Things that annoy you, (non-political)

[Northumbiron]

Well annoyed this morning trying to find contact details (phone numbers or email) for a well known company. Nowhere to be seen on the website or my documentation.

After trawling through the online FAQ’s and suffering the agony of a “chat” with the friendly helpline bot. I gave up and tried googling the company and checking for UK based phone numbers.

Took a while but I finally found one. Full of trepidation of course expecting there to be another bot on the other end telling me to go to the website and check out the FAQ’s, but guess what? A human answered and sorted out my problem in a few minutes!

An hour out of the sunny day wasted though, and of course there was a price to pay as her final words where “you’ll be receiving a feedback questionnaire on this number shortly. We’d be really grateful if you could complete it”.

[alcazar]

Politico meddling that backfires.
Two good examples:
1. a)”We’d like you to use less fuel, so everyone should drive diesels”.
Five years later, having noticed a hole in the tax revenue from fuel
b)”We’ve realized that diesels are worse polluters than ANYTHING, (they aren’t), so we’re increasing the duty on it and want you to stop driving diesels”.

2.a)”In order to cut down use of electricity we want everyone stop using incandescent light bulbs, and switch to pinkish coloured cold fluorescents which can take an age to reach colour temperature”.
b)”Now we want you all to dump your CFL bulbs and switch to ten times as expensive to buy LED. The upside is that an LED bulb lasts up to 50,000 hours!
(The LEDs might, but most of the drivers struggle to get past 500 hours).

[Iron-awe]

Diesel was always traditionally a cheaper fuel compared to petrol to produce then the common rail diesel engine arrived which is much more efficient and giving fantastic fuel mpg returns. Suddenly diesel is more expensive to refine the oil companies say so the price sky rockets and overtakes petrol in price at the pump’s, really, just another example of shafting the public. Diesel cars are unbelievable value and anything above a 2 litre will run literally forever if serviced regularly, yes parts wear and a CPU fault is a rare expensive item which has to be weighed up carefully on the cars age but diesel’s in general are very good value despite the rip off prices at the pumps.

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alcazar

[alcazar]

Had my last diesel I’ll ever buy some years back now, an Astra TDi 150.
It suddenly started going into limp mode if you pressed the throttle too hard, for example, when joining a motorway and then wouldn’t rev.
Vauxhall dealer diagnosed a fault with part of the high pressure fuel delivery system.
If it had been a 1.7, that part could have been replaced, £200.
But on the 1.9?
All part of the pump.
£1800 to remove and replace.
I got used to dropping the clutch, switch off ignition, back on, lift clutch, which cleared the fault.
Car then sold a year later for scrap.
Pity, really, as it was a work horse when behaving.

[64]

” Can I get?”
Although just “”I’ll do ” 1st for me that one

[Northumbiron]

Thing is that I now find myself involuntarily saying “can I get” in restaurants. I hate myself for it, but there you go!

Doesn’t happen in the pub though, “pint of IPA* please” doesn’t seem to lend itself to such corruption.

*Other beers are available.

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alcazar

[Iron-awe]

alcazar wrote:

Had my last diesel I’ll ever buy some years back now, an Astra TDi 150.
It suddenly started going into limp mode

Ah yes the old viagra wearing off syndrome.

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alcazar

[Deereyme66]

People bigging up the Rolling Stones. Yeah, probably a good live band if you’re in to that stadium shit, but artistically manure. Do one. Music for idiots.

Correction: I do like a few tracks by them but the whole deification of them is unjustified. Some may say that about The Beatles of course but they are either tone deaf or aliens.

[64]

Dynamic pricing, Have to go to London to do something in Hyde park at short notice this morningweekend, dynamic pricing is out of control this weekend.Premier inns central are asking ove £300 even in shit holes like Beckton over £200 for one night.Even Travelodge over £250

[Deereyme66]

My daughter’s working those Hyde Park events the next 3 weekends in Comms. Yesterday sounded horrendous in 35-36 degrees heat. Thankfully starting to cool down a bit today. She’s got a swanky air conditioned room in a hotel off Marble Arch on expenses, but I doubt she’d be up sharing it mate :)

[64]

Ha I’ll probably be in the same office .I’ll look out for a girl with an accent

[Siderite]

Deereyme66 wrote:

People bigging up the Rolling Stones. Yeah, probably a good live band if you’re in to that stadium shit, but artistically manure. Do one. Music for idiots.

Correction: I do like a few tracks by them but the whole deification of them is unjustified. Some may say that about The Beatles of course but they are either tone deaf or aliens.

I shan’t introduce a friend of mine to you then who thinks they’re the best of all time. He can be quite opinionated too.

Yes, that’s coming from me, but I am a lot more mild in real life, unless I have had a few pints and someone is chatting cobblers. I did have a debate about climate change with someone last summer at a bar (nostalgia for the Bucks days) and he went hone to print off material to try and show I am wrong when he came back. That was enough for me to call the debate off and have it deescalate.

[Iron-awe]

Ah the old Beatles v Stones debate, as usual it’s all about what makes either the greatest. If it’s about live playing well the stones have had about 57 years more practice at increasingly bigger venues with the tech getting more superior decade upon decade ( yes even flat old out of tune Don Henley can be made to sound good these days ) If it’s down to the numbers game then the Beatles win by a country mile, be it number ones or total worldwide sales. It’s also worth pointing out that despite still releasing the odd piece of new material in the last 57 years and quite a few trilogies, number one collections etc etc The Beatles never made a complete new studio album as a band after breaking up whereas The Stones have released 17 new studio albums in that time. Personally it’s The Beatles all day long for me, their songs are far more memorable and they are still incredibly popular even today, plus Lennon and McCartney are recognised as the most successful song writing partnership of all time. So opinions matter of course but cold hard facts settle most of the arguments in The Beatles favour.

[alcazar]

Hotels that require you to telephone them, not their central booking, mind, but them, to find out if they actually HAVE any wheelchair accessible rooms and if one is available when you need it.
Then they either book a normal room or ask you to book over the phone, and don’t give you the preferable internet rate.
Just happened to us again after a six hour drive.
No accessible room.
“But we specifically reserved one by telephone”
Blank look.
WHY OH WHY can they list things like no smoking, dogs allowed etc but make no mention of wheelchair accessibility.

[Northumbiron]

Deereyme66 wrote:

Some may say that about The Beatles of course but they are either tone deaf or aliens.

“NI phone home!”

Sorry Deerey but can’t stand them. Couldn’t sixty years ago and still can’t.

I guess it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t like The Fall.

[64]

People don’t like the fall? Say it ain’t so.
I like the Stones as their songs are on the whole better finger tappers than Beatles ones.

[Deereyme66]

I don’t dislike The Fall but there are plenty of their tracks I think are rubbish. Enough I do like though.

[64]

Overuse of superlatives,”legend’ for instance

[Northumbiron]

Add G.O.A.T. Iconic and award winning to that list!

[Deereyme66]

People doing that snorting snotty thing very loud in public. Get a grip!

[64]

Blokes in the street without tops on.
Calling the Honda 50 a Cub

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Deereyme66

[alcazar]

Lorries getting bigger every year, and more of them.
The damage they do to roadsurfaces becoming more obvious, yet being roundly ignored by the authorities, or blamed on car drivers.
And all while rail freight yards lie empty and derelict, both here and in Europe.

[64]

Thin bin bags

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Deereyme66

[Deereyme66]

Lol, thin bin bags! Good shout though.

[Iron-awe]

alcazar wrote:

Lorries getting bigger every year, and more of them.
The damage they do to roadsurfaces becoming more obvious, yet being roundly ignored by the authorities, or blamed on car drivers.
And all while rail freight yards lie empty and derelict, both here and in Europe.

Some good points about road damage on the other hand have you ever tried to back a freight train into a Marks & Spencer’s warehouse?

[Northumbiron]

64 wrote:

Thin bin bags.

https://share.google/YboW9xH9EgTF5Q9Bg

[Northumbiron]

alcazar wrote:

Lorries getting bigger every year, and more of them.
The damage they do to roadsurfaces becoming more obvious, yet being roundly ignored by the authorities, or blamed on car drivers.
And all while rail freight yards lie empty and derelict, both here and in Europe.

Stop buying shit off Amazon!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Deereyme66

[alcazar]

Iron-awe wrote:

alcazar wrote:

Lorries getting bigger every year, and more of them.
The damage they do to roadsurfaces becoming more obvious, yet being roundly ignored by the authorities, or blamed on car drivers.
And all while rail freight yards lie empty and derelict, both here and in Europe.

Some good points about road damage on the other hand have you ever tried to back a freight train into a Marks & Spencer’s warehouse?

Nope.
But stuff used to be delivered to a local hub, (yard), and delivered LOCALLY, by vans.
Now we have 50 tonners rumbling through Europe, bringing us the delights of out of season fruits: strawberries like bits of red turnip, and rock hard peaches or nectarines that never ripen, just wither.
As for Amazon, no longer use them after some foreign gentleman in Barking tried to get me to pay for his £2000 TV.
We had his full name and address; neither Amazon nor Essex police remotely interested.
Amazon did block it, but that’s it for me with them. There’s plenty others who CAN keep accounts safe.

[Iron-awe]

What used to work alcy would not work anymore as the times you speak of involved a smaller population being serviced by a lot less lack of choice. You cannot turn the clock back and if you ever take the time to take in the vast amount of huge warehouses all supermarkets and other large brands now possess due to consumer demand you may take a different view. We left the eu because some people thought turning the clock back would work better, newsflash , it doesn’t.

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Northumbiron

[Northumbiron]

It’s entrenched into the mindset of many people these days that they definitely need next day delivery. So these wagons are rattling along our roads 24/7.

As I-A says you can’t turn back the clock. The consumer genie is out of the bottle, so A-O, let’s go!

Our little village has double length artics coming through it at all times. They are loaded with timber from Kielder Forest going to the chipboard factory in Hexham. One bloke in a machine loading them up in the forest, one driver, one man in a machine unloading at the other end. Three wages. What would a freight network cost to run? And yes, there was a railway line between Hexham and Kielder but it closed in the “golden era” of the 1960s.

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Iron-awe, alcazar

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