Copies of “Fifty Not Out” now available by donations to BVCC Juniors
Why I Want to Stuff a Meerkat
When I left the day job a few years ago, instead of the expensive future career counselling provided, what I really needed was more practical advice on how to deal with the big bad world outside. In particular, shorn of my protected status as a company car driver, not only did I now have to buy a car but, worse still, insure it. After my recent experience I think I would drive a company Tuk Tuk if I never had to trawl the market for car insurance again.
When I first left the bosom of something new and shiny every three years plus insurance, servicing and more petrol than a Saudi Sheikh, it was insurance that struck me as a minefield. In insurance terms, I now ranked alongside the local spotty cap wearing Saxo drivers. In essence you start again, almost at the bottom of the heap, whether you have an unblemished record or have the driving abilities of Saxo Boy.Two years on and after a small reduction last year, presumably for good behaviour and not wearing my cap sideways simultaneously staging a rave in my car, this year my premium went up again.
This was a little bit irritating not least as soon I will qualify for a free pen from good old Parky “just for enquiring” about when I die. Irked by this, I sought confrontation but it is impossible to vent at anybody because there is simply nobody to talk to. Gone is Dependable Dorothy in Customer Service replaced by…Live Chat. The term itself is open to question as you get to “chat” via text with somebody who is clearly borderline brain dead.
My provider used to be called Norwich Union before some three year old won a competition to “rebrand” them as Aviva. As soon as I entered their website, up popped Amy my “advisor” although this title is a complete load of bollocks as the only thing she actually could advise me on was how many miles per week my annual mileage equated to if divided by fifty two. Note to Mr Gove, this is not educational progress. Convinced I was disturbing her from reading Chat or Heat magazine I took the plunge, deleted her with some pleasure and stepped into the mystifying world of the comparison websites.
When the self-styled comparison site evangelist, Martin Lewis, is hyper-ventilating on my television, regularly imploring us all to spend a day at a computer to save a quid a month off our gas bills, my first reaction is to boot the screen in. Similarly, the purpose of the fat opera singer and the meerkat is simply to ramp up our annoyance levels before we actually use their sites, almost acclimatising us to the disappointment and frustration to follow. Eventually we will click on any old deal just to get our lives back on track. I can only say I ventured in a bit like a child into a freezing cold swimming pool with Jimmy Saville waiting.
Incredibly, I actually got a quote some £100 less than my trusted provider until, that is, I read the small print and found that my new source was actually Aviva in disguise…the moonlighting bastards! Worse was to follow as reading more small print and suddenly my newly won discount began to shrink from a big night out to a few beers at the local. Amazingly, going back to Aviva’s own site, ignoring Amy who by now would most likely be polishing her nails, and I was again back in pocket. How can this make sense?
Incredibly Lewis sold his Moneysupermarket.com business last year for a price that may reach almost £90m and it is right to point out that he has pledged to give away £10m to good causes. But just how much of the value we consumers should be getting is being carved out to the likes of Lewis and the meerkats? These are highly profitable businesses trading on the confusion in the “free” market, fed by the dominant providers.
Rather than offer straightforward, competitive terms insurance companies subject to us to the likes of Amy who, clearly mute, force us to trawl through the myriad of quotes and providers making our choices at our peril with small print as clear as Arabic. Little wonder loyalty is a forgotten commodity these days and the fat cats, including the meerkats, just get fatter.
Another Big Fat Scandal
Obesity has been back in the news recently with yet another survey confirming what anybody could detect from any part of the country that, even if horsemeat is cheaper and leaner, people continue to get fatter. All sorts of excuses were trotted out but the simple truth is the unpalatable; there is an epidemic out there…of stupid people.
Incredibly, The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, a group of highly intelligent people representing nearly every doctor in the UK, came up with the woeful solution that fizzy drinks should be heavily taxed and junk food adverts banished until after the watershed. Suddenly the Big Mac advert has become the new dirty movie.
Every time we have an issue in the UK the first reaction is to slap a tax on the offending product but we keep driving despite fuel rocketing, we still enjoy a pint and a 20% tax on a 50p can of fizzy sugar will not solve obesity. Additionally, banning adverts till after the watershed means nothing as most kids don’t even know there is a watershed and parents will probably Sky+ the ads for them just to keep them sedated after drinking their ten cans of coke.
What the horsemeat scandal proves in tandem with our obesity issue is not that people cannot afford to eat well, merely that they do not know how to eat well. Walking to the shops once a week, learning to cook rather than simply reheating imported, processed crap and dropping off the kids at least a mile from the school gates are simple solutions to a bulging issue.
Global Warming and the Work Shy
One of the joys of “working” from home is that you are never alone. Hour by hour the telephone buzzes with cheery chappies, generally from the sub-continent, trying manfully to pronounce their name for today and simultaneously sell you a new kitchen Registering with the telephone preference service is about as effective as squashing a slug in the garden as once you kill one, several more seem to spring to life.
The other day I had a call offering me a new boiler…for free…from the Government no less…surely not and so well timed with Spring on the way. Messrs Cameron and Osborne are trying to get us all energy efficient before the utility companies hike our bills up because all our power stations are shut or in Russia. If my boiler was over six years old I was, at last, in with a shout of a handout from the state! Where do I vote?
The only hitch was that I had to answer a few questions, firstly, was I unemployed? Of course, that was not an easy one to answer so I confessed I had not yet reached the aspired state of total idleness. My new friend’s tone conveyed a degree of disappointment but he pushed on this time asking me if I received any benefits. Once again, to his dismay the answer was no. One last try then…did I have kids? Again, I had to offer the negative and that was that. Not even a polite “goodbye” and off he went to search for qualifying layabouts with six kids and an clapped out old boiler…or two.
Remember that Mr Osborne suggested the work-shy were staying in bed all day as the rest of the “hard working” families he loves so dearly were off to help pay off the deficit he “inherited”? Small wonder if the state is keeping them all warm as toast with free boilers leaving them to breed all day? I await my offer of free solar panels next winter.
A Tale of Two Cities
The Boss is coming to Leeds to open up the magnificent looking new Leeds Arena. If you tried to get a ticket via the Arena website then you may have shared my experience of discovering a sell out at one second past the appointed sale time. Luckily, my free alert did pop up to tell me to log on…one hour later! Meanwhile applicants number approximately one hundred for every job at the nearby new Trinity Arcade shopping mall just about to open. Back across the border, our lovely hole in the ground in Bradford awaits the first bulbs of spring and the dimwits at City Hall pontificate over what to do with the Odeon. At least Bradford City may offer some relief…good luck on Sunday…go on City!!!
4G
The latest auction is over and done with but there is no sign of my old Nokia perking up to look forward to faster download times. Sometimes it’s good to take things slow…over and out!
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