Using Mobile Phones whilst Driving
According to this piece on the BBC, the police are cracking down on people, who use their mobile phone whilst driving.
Edward King was on and e told how an AA man, had said the only punishment needed was to lose your phone number, so you’d have to get another.
What a simple idea! Often the simple ideas are the best.
I’m certain it would work well.
Roof Clutter
This house is near to where I live.
Roof Clutter
There has been a lot of controversy about whether the solar panels they have installed should be allowed. You can just about see them. But surely the real eyesores are the television aerials, satellite dish and the overhead wires to bring in the phone lines!
BT Broadband/Vision and Virgin Media Compared – Prices
A couple of months ago, I compared the two systems for getting TV and broadband.
The only thing, I didn’t have was any sensible price comparison. My last seven months of Virgin cost me an avverage of £132.75 and I’ve just paid my first BT bill without any setup charges. It was £45.85, which is a saving of about a thousand pounds by using BT instead of Virgin.
I’m also still getting junk mail from Virgin.
92 Clubs – Day 25 – A Day Off
This was an enforced day off for two reasons.
I needed to have by three-monthly B12 injection for my coeliac disease. I also took the advantage of a free flu jab. I don’t want a dose of that to add to my problems do I?
My trusty Nokia 6310i also seemed to have packed up and I needed to get a replacement. However on looking at the new phones, I decided that they had no features I needed. And they cost a fortune!
So I took a train to the depths of Enfield Lock to see Tonik, the company behind the web site, nokia6310i.co.uk. All went well except for the fact that some wag had turned the signed round to the Innova Science Park, where they are based, and I ended up at a locked school instead.
A Mispointing Signpost in Enfield Lock
The Innova Science Park is actually in the direction of Brimsdown and the school is where the sign says the Science Park is.
I then left my wallet in their offices, which meant a return trip to retrieve it.
BT’s Copper Is Worth More Than The Stock Market Value
According to The Times today, BT has 75 million miles of copper cable, which at £5,000 a tonne is worth £50 billion.
Compare this to their stock market value last night of just £14 billion.
This figure came from an article on the massive amounts of metal theft in the UK.
Why Not?
I found this telephone cable cabinet behind Waitrose in the Barbican.
A Painted Telephone Cable Cabinet
Perhaps all of these cabinets, which are always getting damaged by metal thieves should be painted in other designs. After all, it would make them very traceable, if they were stolen.
Everything Everywhere
Mickey Clarke is one of the presenters of the BBC’s early morning business program, Wake Up To Money.
He remarked that he’d never heard of the mobile phone company, Everything Everywhere.
I hadn’t until a few weeks ago, noticed them either.
It does seem that they haven’t done much to successfully raise brand awareness.
Channels I Don’t Want or Need
As I’m moving to BT Broadband, I looked at BT Vision. I was surprised to see that the basic package doesn’t include two channels; CNN and filth. After my experiences in Hong Kong, I can live without the first and earlier this year I saw enough filth to last a lifetime.
But I need the broadband first and for that I need a working phone line.
Did My Anger Burn Richard Branson’s House Down?
If it did, I of course apologise, but then the response of Virgin Media to my lack of landline would try the patience of a saint. And of course, I may be many things, but I’m no saint!
My landline probably failed about the 1st of August, but I’m unsure when, as my TV and broadband was still working and I mistakenly thought that the landline came through the cable. I may be an electronic engineer, but hardware and especially telecoms hardware has always been a mystery to me. Those that tried to reach me on the landline failed and so tried my reliable Nokia 6310i connected through o2.
Only about the 10th of August did I realise that the landline was broken and eventually phoned them on the 12th. Virgin Media support, said that the line was OK and would I try another phone. Not so easy when you live by yourself and don’t have a spare one handy. So in the end I bought a new phone from Maplin for about £30 to test the line. That may seem expensive, but it is a twin one and I needed that anyway. The lack of phone line just brought my purchase forward by a month or so.
The phone didn’t connect either, so I spent another hour or so trying to get through to Virgin. At one time, I was left on hold to rediculous music, which I couldn’t stand. And of course I was paying for the expensive call on my mobile phone. One idiot at Virgin might actually told me to use the ladline as it would be cheaper but another did try to sell me a new calling plan, which would be cheaper. It strikes me that Virgin have already found me a very cheap calling plan. It’s called the no phone plan.
At this point I phoned BT and they will be taking over the phone from the 30th of August.
I finally got some sense out of Virgin by phoning them up and cancelling. But this will cost me £70. The lady with the sense also made sure that an egineer would come round on Monday the 22nd.
They did and fixed the phone. But the engineers did say there was a problem with the cable and it would need properly fixing later. This would of course mean digging up the new pavement. They actually accused the works of causing the problem with the phone, but retracted that when I told them, that the phone line had failed before the work started.
Yesterday, someone very polite, (Unlike me!) , from Virgin phoned to check that everything was OK. The phone hasn’t worked since.
My Landline
Looking at the cable from the outside, it doesn’t look as though it’s a much better piece of work than their cabinets.
This morning it was the usual Virgin get connected obstacle race and I lost it. Wouldn’t you? In the end they phoned back a couple of times, but always at inconvenient or noisy moments. It doesn’t help that there’s a road drill outside.
So now I’ve decided to wait until BT connect my broadband on Tuesday.
I have completely lost what little faith if any I ever had in Virgin Media.
I hope Sir Richard didn’t have to call the emergency sevices on one of his own phone lines! Or perhaps he was waiting for the lines to be fixed and the firemen didn’t get the message quick enough.
BT 2 Virgin Media 0
I had a letter from BT this morning, saying could I contact them, if I thought there might be a problem setting up my landline. As the Virgin Media line has been down for a couple of weeks now, and to check my side I asctually bought a new phone handset, I sent an e-mail to BT saying that they may have trouble connecting.
They phoned me within ten minutes and even went to the trouble of ringing me back on the Virgin number to see if it did work. It didn’t.
So that made the score BT 1 Virgin Media 0
Then when I was at the checkout in Sainsburys about half-an-hour ago I got a call on my mobile marked Private. Usually, I don’t answer these, as they are often scammers or crooks. But this time I did and it was Virgin. I politely asked them to ring in a few minutes as I was at the checkout.
They haven’t so far, so that makes it BT 2 Virgin Media 0.
I shall wait in all night to see if they call!
The Anonymous Widower 