Rants - It's good for my blood pressure!

24/09/2005

I just bought a composter. Brighton council offer subsidised bins, but you can't buy them in Brighton, you have to drive to a garden centre in Newhaven. Bloody idiotic. Why can't they give everyone in Brighton a discount no matter where they buy it from? To be honest they should give everyone a free composter, they would instantly cut the rubbish going to landfill by 20%.

23/09/2005

I went swimming at the Prince Regent swimming pool in Brighton. As I was leaving I moved backwards out of someones way and my elbow banged on a pointed corner of a kitchen-worktop style shelf. I was standing looking at a vending machine, so it is a place where people often gather, so I am sure other people have been hurt in the same manner. And it is the height where a child would bang their head on it. Why is it pointed and not rounded for crying out loud ??? But what annoyed me more afterwards was that they never had an accident book to record it in. How many other people have been hurt? Who knows. And the manager said they had lots of similar dangerous corners.

27/05/2005 - Global Warming

I just heard that because of air travel, especially because of cheap flights, global warming will soon be unstoppable. Great. Everyone thinks these days it is their god-given right to be able to fly to spain every year or two. Thanks everyone.

20/04/2005 - Grass

There's a patch of grass nearby that I walk past. I have been noticing the rubbish on it never seems to get cleared away (there's an old broken mug and an electric hob as well as other pieces). Yesterday when I walked past I noticed it had been mowed. Great, I thought, about time this place was tidied up. Then I noticed the mug, obviously mowed but still in essentially one piece. Then I saw the hob. The mower-man had moved it to one side and left it there. Flipin' 'eck, he works for the council, couldn't he pick up a bit of rubbish? It should be someones responsibilty to look after these areas and get them looking good, not just to do their particular job and say anything else is not their problem.

05/02/2005 - Microwave

The dial on my microwave jumps 10 seconds every click you turn it to the right. However, I just knocked it round one-click to the left by accident and it jumped to 90 minutes. Now that's a long time in a normal oven, let alone in a microwave. Good job I realised it hadn't gone BING and was there to stop it. What on earth would take 90 minutes to cook in a microwave? What are they thinking?

18/11/2004 - Royal Mail Ripoff

They sell you a book of 1st or 2nd class stamps, but if you want to send something heavier it doesn't go up in multiples, so you always end up wasting money. They should change it so that each weight band is reachable with a combination of 1st and 2nd class stamps. They do it on purpose.

18/11/2004 - Throw-away Linux

I left a box of PC-stuff outside my house, with a sign "Free, please take". I was quite pleased a few things went. Then today I went up the road and found my copy of Linux smashed on the floor (3 cds and a floppy). What a waste.

13/11/2004 - Oi, Thief

I have been to a few car-boots and sold some stuff, but had some rubbish left (old PC games and DVDs - mostly from the pound shop). So I put the left-overs outside my house. Started at a pound, then 50p. Then I put 4 for a pound just to get rid of them. Some bloody kids were looking and I gave one of them a PC game free. Then they came back and stole 10 DVDs. I chased after them. Almost caught one of them, what I would have done if I had I don't know. He dropped the free game though.

02/11/2004 - "Someone's poisoned the water-hole"

Fluoride in our drinking water? That's what they are planning. And why? Because it will give some of our kids less tooth decay! I have a better idea, why don't they ban fizzy drinks from schools. At least then we won't all get a daily dose of poison which will build up in our bodies and bones and cause god knows what problems.

This site has the reasons we should say NO.

31/10/2004 - The Loser

Oh My God. We just got ripped off by a pub."The Winner" up by the racecourse (in Brighton). We had a tab behind the bar because I forgot my cash, and when we came to pay it - they added £10 to the price! We had kept our own tally, and they charged us £30 when it should have been £20. And we have been going there for over a year. B@stards.

29/10/2004 - Poison

We were making cakes with glace-cherries. I noticed the colour was a bit red so I looked it up - Erythrosine. It's not only been banned in the USA but it is on my list of e-numbers to avoid for children. And it is feared it gives people hyperthyroidism, which is a worry for Kate during her pregnancy.

AND THIS IS IN CHERRIES THAT ARE IN ALL THE KIDS RECIPES. For fecks sake, the bloody supermarkets.

20/10/2004 - F1 leaving Britain

So Bernie Ecclestone does not want the British Grand Prix next year. Well, stuff him I say. Silverstone is the home of Formula One. We should make "The Real F1" and cut Bernie out completely (he pockets millions), and make a whole new tournament, and see which other circuits around the world want to join. It would also be a good chance to sort out the money so that the smaller teams do not go bust.

02/10/2004 - Nappies in land-fill sites

Ok, not many people want to wash out pooey nappies, most people want to dispose of the mess straight into the bin. The problem with this is that in landfill these nappies hang around for hundreds of years (made up figure, but a long time). So, why not have nappies that biodegrade? Here is a company that makes just such a thing...http://www.naturebotts.co.uk. Why don't these get sold in places like Boots? They should be next to the Pampers nappies, with big advertising saying how much better they are for the environment. Ban Pampers, that's what I say.

However, they will biodegrade but they are still going to end up in landfill, unless they are sent to a wormery. Ok, now not everyone has a wormery (do you know anyone with one?) but perhaps the dustmen could pick up wormery material separately. In fact, I bet 80% of garbage is good for worms. Why in this country are we not taking simple steps to reduce landfill?

24/09/2004 - Another phone scam.

Oh no. I think I have been scammed again. This time on my mobile. There were a number of calls that I missed when I was out of the country, I phoned them back and one of them was decidely dodgy. They answered straight away and repeated the phone number I had just dialled really slowly, then they put me on hold. I suddenly smelt a rat so I hung up - I bet it was £5 per minute or something.

23/09/2004 - The Great Telephone Swindle

I have been scammed, and I feel bitter about it.

I was fixing someone's PC and a nasty piece of software had changed his internet dial-up to use a premium rate phone number. I have never seen this before, normally there is a piece of software on the machine known as a Dialler that dials the premium rate number and I had already searched for one of these. So I got caught out. It turns out that most (or all?) 09 numbers are premium rate numbers, so the moral of this story is to keep your eye out for them.

Luckily I only used the net a few times, while I was making sure it worked. Unfortunately one of those times I made a cup of tea, so I left it on for 15 minutes. In total I was charged £30 for 20 minutes. That's £1.50 per minute.

I phoned up NTL and they said " sorry you have been scammed, nothing we can do about it".

They gave me a place to go (http://www.icstis.org.uk) where you can type the premium rate phone number in and find the address of the company and details about investigations.

The phone number was 09061 746066 and name of the company is Dataline Ltd, Suite 606, 1220 N. Market Street, Wilmington, County of New Castle, DE19801. USA.

So, it turns out the ICTIS are investigating this company. So how come NTL still let me dial it? I know why, they are making money from these phone scams, I bet NTL are making £1000s per week from us getting scammed. Perhaps they want us to keep phoning these numbers?

Someone has said that "under investigation" does not mean they are guilty. But unless these numbers are pulled (or at least customers contacted to see if they are using the premium-rate knowingly) then hundreds more people are going to be ripped off. If they are found guilty then I bet there is slim chance of getting any money back.

Some people say these premium rate phone numbers have a valid use, it is a way of paying for services or software. However, how can it be right for them to charge £1.50 per minute when all I am doing is logging on the the internet and going to WWW.YAHOO.COM, they should only charge when you are using their service.

I said to NTL, "can't you block these premium rate numbers?", they said there is a thing called call blocking, but guess what - it costs £1.50 per month. And the guy said "it is not fool-proof because new numbers and scams happen all the time". I said "can I not just block phone calls that for example are costing more than 20p per minute", and guess what - you can't do that. Why not - perhaps because NTL would lose money. Also, NTL said the solution was to get BROADBAND. I agree that broadband is better and safer, but it appears to me they are using the dialler-problem to sell their own services instead of trying to fix the problem, which strikes me as bad practise.

(Anyway, I already have broadband, how come the guy never knew that when I was speaking to him?).

If I had left the machine on overnight the bill would have been over £1000 !!!! What would NTL do then, I suspect they would say I had to pay it. What if I left the computer on the net for a week? The bill would have been over £15000 !! What would NTL do then, take my house?

This has got to stop, I feel lucky that I only got scammed £30, it could have been so much worse. I suspect there are people out there who have been charged thousands. Something needs to be done.

I was about to say that "it is not just NTL, I could have been scammed by any phone company and it is the Dataline company that is really doing the scamming". This may be true, but NTL could do something about it. For example they could refund the money and go after the scammer themselves to get the money back, or they could stop these numbers from working unless I specifically sign up with NTL to use them.

I was talking to someone about this - they were scammed for £300 via BT, and they feel the same - it is not just the premium-rate-companies that are scamming us, it is the phone companies themselves. He accused BT of making money from the scam, and they said that they don't !

28/08/2004

A TV advert I was just watching had beeps in the background, I was looking around for what was beeeping. It drives me crazy, it should not be allowed. And it should be against the law for TV programs to have mobile phone ringing, half the country is looking around for their phone, they do it to us on purpose.

27/08/2004

A friend of mine got burnt on a garden flare. They hold wax, the whole thing melts and burns. They absolutley should be banned. If they get knocked they flick molten wax WHICH IGNITES. Imagine that all over your arm, it's like napalm. Or your face. Or your kid, they are just at the right height. And the flare is red hot for an hour once you put it out, just waiting for a kid to run into it in the dark. We are talking hospitals and scars - do not buy them.

09/08/2004

All the discussion about the old pier now is "who is going to pay to pull it down?". Well I for one really think they should just leave it there, I like to see it slowly falling into the sea.. And while I am talking about the pier, I bet they wish they had sold it to Chris Eubanks all those years ago, I bet now it would be gleaming.

11/07/2004

Have you seen that Magicool stuff? It's an aerosol you spray in your face to cool you down, I just saw it advertised on TV. Flipping nora, they've gotta be joking. I hope no one buys any.

03/06/2004 - Council using weedkiller outside a house in Hanover

I was up at 6 this morning and saw a man walk past my house with a sprayer and tank on his back. I followed him down the road and took a few photos.
He wasn’t being selective, he was spraying the whole pavement.
I asked him what it was.
He said it was low grade and weeds of a certain size are trip hazards, and it was the same as stuff you can buy in B&Q (Roundup I think he said). He seemed to know his stuff and blinded me with science.
He was not wearing any protective gear, not even a mask. I hope for his sake that it is safe, and I guess the pavement would become a jungle if the council didn’t do it.
But I just don’t like the idea that my kid could be out on that pavement an hour after it has been sprayed. She has always played with the weed growing outside our house, I won’t let her anymore.
One last thing. He said he had leaflets in his van, but to be honest he could have been anyone. In this day and age people need to know who is spraying what - he could have been a terrorist.

This is what other people say about the weedkiller he was using

1st June 2004 - Danger from charity.

Bags that come through the door when charities want your bric-a-brac or old clothes. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good idea to donate stuff to charities, but the other day I found my toddler playing with a large green bag that could have suffocated her. Who controls what comes through our doors?

14th May 2004 - Ice Cream Van problem.

Ice Cream vans !!! They are really starting to annoy me. Every day now for months they have been driving round the area playing that god-damn awful tune. It's noise pollution, that is. And they make their money from kids. Selling them stuff their parents don't want them to eat. And the kids hound the parents for money. I for one am going to keep the ice-cream van music a secret from my kid for as long as possible. And when I am on the subject of ice-cream vans, it really annoys me when they sit there running their engines all day long, such as up on the Dyke. It ruins a tranquil beauty spot. Or on Hanover Day, you could smell the fumes around the stalls. Surely they could do it differently, for example have a bank of solar panels on their roof and a few more batteries.

26th Mar 2004 - Rubbish

I have been ignoring the rubbish that keeps piling up - I guess we are all resigned to it. But why should we be, the coucil tax bill has just gone up, what was it - about 10% or something. I hope we start seeing an improvement in the service. They sent us a letter a few weeks ago changing the collection day from Friday to Thursday. I don't think they have told the dustmen !

22nd Mar 2004 - Fountains cause sickness

There's a fountain in the park at Queens Park. Looks very nice, but when the wind gets up it blows a mist over the paths. During the summer last year it was actually blowing into the kids play area. Have you seen the state of that water? Probably carries Viles disease or something. I think I'll kick up a stink next time.

15th Mar 2004

Remote controls. There's always one missing. Always.

26th Feb 2004 - Bonfires

I was at my brothers house and one of his neighbours was burning garden rubbish. He lives in a terraced house not in the country. What a stink, we had a window open as well. They soon put it out when he shouted across the gardens at them. They'll think twice about doing it again. Sometimes you have to rant in public to get people to change.

24th Feb 2004

It's bad enough with "Sponsor a Bleedin' Dog" when you are outside the supermarket, now they hassle me to get "points on my card by using my phone" or some such crap when I'm in through the door. Look I just want some milk.

21st Feb 2004 - Cooking can make you feel ill.

I heard the rumour that teflon kills birds in the kitchen. I looked it up and apparently the stuff gives off fumes when it gets really hot. It's made from some nasty chemical, which we are all eating everytime we scrape the pans. Now I find we are breathing it in as well. If it kills birds then it can't be good for us. I'm going to buy some old fashioned iron pans, anyone want a pile of scratched teflon ones?

20th Feb 2004 - Mobiles

I just took a phone call from someone wanting some work doing, and my battery went flat. They had 'number withheld' so I couln't phone them back. I feel bad because I lost a job, they feel bad because they think I put the phone down on them (and I expect they'll tell their friends how rude I am!). Why oh why can't the phone say something like "The person has been disconected because their battery went dead".

17th Feb 2004 - Dogs

I've got another rant already. People with dogs who let them into kids areas in parks. It happened to me last week, the dog was running around the kids sandpit! I said to her you can't have dogs in here and said "why, there's no one else around?". Well perhaps the flipping dog had stopped parents coming in. This dog today was one of those scary looking 'fighting' dogs, in the fenced off area marked "NO DOGS". I said to the woman that dogs aren't allowed in here, and she said she wouldn't have let it run around if she thought it was dangerous! Well I don't care what she thinks, if that dog had turned it could have eaten a toddler. Heck it could have eaten me! The other thing is, dogs carry diseases. Which reminds me, to the woman who feeds the pigeons in the park - CAN YOU NOT DO IT WHERE THE KIDS PLAY.

16th Feb 2004 - Chemicals

I can't believe these things. Air fresheners in toilets. I hate them anyway, breathing in chemicals. Just open the damn window, anyway what's wrong with a few farty smells (unless it's the big one after a night out and a curry!). But they are now aiming them at kids. Can you believe it? Not only is it saying to kids that it's ok to play around with toilet cleaners/sprays/aerosols and chemicals (god forbid they sniff the stuff!), but it's saying "look kids, going to the toilet is nasty and something to be embarassed about, cover the smells up or people will think badly of you." That really sucks, these companies should be ashamed of themselves.