Bird flu

The first victim of bird flu in Britain — I found this photo on another blog and decided to jazz it up a bit and repost it here. So, if you hate Orville, I hope you like this photo. And if you like Orville, then you are either too young to be using the Internet (i.e. about 1 year old) or you are Keith Harris.

Lost blogs

I think my blogs have gone. I tried to view them today and was told I could not access the page. Or maybe just a server error. Either way, I hope my blogs are not gone forever, as I wanted them to remain and did not have a backup. But if everything is okay then this blog and the 4 previous entries will show up.

Update: I since found out that blogger.com was having problems with a server, and now it seems to be back online. However, this blog post was not showing up, so by editing it like this, I hope that it gets added in.

Sunday 5 March 2006

It is now Sunday night, and as I reflect on recent events in my life, I would like to write about two that concern me right now.

First, my hot water. As I wrote earlier in my first blog, there have been problems with the boiler that was installed in my flat in January 2006, which was installed by United House for the local council, to replace old storage heaters with a modern gas central heating system. But the boiler, made by Vaillant, has so far not fully worked properly in providing hot water. The central heating works great, and I have a lovely warm flat. But the hot water sometimes works and sometimes does not. An engineer came a few days ago to replace a part inside the boiler which he thought would fix the problem. But it only worked okay after that for 2 days, and all weekend it has been not providing much hot water at all. So tomorrow, Monday, I shall have to call United House again and get them to sort out something to fix my boiler. It may even be necessary to replace the boiler. I have no idea what is wrong with it, but I expect a brand new boiler to work perfectly, especially one that retails for around £900. Hopefully someone will take the responsibility to fix it, otherwise I shall be complaining to the Council (my landlord) about this.

The other thing that bothers me today, was when I went to buy a train ticket to visit my girlfriend. I do this every Sunday and travel on the c2c train company. Throughout 2006, according to their website and other promotional literature, at weekends only, they offer a 25% discount on all tickets for use on their trains, including travelcards for use in London (but only if the travelcard is purchased at a station outside London). Anyway, the point is, I have been paying the right fare, including the 25% discount, each Sunday I go to visit her. But twice so far, I have almost been overcharged. The first time, last month, the sales clerk at the ticket office had no idea of this weekend discount offer, and had to ask another member of staff when I insisted to him that this offer existed and was advertised on the c2c website. So i got the ticket at the correct price. But today I almost had the same experience again, as this ticket clerk today (not one I had seen before, maybe he was new there) tried to charge me the full amount instead of the discounted price. So I told him that it should be less and he then agreed and apologised for the mistake. So either he was new and made a genuine mistake, or, c2c are deliberately not giving their customers the 25% discount they are entitled to unless the customer makes a fuss about it. And that is just not right. c2c, or any other company, should not state that everyone gets a discount at weekends and then sneakily not apply that discount to the customer’s purchase. It is like stealing. So I hope that c2c are not going to do that. Also, I have noticed so far this year, that heating on c2c trains does not work properly, and only on 1 journey did it work. I complained to them, but they denied there was a problem. So I don’t think their customer service people really care.

There are some companies in the UK with good customer service people who are very good, some are quite good, but far too many are lousy. Some of the lousy ones, in my experience, include: NTL, OneTel, MyDV, Microland Technologies, Eastern Electricity, Powergen, Kaspersky, Vista Print, Sage, Call18866, Parcel 2 Go, Serif, Panda Software; some of these companies have since gone bust.
Some of the good companies include: British Telecom, F-Secure, SafariQuip, TalkTalk.

Let us hope that all UK companies start to implement good customer service programmes so that they build good relationships with customers instead of just making customers feel like they should go elsewhere.

Ken Livingstone

What is wrong with the London Mayor? Ken Livingstone was rude to a reporter and left a large number of Jewish people feeling offended and that the Mayor has no regard for them, or perhaps even no regard for any of the people who voted him into power. He was found guilty in court of bringing the office of the London Mayor into disrepute, because he refused to apologise.

Photo, left, shows Ken Livingstone. Looks like he just farted and is trying to deny it.

Humility is an often-forgotten trait, that great men of the past in the main often had. Mr Livingstone would not recognise it if it came up and sat before him. If only he would apologise then he would not be making himself so unpopular. I am surprised that Londoners put up with him and voted him for the second term. I did not vote for him, I voted for his main rival, who actually spoke in defence of Mr Livingstone. I won't be voting for him again, if he supports a man's right to be rude, arrogant and vulgar towards the people of London.

Mr Livingstone, all you have to is apologise for your rudeness and mean it, and then people will like you again. But, you are such an attention-seeker, that you would rather be known for being rude than to be an unknown. He loves controversy for the sake of it. He has no humility whatsoever and is not fit to be mayor.

Photo, right, shows Ken Livingstone on a tube train in London. Looks like he is trying to avoid taking responsibility for something...

I hope that when the next London Mayor election comes around, we shall have a viable alternative to Mr Livingstone and that other arrogant politician that the Conservatives fielded. Sorry, I cannot remember his name, he has faded into obscurity, and probably only supported Mr Livingstone as he realised that we had all forgotten about him. Well, I forgot about him again now.

However, in regards to public transport, I think that Ken Livingstone has made some good progress, I cannot knock him on that. Except that he got rid of most of the routemaster buses and gave us those rubbish bendy buses which are totally unsuitable for London, they are too long, not enough seats and people can travel for free, thus losing revenue for TFL.

No more miles please

What is all this fuss about miles being removed and replaced with kilometres or else keeping miles?

Photo, left, shows a new speed limit sign in Ireland, which came into force in January 2005. It is about time that the UK did the same.

I noticed that comments people have made at sites like http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1213195,00.html there is some support to retain miles, rather than "Keep the miles, it's part of our identity, keeping us separate from Europe", we should remember that it was Europe who gave us miles in the first place.
The word mile comes from the Latin word for 1000, because the Romans invented the mile and decided to make it 1000 paces of a Roman legion. Well, that equates, according to what I read, to about 1.5 km. The modern mile today is 1.6093 km, which is not much more than the Roman mile.

The point is that Europeans (Romans) forced the mile on Britain 2000 or more years ago, and now they want us to use the kilometre.

So, in the usual silly way common to so many people, British people are saying, "Don't give us European measurements on our roads, we want to keep European measurements on our roads!"
Because the mile is more European than the kilometre. It is true that the French invented the metre, but it was mostly British and American scientists who developed the metric system, and it is due to their hard work that kilometres exist the world over. Almost every country in the world uses kilometres (USA does in some places, Liberian and Myanmar (Burma) do not), and the UK does not use km on Dept of Transport signs, but kilometres can be used on private signs and local Council signs (all perfectly legal).

So I would like to say to the British people, give up a European measurement (mile) for an international measurement (kilometre).

I don't know what measurement we used on roads before the Romans, but it was not miles. Maybe the British people who are against Europe should be campaigning for us to revert back to what we had before the Romans came. Otherwise they are just being hypocritical.

Wednesday morning 22-Feb-2006, first blog

Well, I am now starting my first blog. I should have started earlier, but I was busy and only just got around to it. Probably because I got up a bit earlier this morning. I go to work in the afternoon, so the morning is my home time, and when I get to use the Internet. So here we go.

I live in a small flat which is owned by the local council, somewhere in London (not saying where). They recently arranged for installation of gas central heating and took out the antiquated storage heaters, so now I have a decent heating system! However, all good things are not without a snag at times. The boiler has a fault so I do not always get hot water, although today and yesterday and Monday mornings I had hot water, but last week I had very little out of it. An engineer from the manufacturer (Vaillant) came last Tuesday and diagnosed the fault, and said he would have to order a new part, to replace a faulty water valve inside. I am still waiting. Hopefully it will be ready soon so he can come back and fit it. I am glad though that I don't have to pay for it, as the Council paid the contractors, United House, to fit it, and United House have a contract with Vaillant to repair the boiler.