office where I am the youngest employee by around 20 years, and since all the oldies like Radio 2 I'm stuck listening to it.  This wouldn't be quite so bad if Chris Evans were on, cos I quite like him, but he's on holiday and filling in is Richard Madely!!

Speaking of on holiday, my mate at work is in Vegas, and we're currently half way through her time off... that means I'm rattling around in the main office on my lonesome, while boss man sits in his office.  It also means extra work, but as long as she's having a good time I don't mind that so much.

So there we have it... a selection of random meanderings... enjoy.

Cheers Bro

Well, here we are again... Monday morning... how I loathe thee!!

The weekend was good though, thanks to my bro who organised a barbecue / games marathon.  Now things didn't go entirely to plan... the rain saw off the barbecue so it became a grill / oven a cue instead which isn't quite the same, but it was very good anyway.  Also the late night kebab from the place that supposedly does nice kebabs was decidedly rank, but other than that it was a good time had by all.

One of bro's mates, we'll call him D, joined us.  Nice lad, little bit pushy when it comes to other people drinking though.  Not much of a gamer is D, although he's not bad at Mortal Kombat... I only managed 1 flawless victory over him!!  Strangely when playing 3 player MK he was quite good, but when it was just him vs me I distinctly had the upper hand. 

We also went over to the green for a kickabout... and by kickabout I mean looking like a bunch of inept gits who'd never kicked a ball before!!  I managed one goal while playing head and volleys, bro managed 2, and D... I don't recall him scoring, but he did run around a lot which looked very energetic and made me tired just watching him.  Also at various points the ball was lost in hedges, and even up a tree!!  Luckily D is rather fond of getting into the bush.

We also watched Repo Men which is a slightly macabre film involving the sale and repossession of artificial organs, and the ending is just f*cked.  Still, not a bad film for the most part, quite grotesque in places, and now something you'd want to watch over dinner... combined with the kebab it left me feeling a little nauseous.

The kebab also gave me quite bad wind... to the point that I cleared the room of Bro and D at one point with a fart that Bro described as "chewy".  I shouldn't be proud / amused about it... but I kinda am!!

We were then going to play squash on Sunday, but Bro wasn't that keen, and I'd been awake since 05:40 so skipping it was fine with me.  We went to KFC instead, and then Pets at Home.  They had a giant house rabbit there, which made me decide that I want a giant house rabbit!!  This thing was huge, sadly the other half is a bit freaked out by excessively large rabbits, and the thought of a rabbit which weighs in excess of 5kg put her off a bit!!

While in Pets at Home I picked up another squeaking mouse thing for my mum's kittens since they've destroyed the first one we got them!!  Delivered that yesterday afternoon when I got home.

Then last night the missus bought us an Indian.  I had some tandoori chicken tikka thingamajig... the main problem with it was that I think they'd used a whole plantation worth of sugar!!  It was so sweet that I couldn't even finish it.  The breads were nice though.  It was the first time I'd had an Indian take-away, and I will try it again, but need something less sweet and more spicy in future.

So, for a top weekend... Cheers Bro.

I wanted that...!! Wait, are they mad?!

So, some couple from Falkirk have won the £161m EuroMillions jackpot from this past Tuesday then... I think they'll find that I had actually called dibs on that jackpot and so they should really be giving that money to me!!

They're also holding a press conference about it.  Now, I don't entirely know what I would do with that amount of money (though I'd like the chance to find out) but I know for darn sure that I would not hold a press conference and announce to the world that I was now nearly as rich as the Beckhams.

Talk about painting a huge bulls-eye on your back, now they're just asking to be targets for crime.  A rather sad state of affairs I grant you, but do you think the criminal under-world wont be paying attention to the press conference? 

Money is a strange thing, I imagine... I can't say for sure as I never bloody well have any these days!!  I understand the desire to flash a little cash, get yourself a nice house, and a nice car, but surely that would be enough? 

Anyway, to anyone reading this I am calling dibs on the next £100m+ EuroMillions jackpot, so keep your hands off!!

My boss must die...!!

Hello all, hope you're all well.  I realise it's been ages since my last post, but I've not really had much to write about. 

Now however, I've found something to let off steam over.

I've been working at this company for 7 and a half years now, which is 1/4 of my life.  That's a pretty significant investment of time on my part, and while I am not badly paid for my work of late there has been a distinct lack of respect.

Now, in his defence (as limited as it may be) the boss has been stressed out about getting our new office sorted out, although it's taken him about 8 months so far when he initially wanted us to be in around March time.  We're now moving on July 1st, and yes some things have been going wrong towards the back end of the project.

However, treating your staff with some common courtesy doesn't seem like too much to ask of an employer.

It's apparent for all to see that as a man manager the bloke is useless.  He doesn't unite or motivate his staff, he doesn't lead by example, he just expects people to get on with it.  Which is all well and good, and most of us are more than capable of doing that.  He doesn't seem to realise though that his comments are often demotivational, and make people want to not put their all into their work.

For years he's been well known for his back-tracking.  He'll tell you to do something, and then when it backfires he'll ask why you did it, it pisses us all off no end.  He wants to take no responsibility for these things, and as a classic example just the other day we got a bollocking for not holding shipments to customers who are late paying.  Then 24 hours later he's telling us to release a shipment to a customer who hasn't paid... now come on fella... you can't have it every which way.  What the f*ck do you actually want us to do?  Or was it simply a case that you went off on one without actually really engaging your brain first?!

A couple of days ago an invoice came back in the post as undelivered.  Now the accounts department happens to consist of his wife, on the odd occasion that she bothers showing up, so of course it can't have been her fault that it had been returned.  The most obvious reason for it coming back was the lack of a country written on the envelope (lets give the poor old posites a hand shall we and tell them what country to go to?!), to which his response to me was "well does she know it's in Hungary?  She's not a f*cking mind-reader".  How the f*ck do I know if she knows it's in Hungary?  I'm not the one who asked her to post it, and I'm sure as hell not a f*cking mind-reader either... if I was a mind-reader I might have some outside chance of understanding how your mind works while you're off in your own little world.  If she doesn't know what country it's in then maybe it's an idea to check, instead of just f*cking sending it?!

At this point I was starting to think that the 10 years or so in prison for killing him would be time well spent, and lets face it prison doesn't sound too bad... Sky TV, gym, internet... and I'm sure you'd get used to the buggery.

So we move on to yesterday, and some stuff needed doing at the new office.  I was there at 8am (which is 15 minutes before I technically start work).  I swept the whole of the warehouse, separated a big stack of rubbish and recycling, moved some carpet upstairs, unboxed the carpet, and helped clean down the front of the building with some caravan cleaner and a pressure washer. 

I was shattered after that, and didn't think we'd done too bad for 4 and a bit hours.  Then it was back to the current office to sort anything that needed doing here, the stuff that's actually in my job description!!

So, while I was out for my lunchtime stroll, when I finally got my lunch break yesterday) the boss turns to my mate K and says "I was hoping he might break a sweat this morning, but no".  You f*cking what?!  You laid on your back and fitted a new pop-up waste to the bathroom sink which somehow took you about 3 hours, and you're going to make snide comments behind my back about me not breaking a sweat?  I worked my arse off yesterday morning, and that's the thanks I get?

Well, maybe it's time for you to see how you like it without me?  Job ads... here I come.

And if any of you know a cheap hitman then let me know.

Laters peoples.

"don't stack it"

Those were the last words of my boss as he got into a transit van, after giving me the keys to his Audi. 

Now given that his Audi is a diesel, and my total experience driving a diesel car before stood at about 10 minutes this morning, most of which time was spent re-starting the thing after stalling 5 times pulling out of my road, I was somewhat surprised to be handed the keys.

In my defence for the whole stalling thing, not only had I never driven a diesel before, I'd never been told anything about them either.  So I learne the hard way that you have to rev them a lot higher than a petrol engine when pulling away... might have been nice if Pete had mentioned that when he dropped the courtesy car off last night!!

Oh, right... yeah... I'm driving a courtesy car (diesel Mondeo for anyone who's interested) because the Megane is back in the garage... hopefully this time they're just going to put a new gearbox in and be done with it.  That remains to be seen though, as does how long it's going to leave me lumbered with this hideous Ford!!

Ah yes, the point I wanted to make when I started this blog is that I am, apparently, now trusted with the boss' car... all hail me!!