Rants

Grammar Police

/ masher / 5 Comments

Following on from yesterday’s post, I was reading an article about grammar and so-called Grammar Nazis.

“Am I a Grammar Nazi?”, I wondered.

And, I guess I am… to a point.

Bad spelling and bad grammar annoy me, though “annoy” is probably too strong a word.

Niggle me. That’s better.

Not that I am any kind of English language or literacy expert. However, I do consider myself reasonably competent.

But, I do have a habit of correcting people… which I probably shouldn’t.

Because I’m not an expert.

Indeed, I remember one guy who worked for me a while back – excellent engineer, he was, but his report writing was risable – littered with poor spelling and a lack of punctuation. I often ribbed him about it – in a good-natured way, of course.

Nonetheless, I could tell he wasn’t happy wth me pointing out his mistakes and so I stopped.

As I say, an excellent engineer, so who was I to criticise his weakness in this area?

There are plenty of people out there for whom a decent level of written literacy is a struggle. Many may not have benefitted from as good an education as wot I had, of course, And for others, English may well have been a weaker subject for them.

So, who am I to judge?

But, I still maintain that one should have decent literacy levels if your job requires it… such as in the signwriting example in my last post.

I can’t help but take pictures of poorly written signs. Here are a few recent ones.

Surely, if you make and sell  jokey stickers for people to put on their cars, you should make sure you get it right… no matter how unfunny the sticker is.

I can’t remember where I was when I saw this, but I do remember feeling appalled by it.

And when I took my car in for an MOT a couple of months back, I just HAD to take a pitcher of this.

It’s A Con

/ masher / 8 Comments

Now that she has passed her test, my daughter is obviously keen to get out on the road and so, last night, we spent several hours comparing meercats, in an attempt to find some affordable car insurance.

It’s ridiculous, the amount they charge young, new drivers today.

OK statistics may show that a higher number of accidents are caused by these newer drivers, but, that doesn’t mean that they are ALL bad drivers. It’s probably impossible to tell which ones are bad and which are good, I suppose.

But, premiums are going up every year and one cause of this is due to the number of uninsured drivers on the road.

Of course, a lot of these drivers can’t afford the high price that insurance premiums are costing nowadays and so they drive uninsured. Then they have an accident and so the premiums go up again the following year. It’s a vicious circle. (BTW, I don’t in any way condone driving without insurance!)

The only way they can get these premiums down, is to get older and drive without having any accidents.   Age and No Claims make a significant difference to your premium.

As does where you live.  Unfortunately, living in Luton, we’re not blessed with particularly good crime stats and so that adds a premium to the… er, premium.

Also (and I don’t understand this at all), your occupation can affect it, too.  As a vehicle mechanic, Son pays significantly more for his insurance, than his mate who is the same age and has the same car (pretty much), but who works in retail.

Ridiculous.

Anyway, we got her the cheapest insurance we could find:  £3,140.00.

That’s right: three thousand, one handred and forty pounds.  Not that much less than what she paid for the car!

Just got to hope she gets older and doesn’t have any accidents.

Lighting the way

/ masher / 8 Comments

Daughter’s car went in to our local Vauxhall dealership for a service and MOT, yesterday.

As it had a couple of advisories from last year, I agreed upfront to get those done.

Calculating it roughly in my head, I expected it to come to somewhere between five and six hundred quid.

But, I received the dreaded phone call halfway through the afternoon. If they ring toward the end of the day, you know that the chances are that everything is OK and the vehicle is ready for collection.  But, those halfway-through-the-day calls? They can only mean one thing: more cost.

Which is exactly what happened here. It had failed it’s MOT. Not spectacularly, but it had failed nonetheless.  Also there were issues with the brake fluid and the coolant,  both  of which needed to be replaced. The main culprit though was the nearside headlight – they were unable to adjust the beam and it looked like the mechanism had failed. It would need a new one.

“We have one in stock. That’ll be six-hundred and sixty-five pounds”.

“A hundred and sixty-five pounds?  Bit pricey for a headlamp, but OK”.

“No. SIX hundred and sixty-five”.

“WHAT?!”

Unfortunately, she needs her car next week and so we haven’t got time to hunt around for one from a breakers yard or anything, and so I agreed to having it done.

Hobson’s Choice.

Total cost at the end of the day?

One thousand, four hundred and forty-four of your English pounds.

Eek!

I have to admit, the car does feel better; the engine feels a bit smoother and driving home from the dealership last night, I could actually see the road in front of me… which was nice.

But, 650 quid.

For a headlight.

For a Corsa.

Mad.

 

 

Motoring Madness

/ masher / 13 Comments

Well, let’s kick this thing off with a bit of a rant, shall we?

Something that has been driving me absolutely barmy for a long time now, but which just seems to be getting worse: traffic.

This past week has been absolutely horrendous for me on the roads.

And by ‘roads’ I mean the M1 motorway.

Yes, I’m still having to drive my daughter to Watford each morning for work – more on that in a later post, probably – and quite often we get delayed due to an accident on the motorway.

But, this past week we have been delayed EVERY SINGLE BLOODY DAY due to accidents. Every day.

And trying to take alternative routes is pointless, because everybody else does exactly the same and the smaller roads just don’t have the capacity for that amount of traffic.

I have to feel sorry for the good people of Harpenden though: whenever there is a hold-up on the M1, the amount of traffic on Harpenden High Street increases ten-fold, as we all try to crawl our way further south and pick up the motorway a bit futher down.

Now, Friday’s tend to have less traffic and the motorway is usually quite a reasonable journey for us, but last Friday, it was horrendous!  Again.  Another bloody accident.

Not only that, but there was also an accident on the way home, which added another forty minutes to my journey.

Why do we have so many accidents on our roads?  Why can’t people just learn to drive properly? I do wonder how many of these accidents are caused by people talking (or worse) on their phones whilst driving because, I see this happening every day.

And, driving too fast and too close to the car in front. Why is it, that when some people get behind the steering wheel  – and I’m talking about the steering wheels of German cars in the main, here – they suddenly think they have Lewis Hamilton-like driving skills?

Which they don’t.

There is a campaign for the motorway speed limit to be raised to 80MPH. Eighty!

Good lord, please, no!  It’ll only make it worse.  There will be even more accidents.

How many millions of man-hours are lost each week, by us sitting in traffic, going nowhere?

How many accidents are there on the motorways each week? How many fatalities?

Although it’s a pain, in one respect, I don’t mind driving my daughter to work each day, as once she has passed her test, she will be on the motorway herself, driving alongside all those idiots.

And that thought fills me with dread.

 

 

Lid

/ masher / 7 Comments

My crash helmet has built-in Bluetooth, allowing me to make and receive phone calls, listen to music or receive directions from Google Maps as I ride. This is – of course – all very useful.

It will also allow me to have conversations with other motorcyclists who are in our riding group and who have the same comms package. Unfortunately, this isn’t so useful, as none of my riding pals have this.

But, anyway…

Anyway, my helmet developed a fault and would not charge correctly. Of course, it has done this six months outside the warranty period.

And so, after much, much scouring of the Internets to see if anyone else has had this issue (and possibly fixed it), I managed to find not one single example of someone else having the same problem.

I decided to contact the manufacturer.  On their website, there was a Support page where I could ask my very simple question: “The LED no longer goes blue when the helmet is fully charged. Any ideas?”

But, to ask this very simple question, I had to traverse a range of text boxes asking for all my details.

I tried to ignore them all: all they needed was my question, the model number of the device and my email address so they could contact me back.

But no… every field was mandatory.

In order to submit my simple question to them I had to fill in each of the following:

First Name
Last Name
Phone Number
Email Address
Home Address
Country
City
Postcode
Model Number
Date Of Purchase
Where Purchased

And then, after giving them all my unnecessary personal details, they asked me to tick a box saying that I agree to their privacy policy!

Of course, I only gave them the bare minimum of genuine info – as I mentioned above – putting fake details into the remaining boxes. And – of course – I used an email address that I reserve for such things, so that my main email doesn’t get spammed more than it already does.

So, I was amused yesterday when I received an email from them saying:

“Dear Timothy Hetherington-Smythe . Thank you for your enquiry. Please try doing a firmware upgrade.”

It annoys me that all these companies feel the need to have all our personal details on their databases.

In turn, it pleases me that several of these companies think they have my details, but in reality, what they have is a load of old rubbish.

The firmware update worked, though. 🙂

 

P&T

/ masher / 5 Comments

On Sunday, Son and I went into that London to see Penn & Teller at the Hammersmith Apollo… or the Eventim Apollo, as it is now called.

It was magic.

But, as good and as enjoyable as it was, I must say that I didn’t feel this show was as good as when I saw them there a few years ago.

Their tricks were clever and were delivered in the usual entertaining way, by these two guys who have been doing this for fifty years now.

But they didn’t wow me… not like they have previously.

Don’t get me wrong: they were brilliant and funny and entertaining.

But I missed getting wowed.

Maybe because many of the tricks were re-worked ones that I’ve seen them do before.

Or maybe paying fifteen quid for two pints of lager in plastic cups, had upset my sensibilites.

Or maybe having to go through airport-style security, with body checks and scanners to step through, had rankled me. I mean, what sort of society are we now living in, that one has to have a body search before being allowed in to see a show?

Perhaps having to drive down because the trains were still not running – even when they’re not out on bloody strike – had already put me in a bit of a mood.

Or maybe it was the stationary traffic on the M25 that caused me to be pissed off. I sit in traffic every bloody morning during the week and now I have to do it on a Sunday as well?  Jeez!

Sorry, P&T: you’d have had to perform a couple of literal miracles on Sunday (preferably, new ones), to have got my astonishment senses tingling again.

Going down the toilet

/ masher / 3 Comments

Whilst out and about yesterday morning, I stopped at Beaconsfield Services on the M40, for a pee.

All these service stations now have advertising posters in the toilets, in front of each urinal – a captive audience.

Fed up with reading about period poverty, I stood in front of a different urinal to the one I usually go to (OK, writing this, I ve just realised that I actually have a favourite urinal at Beaconsfield!) and was so taken aback by the advertising poster before me, that I had to take a photo.

Dear Dyno Rod, you’re a big company, but how could I ever trust you to fix my plumbing, when you can’t even throw some apostrophes in to your advertising?

Tea

/ masher / 8 Comments

Spotted this whilst out doing my weekly shop, this morning.

What a terrible idea!

It doesn’t even say which flavour jam.

What next… Hovis to bring out a loaf of bread that tastes like tea?

Yorkshire Tea have adverts on the telly, where their tagline is “Let’s have a proper brew”.

I don’t think this fits with that ethos, somehow.

I give this product two months before it disappears off the shelves, never to be seen again.

 

The Social Network

/ masher / 8 Comments

I’ve mentioned here before, that I don’t do social media.

I’m not a member of InstaFace or the Twitters or any of the other online hangouts that the masses seem drawn to.

Admittedly, when I was younger and going through my experimental phase, I dabbled in a bit of Friends Reunited, but I wasn’t addicted to it and I could have quit it anytime I wanted to.

Which I eventually did.

My one concession to the genre, however, has been LinkedIn.

I was persuaded to join LinkedIn back in 2008 or so, when I was contracting. “It could help you get another job”, I was told.

It never has.

Yes, I’ve received a number of emails from recruiting agencies over the years, offering me six-month contracts in Outer Mongolia, and stuff like that, but never anything decent.  Admittedly, I’ve not actually followed up on most of the recruiting mails that I’ve received, so maybe there could have been something half-decent in there… we’ll never know.

But, LinkedIn has always got on my nerves: people I’ve never heard of… wanting to join my ‘network’.

People I worked with years ago and can barely remember… wanting to join my ‘network’.

People that I knew only fleetingly whilst contracting (engineers that pass in the night)… wanting to join my ‘network’.

To me, for most LinkedIn members, it wasn’t so much about connecting with people who could help you find a new job, but more about how many connections they could get in their own ‘networks’.

And the constant emails:

“Masher, somebody you’ve never heard of just posted something that might interest you”.

“Masher, sombody else you’ve never heard of is congratulating you for five-years at the Acme Water Company”.

“Masher, your career trajectory is gaining momentum! Add these people who you don’t know, to your network and see it really take off!”

I was right fed up with it so, today, I took the decision to close my account.

When I tried to do so, as well as deleting the account, it also gave me an option to ‘pause’ it and hide it from public view.  At first, I was tempted by this option, but then thought better of it and permanently deleted the account.

I immediately received an email from them, saying they were sorry to see me go.

The feeling isn’t mutual.

I’m free! Free, ya hear me? FREE!

Ha ha ha ha ha…

Dumb and Dumber

/ masher / 8 Comments

Stupid people really annoy me.

They shouldn’t, but they do.

I shouldn’t let it get to me, but I can’t help it.

 

Currently, there are two types of people who are unneccessarily annoying me.

The first are those people who still wear a face mask.

When they are on their own.

In their car.

Who are they protecting themselves from? Themselves?

But, I s’pose it’s no worse than those who continue to wear one when they are on their own, walking down the street.  Walking on their own in the open air, wearing a face mask.

OK, I know that wearing a mask is no longer mandatory and is now a matter of personal preference.  But, even at the height of Covid19, I don’t believe there was a single recommendation from the government or it’s medical advisors, to wear a mask when you are outside on your own.

The second type of people who are annoying me are dog owners. Not all dog owners obviously, but those who don’t pick up after their dog.

If I’m walking down the road with my dog and there is someone walking towards me and we both pass a great lump of dog turd on the pavement… I feel guilty!  As a representative of the dog-owning community, I feel like I should be apologising on behalf of whoever it was that allowed their dog to foul the footpath. Which is ridonkulous.

Just as bad are those who do pick it up and bag it, but then leave the bag there.  WTF?!   I’m seeing plenty of this happening in the woods.

Do they not realise that by doing that, they are actually making it worse?

Dog shit will not bio-degrade if it’s in a plastic bag.

You stupid, dumb-arse people.

Crime & Punishment

/ masher / 6 Comments

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post, where I said that we should be looking at the positives of where we live, I now give you this.

Each month, I get sent the crime statistics for the town for the previous month, by the local Neighbourhood Watch bobbies.

I always read it, but to be honest, I don’t care too much about the rest of the town, I just look the area where I live. As we all would, I’m sure.

To be fair, being on the outskirts of town, we don’t get too much bother here and the stats show that last month there were just two recorded incidents in the roads near to us.

One was INTERFERING WITH A MOTOR VEHICLE, which sounds wrong… especially if the motor vehicle in question was underage.

The other was MALICIOUS COMMUNICATIONS. What’s that then? Shouting something nasty to someone?

So yes, it was pretty quiet round here, last month.

Not so much for the rest of the town though, which suffered with:

ASSAULT WITHOUT INJURY
ASSAULT WITH INJURY
THEFT FROM A MOTOR VEHICLE
PUBLIC FEAR , ALARM OR DISTRESS
STATE OR PUBLIC ORDER
ARSON NOT ENDANGERING LIFE
CRIMINAL DAMAGE
CONTROLLING OR COERCIVE BEHAVIOUR
BURGLARY RESIDENTIAL
BURGLARY COMMERCIAL
THEFT FROM A PERSON
HARRASSMENT
FRAUD
THEFT OF A MOTOR VEHICLE
SHOPLIFTING
THREATS TO KILL
MAKING OFF WITHOUT PAYMENT
TRAFFICKING OF DRUGS
CRIMINAL DAMAGE
POSSESSION OF CONTROLLED DRUGS
OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS
RACE OR RELIGIOUS AGGRAVATION
STALKING
SEXUAL
ASSAULTING A CONSTABLE
BLACKMAIL
ROBBERY
PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE
KIDNAPPING
CRUELTY
POSSESSION OF AN ARTICLE WITH A POINT OR BLADE
POSSESSION OF FIREARMS
POSSESSION OF OTHER WEAPONS
MURDER

With the exception of the last one, there were multiple counts of all of these, giving a grand total of 1546 recorded events.

In one month.

I’m not sure we have enough positives in the town to offset those.

The Town

/ masher / 8 Comments

I saw this article in the Daily Mail sidebar of shame yesterday (I wasn’t looking through it on purpose, you understand… my mouse slipped).

It  quite annoyed me.

Firstly, because it is old news.  Heard it all before.

Secondly, it’s rubbish.

Yes, the town has it’s problems, but in that respect, it’s no different to other towns of a similar size and population demographic.

During my contracting years, I worked and stayed in many, many towns around the country and I can tell you that plenty of them were much nicer than Luton.

But also, plenty of them weren’t.

It’s always very easy to shout about a town’s failings. Of course, Luton has its rundown areas of poverty and high crime rates – the same as most places, but then it also has its good areas.   I live on the edge of town and crime round here is pretty low, I’m pleased to say. It’s a nice enough area. There are houses just a couple of minutes up the road that cost upward of half a million pounds.

We have good road and rail connections – three motorway junctions and three railway stations.

We have an airport.

And a (somewhat dated) shopping mall.

There are plenty of green spaces, too.

So yes, we can complain about the negative aspects of where we live, but let’s acknowledge the positives, too.