Category: Life

Dear OFCOM

Jeremy Clarkson is at the centre of another of these ridiculous complaint messes after some comment on Top Gear last week about truck drivers murdering prostitutes (links to the news below). Thank **** the morons who complained don’t read Viz – they have a semi-regular strip about a prozzie-killing trucker.

Being me, I dropped a mail to OFCOM begging them not to persecute the average broadcaster/viewer for the views of a tiny percentage of the populace:

Just for a change – a complaint about a complaint. Or 180 of them according to the news.

Will you please do the HUGE majority of the viewing public a favour and tell the idiots who complained about Clarkson’s “prostitute murdering” comment to get a life and a sense of humour? Kindly ignore them. If people like that take over the world we won’t be able to laugh at anything and the planet will be an incredibly dull place to be.

Frankly, I think if I had dinner with Mr Clarkson I’d want to punch him in the face by the end of it – simply as he’s even more opinionated that I am and a dedicated smoker. But he’s entitled to that opinion, and he’s also bl**dy funny.

I also note that less than 200 people complained to you post-broadcast (before the bandwagon jumpers checked out the show so they could have something to winge about – are they all descendants of Mrs Whitehouse?). Given the viewing figures being upwards of 2 million, this gives us a generous percentage of 0.01% who claim to be offended. Should we really be deprived of a good presenter on a good show simply because a small number of people got out of bed on the wrong side on Sunday?

As for this nonsense about the comment being made on the anniversary (or near to it) of some murders… good grief. As if Clarkson/the Beeb did that on purpose.

I’m begging you, stop pandering to these idiots. The grannies with nothing better to do that complained about Ross and the other guy – the one who thinks he’s funny – should stick to watching Alan Titchmarsh.

If people don’t like something… don’t watch. Clarkson will always be near the knuckle. Did these same people complain about his stereotyping of the Germans in the last series? I doubt it. Why not? Because that was funny to them.

Humour is a matter of opinion and you have to take into account that one person being offended for 100,000 who aren’t isn’t worth considering. The sooner the viewing/listening public susses that out and gets on with their own lives, the better. Nothing gets a show cancelled quicker than bad figures. If 1 person in 100,000 stops watching, who cares?

I don’t envy your job. But please – stop giving so much credence to idiots with too much time on their hands. And kindly don’t point out that I’ve just become one of them!

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eBay – what a bunch of useless ********

eBay Inc.

OK, time to rip into eBay. They’ve annoyed plenty of people over the last year or so with countless changes in policy, but I’m going to have a go at them for simply being inept. Thankfully I don’t really use the thing any more after I flogged all my old crap before I left the UK in 2006, as I think I’d go mad with them.

The story begins when I got a load of emails, seemingly from my own email account, directed at various sellers asking them questions on sales. Thing is, every person targeted was non-English and the question was in garbled English. I then started getting replies from the sellers, usually along the lines of “I don’t speak English, sorry”.

Now, I genuinely have no idea how anyone got my eBay password when I don’t think I’ve logged into it for months. Regardless, it’s not a big worry. I just log in and change my password, right?

Wrong.

By the time I tried to do that, eBay had already part-locked my account and I had to go through the “forgot password, set a new one” routine. In itself, not a problem.

Wrong.

Email arrives from eBay telling me I need to do this. Fine. I go to the site (which I can still log on to at this point), and click on “forgot password”. I then get taken to a screen that asks for my login name, and some other details (personal question, date of birth and the like). I fill these in and click the button. I duly get another mail with a further link in it. I guess for them to check the email address they have is correct. No use if the hacker had changed it, but never mind.

I click the new link and get to another page asking me to enter my username. OK, I enter it and click again. A message says another email with further instructions will be sent. It never arrived, despite my repeating this umpteen times. I am now completely locked out of the website.

I email eBay to explain the situation. It’s symptomatic of the system failing – it’s not sending the mails out and it’s redirecting to the wrong page. I also found that I couldn’t get to the “contact us” page – it was redirecting to their version of the “404 – Page Not Found” error. I’ve seen this before on eBay. They really should be more careful with their delete key.

So I gave up.

On Sunday I tried again and “lo” it worked. No problems. Whatever glitch there was had been cleared up. I got all the emails, clicked all the links, changed my password and the world was a better place. Finally.

Then I check my email on Monday morning and I have a reply from eBay relating to my message on Friday telling them I had problems. They’ve relocked my account as it’s been accessed since that first email – because their system started working. I now try to get in and I’m told my account is blocked, but it’s OK as they can verify me by phone.

Only the phone number they have is incorrect and I can’t change it as I can’t log in… it does let me go through the steps of changing, but then refuses to let me save the changes.

ARSE.

So I fired off the following email. Apologies for the lack of gratuitous swearing, but you never know if mails will be bounced for bad language these days. I’m just going to leave it till I’m at the folks next weekend and therefore near the phone line I have listed. That way I can just run through the system without involving the workshy lackies in whatever office my mail went to. Assuming the damn site’s working next weekend.

Oh FFS.

I finally managed to get into the account yesterday and changed my password to something new – two days after I started trying. Frankly, the problems I had seemed to stem from a broken website which was finally fixed.

Only now I can’t get in as you’ve eventually acted on the mail I sent on the 24th and *re*locked my account. I can’t get in via the front page as it wants to call my telephone for confirmation and I’m currently residing around 20 miles away from that phone line. I can’t update the phone number as *you’ve locked me out of my account again*.

If you’d actually paid attention to an email sent on Friday instead of waiting two whole days to actually do something about it – or, indeed if your website hadn’t sent me round in circles – this wouldn’t have happened.

Frankly, I can see why people are leaving eBay in droves. You seem to have less concern for customer care than a bank. And that really is saying something.

Look, forget it. Leave everything alone. You’re obviously not capable of dealing with a simple help request in a timely fashion. I’ll wait till the weekend when I’m *at* my parents, go through the system as it’s set up and just hope you’re web site doesn’t fall down again. It’s got to be better than involving a human again.

Yours,

(etc)

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Blog Action Day 2008

Blog Action Day October 15th, 2008 - Focus on ...

I just heard about Blog Action Day and I’m just going to make it with a post before the end of the 15th. This year’s topic is poverty, though I don’t know why we need a whole blog thing to draw attention to it.

No, let me rephrase that. I don’t know why we should need a whole blog thing to draw attention to it. It’s everywhere. From beggars on the streets in London to the poor being fed by the better off in Bangladesh I’ve seen a lot of it.

The thing with poverty is that in some cases we don’t seem to want to do anything about it. We don’t trust those who need it. To a large extent it’s not their fault as so many people use a pretense of poverty to wangle cash out of decent people, thus tainting the truly needy.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help. It simply means you have to be careful how you do. Choose a charity or a cause where you know the maximum money will filter down in a useful way to those who both need and deserve it. Don’t go doling it out in the street, especially somewhere like India where you’ll just get mobbed by “you gave to her, you have to give to me” hordes.

The best way to cure poverty is to get the people in need in a position where they can do something about it. The old “give a man a fish and he’ll have enough to eat for a week; give him a rod and teach him to fish and he’ll have enough to eat for a lifetime” solution. Throwing money at poverty is a great way to make people rely on handouts. There are a gazillion charities which will help people break the poverty cycle. Dig around, find one you like and give them some support.

My personal recommendation? The Blue Dragons Children’s Foundation in Vietnam. Don’t forget that poverty is a worldwide issue. Although there’s likely to be enough on your doorstep to open your eyes.

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You can tell you’re back in England when…

map showing the area of England in relation to...

… you’re reading a copy of the News of the World someone left sat on the tube seat and once again you find yourself asking “why the hell do people read this ****?”

… you have the best, most filling breakfast in ages despite knowing it’s furring your arteries faster than lining them with badger pelt.

… you’re behind a heavily pregnant woman in a newsagents who buys all her groceries; then a lottery card; then 20 fags.

… a chocolate bar costs around 50p and there’s no excuse like the fact that the shop has to import it in from another country.

… a bus ride costs a quid.

… it’s glorious sunshine despite all the news for the last 3 weeks saying it’s been pissing down (happens every time I come home).

… I can finally top up my mobile without having to contend with a broken bloody website (thanks, Vodafone you *******).

… I don’t see anyone flying their national flag in their gardens or on buildings any more.

… the quality of written and English I’m encountering is worse than that in most of the other countries I’ve been to for the last 4 months.

… encountering traffic driving on the left is not unexpected.

… I can find more than one type of beer in each bar I go to.

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