Election fever

So tommorow those of us (un)lucky enough to live in London go to the polls to decide who shall be Mayor of London for the next 4 years.

Naturally, the whole thing is a complete cock-up.

This morning I heard of a man who, for no reason whatsoever, received a letter enclosing his postal vote form. He has always voted in person throughout his entire life. He sent this form back saying he wanted to vote in person, as he has always done. But he is not allowed to. He now has lost the right to vote, because of somebody else's incompetence.

I then heard of a 9-year old girl who has received a voting form. And that wasn't an isolated incident. Loads of under-18's have had voting forms. This is a blatant attempt at Mugabe-style ballot stuffing I'm sure.

But the real stupidity is this whole "second choice" system. For those outside London, what we have to do is choose two candidates - a first and second choice. If the first choice gets more than 50% of the first choice votes, they are the winner. If not, then all the second choice votes are counted and put towards the totals.

What is the point in this? The winner will end up being the one that most people wanted second-best. Why not just have one choice, and the one with the most votes wins. Simple. Why over-complicate it? Of course the danger is that people won't think much about their second vote and just put Ken Livingstone down, and I'm worried that on that basis he might cling onto power.

The really daft thing is that you don't actually need to put a second choice down anyway - so why bother at all? I therefore won't be making a second choice. My one and only vote will goto Boris Johnson.

Important Blog Enclosed

Why is all post these days considered "important"?

I mean, when was the last time you got a letter through the post, in a plain white envelope, that didn't have pretensions of grandeur?

A case in point: A few days ago a letter came through the post, in a brown envelope of the type beloved by the Inland Revenue. Printed in black in official-looking type on the envelope were the words "IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED", or something to that effect.

Fearing the worst - a letter from the Inland Revenue saying that I owed them lots of money - I opened the envelope with trepidation.

Inside? "Thank you for informing us that you wish to cancel the warranty on your Washing Machine."

Very important indeed....

Strike One!

I'm really struggling with this whole teachers' strike thing. From what I can tell, they've been offered a pay increase of over 2% this year, and for the next couple of years as well.

Frankly, that's more than I've had in the past few years, and they aren't desperately underpaid, so why the hell are they striking?

Do they think they are underpaid? In which case, why did they become teachers? Surely they knew the salaries before they decided to do it? In any case, I think a lot of the time that people only become teachers is because they don't know what else to do. Sure, some want to make a difference and all that, but for many it's going to be something to do. We are so desperate for them that you are basically guaranteed a job. And you get a nice long summer holiday. And Christmas holiday. And Easter holiday.

Also, if I ever decided to take Jess out of school for a day, I'd have to write all sorts of explaining letters. If I took her out to go on holiday during term-time (to save lots of money), I could be fined. But it's perfectly okay for the teachers to decide to shut the school.

I think I should write to the headmaster demanding a £100 payment. That would be fair.

Frankly, if they don't like their pay, or their (perfectly fair) pay increases, they are more than welcome to go out and get other jobs. Ungrateful sods.

Ripped off

Do you know how much I spent on parking at the weekend? £20.80.

Broken down, this equates to £15.00 in Brighton and £5.80 in Heathrow.

Yes, £15 to park in Brighton! £15!!!! And this was the maxiumum charge as well, it's actually 80p for 15 minutes. Unbelievable. According to that logic I actually made a decent saving, I was there for about 8 hours. If it wasn't capped at £15 it would've come to £25.60.

And the Heathrow charge is irritating, as I was 1 minute over an hour, meaning I moved up a price band. A single bloody minute. If the queue for the lift had been less, or the idiot in front had been able to work out how to put notes into the pay-machine I would easily have slipped in under the 1 hour.

Still, the SeaLife Centre in Brighton did provide good value for money, at £8 each to get in, but the fish and chips in the restaurant on the pier was a bit expensive at £8 each. Very nice, though.

The other expensive thing was the rides on the pier. £4 for a single ride. And one ride was £8 a go!

Somehow I think I'll be giving Brighton a miss from now on.

Oh, and I have to say this: John Prescott had a battle with bulimia? I think we can safely assume it was a battle he won...

Refunds

Why is it that some companies don't think they have to give you your money back, even if they don't supply the service you pay for? And think they can get away with it, calling it "policy"?

Yesterday, Ele and I took Jess and a friend of hers to Thorpe Park. We had a couple of free-entry tickets from Woolworths, so decided to make use of them. The first thing I noticed was that if you booked online (which you couldn't with these tickets), the prices were so much cheaper that we would have only spent £4 more buying 4 tickets in advance instead of 2 on the door. Nonetheless, I coughed up £64 for 2 tickets on the door. I then went to the FastTrack counter, which lets you spend even more money on tickets to jump the queue. I bought tickets that let us skip the queue for 4 of the biggest rides (£9 each), and then tickets to let us skip the queue and ride at the very front of their best ride (Stealth), at £6 each. Those of you with calculators will make this an extra total of £60. Expensive, but I'm far too impatient to queue for hours, when a bit of extra cash will let me waltz past the chavs swearing and smoking in the queue lines.

So, we do our rides. Eventually, that is, as initially most of the big rides were closed and didn't open until after 11am. Naturally, this made the ones that did open have enormous queues (over 2 hours), but thanks to our fast-track passes we only waited a few minutes so this didn't bother us. However, Stealth - the ride I had paid £6 each to to skip the queues - remained stubbornly closed all day. Obviously something was wrong with it, so fair enough; I'd be more annoyed if they let it run and it broke and I died. Still disappointing, as I'd been looking forward to that one the most.

I assumed it would be a simple matter of go back to the FastTrack desk and get my £24 back. Not an unreasonable assumption. Of course, I was wrong. I approached the desk, and the very nice girl behind the counter was a bit shocked that I was sold these. She then said she couldn't refund me, and suggested I goto Guest Services. I thought this was fine, obviously she doesn't have the authority to do the refund.

I made my way to Guest Services, explained the situation and was told I couldn't have a refund. I struggled to comprehend this for a second, then explained it again, slower, in case he had misunderstood me. I explained that I had paid for a service and that it had not been supplied. I said that I was not asking for anything unreasonable. I was not asking for free tickets. I was not asking for compensation. I was merely asking for my money back for what they had sold me, but had not been able to supply.

I was told no, it was not company policy. I was still trying to keep polite (there were lots of shouty people in there complaining that the rides had been broken, and that queues had been huge and they'd only got on 2 rides all day, so I decided that playing it nice might get me further in this case), but it was getting harder. I asked him if he'd heard of the Sale & Supply Of Goods And Services Act. He hadn't. I explained that if I buy something, and it is not supplied, that the law states I must be given my money back. He started talking about policy again. I had to tell him that, sadly, company policy cannot over-ride the actual law. I asked him if I paid him to mow my lawn, and he didn't, would he still expect payment? He admitted he would not. He then tried to offer me another fast-track pass for another ride. I declined this; if I want you to mow my lawn I don't want you to offer to wash my windows instead. Especially if I've already paid you to wash my windows. He then offered to make my existing fast-track pass valid for another day, therefore generously giving me the option of paying tons of money to come back to the park. I don't think so.

In the end, he had me fill out a complaint form whilst he spoke to his manager. I wrote down what had happened, and indicated that not refunding was possibly illegal. The manager came over after dealing with someone else, read the form, went out back for a second, then invited me to go with him into the back room. I initially thought this was a crowd-avoidance tactic, where he didn't want me to make a scene in front of other guests as he told me I couldn't have my money back. But to my suprise, he came over with £24 in cash. I guess he didn't want to show people that they could get a refund after all.

So all's well that ends well, but I do not agree with their policy. It should have been an open-and-shut case. I was sold something that they were unable to supply, so I should get my money back. It should not have been that difficult.

Express delivery

I've said in the past that I have offended the God of Internet Shopping, when attempting to purchase items like fridges and televisions.

I think I have been forgiven.

We decided a while back that we needed to replace the television in our bedroom. We don't watch it that much really, but when we did it was really not up to the job. It was a free 14" LCD TV we got when we bought our first big plasma screen a few years ago. It is a bit rubbish and you need external speakers to make the sound bearable. We did have a bigger CRT but gave this to Ele's parents as they didn't have a TV at all when they moved out of our house.

So, after a bit of thought I decided a 26" widescreen LCD would be far more suitable, and did my usual anal research, deciding on one or two models. A Samsung one would have matched the TV and computer monitor downstairs, and they are both great, but a Panasonic one had better reviews. I did some searching around for prices, and although the Panasonic was generally more expensive, I did find it at one or two places for about the same price as the Samsung one.

Of course then there was the problem of wanting it delivering to a different address to which my card is registered to. A lot of sites won't do this, which is ridiculous. They state security reasons, which I can almost understand, but it really is ludicrous that I'd have to take a day off work to get a TV delivered, especially one that isn't really that big and would easily fit in the car. Also, it was hard to find a site that would satisfy my patience and wallet with deliveries. In other words, I wanted it next-day and I wanted the delivery to be free.

Eventually, I came across www.electrical123.com. They not only had the cheapest price for the set, but it was free delivery, and you could pick your own delivery day, which included the next day. They would deliver to an alterate address, and they also guarantee that if it is shown on their site as available, then it is in stock.

I had not heard of this site before, so I was a little worried, given my past experiences. So, I nervously entered my credit card details, selected the next day as the delivery date, and entered Ele's work address for delivery. I was astonished when I got an email later on saying it had been picked for dispatch. And I was amazed when it turned up at about 1pm the next day, about 24 hours after the order was placed.

Cheapest price, free next-day delivery, don't even have to actually register on the site... I will certainly use this company again.

Fat Wednesday

Apparently, today has been dubbed Fat Wednesday. A group of people with a pointless budget has done some research and came up with the fact that today is the second most calorific day of the year, after Christmas Day.

Naturally, I would normally scoff at this. However, today instead of my usual healthy-ish lunch of a couple of bits of fruit and a chicken sandwich, I had a ready-meal lasagna and a mars bar, because I didn't have any unfrozen bread at home this morning. Whenever this happens I simply buy a sandwich. But today, I decided to treat myself for no apparent reason. This happened before I found out about Fat Wednesday, incidentally.

Then, a colleague bought in some doughnuts and cakes and muffins as it was his birthday. Naturally, I had to have one of those, too. And judging by how many are left I may have another before the day is out. And with the left-over plethora of easter eggs at home, it is rather likely that I'll eat one of those later, too.

So I can no longer scoff at the findings, rather I can only scoff the fatty foods that today I am seemingly unable to avoid.