Stupidity

London 2012 Olympic Games

| Richard

Yet more reasons for abandoning London during the Olympic Games have come out this week: reports of a lack of hotel rooms and extortionate pricing for those which are available have been discussed on various news channels.

It’s all about supply and demand, of course.

In this case, demand is high because of both the ‘main’ Olympic Games as well as the Paralympic Games afterwards. As noted on the BBC’s “Democracy Live” website:

 ”Speaking during questions on 9 February 2012, Ms Jowell told MPs of a mother who had been forced to pay £1,000 a night for a specially adapted hotel room in order to take her disabled daughter to the Paralympic Games.

“The same room would cost £375 during the Easter holidays, a 167% increase, Ms Jowell claimed.

“She told MPs that her team’s research found that hotel prices in London during the course of the games were, on average, 315% higher than normal.”

Of course demand will be high from tourists and visitors wanting to watch the Games, but it’s also the supply side that’s being affected. Why? Well it’s down to that great gravy train of excess and privilege known as “the Olympic family”. This is estimated to mean 78,400 people. Yes, 78,400!  Of these, well over 60% aren’t actually athletes or officials:

“National Olympic Committees (NOC) 19,900
Includes:
– Athletes
– Team officials

International Federations (IF) 4,150
Includes:
– Technical officials
– International Federations staff and guests

Media 21,300
Includes:
– Press, photographers, journalists
– Rights holding broadcasters
– Olympic Broadcast Organisation

International Olympic Committee (IOC) 1,650
Includes:
– IOC members
– World AntiDoping Agency
– Court of Arbitration of Sport
– IOC Medical Commission
– IOC staff
– Observers and guests

Marketing partners (sponsors) 31,400
Includes:
– The Olympic Partners and guests
– Marketing Partner Coach Programme (ticketed)

Grand total 78,400″

Wow!

This is the bunch that will be bringing traffic chaos to London with the Olympic Route Network of Olympic Family-only traffic lanes carved out of the already-congested existing road network.  It’s explained nicely here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16277688

And where are all these Olympic Family members staying? Well maybe in the rooms they’ve block-booked at specially reduced rates:

“Under a deal struck in 2005, Locog booked around 600,000 room nights in London during the course of the games, for Olympic officials, media and others.

“In January, around 120,000 of these rooms were put back on sale to the public after Locog said it no longer needed them.”

Ah! That would explain it! I’m so pleased I won’t be here in London during the Olympics…

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

| Richard

…but as always that fury bites both parties. Or so it would appear from today’s news that the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce will both be charged with perverting the course of justice over claims that she took speeding points on his behalf in 2003.

The whole thing blew up when, following an interview she gave, allegations were made that someone had agreed to take his points for him. This was after the pair had become estranged following his affair.

Maybe saying and doing things out of revenge isn’t such a good idea after all.

Serves them both right!

Car Wars: Greater Manchester Police Trash a VW Golf R

| Richard

I was interested by the evolving story of how a policeman from Greater Manchester Police managed to spectacularly wreck a new VW Golf R in the wee small hours of the morning recently.

It started with a report on the BBC News website that told us that:

“The Greater Manchester Police officer crashed the £33,000 VW Golf R on Wharfside Way, Old Trafford, at about 01:50 GMT on 15 December.

The driver was taken to hospital and treated for a back injury.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman refused to reveal details of how the crash happened.

He said that “as a result of the incident, GMP is reviewing its policy on officers test driving cars”.

The officer, who has recovered from his injuries, is currently suspended from driving duties while an internal investigation takes place.”

The photo of the car shows just how much damage was done: not just a little bit of superficial damage as you might expect from a shunt on an urban road.

Wrecked Golf R

It'll polish out with a bit of T-Cut

Now Section 19 of the Road Safety Act 2006 amends Section 87 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 which grants police an exemption from speed limits when a vehicle is being used for police purposes. “Police purposes” is a pretty wide-ranging description but you do have to wonder what on earth this officer was doing at that time of the morning at the sort of speeds he must have been doing to cause that sort of damage whilst, apparently, testing the car for possible police use.

But the story gets better: apparently the driver was PC Paul Fletcher who was regularly seen on the TV programme “Car Wars” doing high speed chases.

PC Paul Fletcher

PC Paul Fletcher on "Car Wars"

And GMP stated that no other vehicle was involved, despite emerging reports that in fact the whole thing was caught on camera by another high performance car out at the same time on the same piece of road when PC Fletcher – a trained driver, remember - lost control on a roundabout. Hmm. Racing each other, perhaps? That’s surely what the police would say if you or I were doing the same thing?

Greater Manchester Police are, supposedly, reviewing their policies in this regard but surely testing a vehicle would be better done on, say, the MIRA test facilities which are purpose-built for such testing?

Maybe next time I get a pull for speeding – at a significantly lower speed than that which would have led to a car being written off so badly as the Golf – I could just say I was testing its suitability? Ah wait: I don’t have the exemption they’ll be hiding behind whilst driving as dangerously as they do…

Thorntons Delivery Fail

| Richard

Another year ordering some expensive chocolates from Thorntons and specifying a delivery date.

Another year when they fail to deliver, due to their using that complete shower, Parcelnet/Hermes/Home Delivery Network/Yodel/Any Other Name We Can Think Of for so-called Premium Delivery.

Last year, they “lost” the packages of chocolates I was having delivered to my London office for the receptionists and Ops Director and Thorntons had to re-order.

This year, I paid for premium, next day delivery, so that delivery was due to take place on Tuesday, 13th to our SE1 offices. Guess what?

Out for delivery 15/12/11 16:30 VAUXHALL SERVICE CENTRE
In transit but possible delay 13/12/11 17:30 VAUXHALL SERVICE CENTRE
Arrived At Depot 13/12/11 04:33 VAUXHALL SERVICE CENTRE
Departed Depot 12/12/11 20:54 WEDNESBURY HUB
Arrived At Depot 12/12/11 20:50 WEDNESBURY HUB
Parcel data received awaiting coll. 12/12/11 SHEFFIELD SERVICE CENTRE

He must be lost.

Here’s the second package’s current tracking details:

In transit but possible delay 13/12/11 17:30 VAUXHALL SERVICE CENTRE
Arrived At Depot 13/12/11 04:31 VAUXHALL SERVICE CENTRE
Departed Depot 12/12/11 20:58 WEDNESBURY HUB
Arrived At Depot 12/12/11 20:56 WEDNESBURY HUB
Parcel data received awaiting coll. 12/12/11 SHEFFIELD SERVICE CENTRE

Crap, eh?

Save Us From Ourselves!

| Richard

An excellent piece of tabloid journalism from the BBC News site:

Call for law change on quad bikes

“Doctors say the law should be changed to force people who use road-legal quad bikes to wear helmets.

Accident and emergency medics say lives are put at risk because riders do not have to wear protective gear – despite the fact the bikes can reach 90mph.”

Oh my word! Think of the children! Something must be done!

And yet…

“There are no separate statistics on the numbers of quad bike crashes, but two particularly high-profile accidents have made headlines and brought the dangers to wider public attention.

In 1998, comedian Rik Mayall suffered serious head injuries and spent five days in a coma after his quad bike overturned while he was riding it at his farm in Devon.

In 2003, rock musician Ozzy Osbourne spent eight days in a coma, broke eight ribs and punctured a lung while riding a quad bike in the grounds of his Buckinghamshire mansion. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.”

So there’s nothing to support such a cry for us to be protected from ourselves. And clearly the high profile accidents took place off road. Not sure what a crash helmet would have done to save Ozzy’s broken ribs and punctured lung, but hey, let’s not let facts get in the way of a hysterical piece of so-called journalism.

Credit? What Credit?

| Richard

Fed up as I am with Barclays’ Currency Call Account – you give them your US Dollars, they may or may not charge you a fee for paying them into a US Dollar account, they give you no interest, no paying-in books, no cheques or cards and then they charge you a fee for taking any US Dollars out – I decided that Citibank’s US Dollar current account might be the way to go.

So I went online, filled out the application details, sent them proof of address, etc. and then waited. Yesterday, I received a letter saying that due to my credit score from Experian, Citibank wouldn’t let me open the account.

It’s a current account with no credit card and no overdraft facility. No credit or borrowing required. So why should a credit score affect this? What a wunch of bankers!

YouTube – Contact Us

| Richard

Well I would … if I could find a contact form that doesn’t threaten me with being banned if I use it!

I’ve now received two ’strikes’ in 6 months from YouTube on an account of mine for videos I’d posted a couple of years ago. They’re not explicit or anything and yet – according to YouTube:

The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violating the YouTube Community Guidelines:

  • {Video Name}

Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It’s also not OK to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

This is the second Community Guidelines warning sanction your account has received within six months. Accordingly, the ability to post new content to YouTube from this account has been disabled and will not return until two weeks after you acknowledge this message. Please review the YouTube Community Guidelines and refrain from further violations, which may result in the termination of your account(s).

Helpful eh? Of course they’ve also helpfully removed my ability to actually access the ‘offending’ video but having looked at the one in question offline, I really, really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

So I thought I’d ask them to clarify what was wrong, but no. There’s no actual way on the YouTube site for me to be able to query this with anyone. How stupid are these people?

Currys – Avoid At All Costs

| Richard

I don’t think I have ever experienced such terrible ’service’ from any company in my life before!

A few weeks ago, I decided to buy a new dishwasher. After looking on the John Lewis web site, I found a suitable model but it was out of stock. Currys’ website indicated they would price match as they were overpriced in comparison. Ringing them elicited the response that yes they would price match and take a further 10% off but no, we couldn’t order one until Friday as it was out of stock, but maybe we could find one in store.

Off to Grimsby Currys on the Saturday afternoon. After looking around at what they had in store, I eventually had to go and break up a cosy chat between four of their staff to get one of them, Jenny Noble, to actually sell us one as they were apparently uninterested in serving us. She graciously allowed us to make a purchase of an integrated dishwasher but as it was now 3.01pm, they wouldn’t deliver it on Sunday, as we’d missed the 3.00pm deadline…

We were told that delivery was free but that we could pay extra to have it delivered, installed and the old one disposed of. We were charged £20 extra for this.

So today it was delivered but we were told that the delivery man was only dropping the new one off as he had 5 minutes only and 30 deliveries to do.

We rang Currys who eventually said they would get Rob, the manager, to check with Jenny and ring me. They didn’t. I rang back and was told that no, she wouldn’t have made a mistake and the additional money we were charged was for … something else. After much to-ing and fro-ing, I was told that installation would cost another £100 but Rob would allow us 20% off that. I argued that we’d already paid for installation and after Curry’s Customer Services hung up on me after refusing to put me through to a supervisor, we were told that Rob had withdrawn his generous offer and if I wanted installation it would cost another £100.

I told them to come and collect it: it would be on the driveway.

In the meantime, my partner was telephoned and it was agreed that they would refund the £20 … but I’d have to go to Grimsby from London to get the refund! Eventually a few days later we actually got the refund.

So thanks to Rob at Curry’s Grimsby, we’re never, ever buying anything from Currys again, anywhere in the country. I already don’t buy from them online as Currys’ online prices are much more expensive than Amazon’s anyway. Oh and that will also extend to PC World who are part of the same group of companies.

Internet-Only Football Coverage

| Richard

So the England -v- Ukraine football match will only be available to view (at cost) on the Internet.

“[Kentaro] said Kentaro would take a maximum of one million subscribers for the match – which he said equates to about 2.5 million viewers – because this would be the “safe number to stop at to ensure the optimal broadcast”.

Hmm. I’m not sure my broadband connection – as much as 768kbps at times… –  will ever provide “the optimal broadcast” for any streaming media.

“Andrew Croker, executive chairman of Perform, insisted England fans would “embrace” the internet broadcast.

“I think consumers are pretty sophisticated now, particularly in the UK, where we have been in the vanguard of adopting new technology,” he told BBC Sport.

“I think people want a choice – the chance to watch football in a different way. This is pioneering, very exciting and I think people will enjoy it.”

Yes it would be a different way for me – rather than high quality and effectively free broadcast on my television, I can have intermittent and choppy images on my Mac if I’m prepared to pay through the nose for it. Well guess what: I’m not!