One-Nil Flattered West Brom
That is how the BBC summed up Ipswich’s remarkable victory at Portman Road tonight.
Did I wish I had gone? Not really, as I wouldn’t have been able to get home!
Crazy Utility Suppliers
My new house has four different suppliers for gas, electricity, telvision/broadband/phones and water, as is fairly typical in the UK.
I’ve now got them sorted, but sometimes you wonder what sort of muppets designed their systems.
- One supplier needs me to sign a contract, but they don’t have any means to send the contract to an address other than that of the property. And as the property has had tenants in it, good knows where the contract went to! I would vote for the rubbish, if my previous experience with tenants is anything to go by.
- One wanted me to sign on on-line for good reasons, but after two hours I gave up, as they kept asking who was my previous supplier, when obviously there wasn’t one. They also said I should phone a particular number, which had a fault. After I’d finished, they asked me to fill in an on-line survey, which I did truthfully. As it didn’t ask for my name, phone number or e-mail address, I doubt I’ll get an apology for the time I wasted.
- The water company were OK, but tried to sell me things I’ve never needed before.
- On a first call, nPower were short and to the point, so after I’d given up on the other energy company, I phoned them back. I did a combined gas and electricity deal, which may not be the cheapest, but it took me just ten minutes on the phone with a salesman who seemed much more competent than the rest combined.. He also informed me that my new house had a prepayment meter and arranged a suitable date for its removal.
It just goes to show that you can win some and lose some.
It would certainly help if some companies had properly designed systems.
A Quick Reply from My MP
Yesterday I wrote to my MP, Matthew Hancock about the Daylight Saving Bill.
Today, I got a signed reply in the post.
He finished the letter with the following statement. “I am fully in support of this bill, and will be voting for it on Friday the 3rd of December.”
i think the swift reply is to everybody’s credit. And especially, the Royal Mail.
Are We All a Load of Softies?
I’m not asking the question, by my stallion is.
Vague Shot in the Snow
Lookm at him here, with his backside into the wind. He’s 27 years old now, which is a good age for a horse, but he is still hale and hearty and he lives out most of the year. At the moment, he does come in at night, but that’s only because of the cold.
One thing, I’ve always wanted to do is put a proper camera on his head, to film what he sees in the fields. As he likes to think he’s protecting his herd, he is always watching for movement. Would the camera catch the deer, foxes and hares that pass through his field?
Beckham Plays it Straight!
My late wife always reckoned that Seb Coe’s speech in Singapore to win the 2012 Olympics for London was one of the best speeches she’d ever heard and she’d heard a lot as a barrister for some really hopeless causes.
Today, David Beckham has given a wonderfully crafted press conference in Zurich, as England try to win the World Cup for 2018. If we don’t win, we won’t be able to blame him! But then he’s got too much London and Essex in his DNA not to give it his best shot.
They even asked him whether he had an invite to the Royal Wedding! That’s the main reason of course why we won’t win. Prince William and Kate Middleton won’t be inviting Sep Blatter!
The FBI Wades In
I posted the question, Are We Winning the Spam Wars, a few days ago.
Today there is this fascinating article on how the FBI is targetting a Russian spammer, on a web site called The Smoking Gun. The web site was started independently, but is now part of media giant, Time Warner, and gets a lot of its information through the Freedom of Information Act.
The numbers in the article are huge. The Russian is alledged to have controlled 500,000 computers and sent billions of spam e-mails every day, selling fake Rolexes and all the other rubbish. For one six-month period, he was paid, $459,000 by his clients.
I hope Mr. Putin is taking note and sends a few men round with heavy boots and large machine guns!
The Weather Must be Bad!
The BBC has just had a report from Hull abut the awful conditions there.
I thought that Hull was one of those places where the weather usually didn’t get that cold and snowy. If that memory is correct, then this cold spell must be bad!
Visits to This Blog
I would have thought that traffic would have been higher in the last couple of days or so, as people would be sitting at home with nothing to do, as they would have decided that going out wouldn’t be worth it. After all, with freezers, I suspect that there are a lot less people who need to go to the shops every day. And those who can, are working from home.
But since last Friday, when the weather started to get really cold, the traffic has been well down. I have also received very few e-mails, serious or spam, so perhaps everybody are just concentrating on keeping life together and are not at their computers.
It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between the weather and the amount of Internet traffic.
The Basset Has Given Up on the Weather
She spent the whole of yesterday indoors and was only persuaded to venture outside for a few minutes.
This morning, she has just got up and reluctantly she went out of the front door for perhaps a minute. Now she is back on the rug in front of the sofa, wondering if she’ll try her luck. She didn’t and now she’s lying in front of the AGA.
The Anonymous Widower 