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Cretinous numpties at that. I have just had the pleasure of speaking to someone in the billing department of my ex-broadband provider, Pipex UK (oh yes, this is a name and shame post).

The History:

I noticed in May that my direct debit had jumped from £7.98 to £14.99 at which point I jumped on the phone to Pipex and asked why I was being overcharged. I got a very blunt response of “We aint bin’ overchargin’ ya” – well yes you bloody have! Anyway, I was told I would have to put my complaint in writing, which I duly did. Three months later no reply so I sent a barrage of registered mail to both Pipex UK and their new owners TalkTalk…

Whats happening now…

Well Pipex UK has increased their prices to level out the pricing gaps between customers that are joining from TalkTalk and charging a flat rate to all regardless of speeds and limits. I was never informed of this price hike and therefore I am entitled to jump ship without further charges being levied, and because they failed to notify me I get a nice big refund…or so I thought! Like all big companies, they take your money in a flash but woe betide you should you want it back. I have had to fill out numerous forms to get my £52.00 of which I am rightfully owed. Your lesson from reading this…

DO NOT sign up for any services offered by either TALKTALK UK PLC or PIPEX UK LTD as it will only cause you pain and anguish. TalkTalk tried to slam my line, Pipex tried to send bailifs round for a credit on the account…

CRETINOUS NUMPTIES!

These past few days have been eventful, to start with…

A volcano in the middle of Iceland with an impossible to pronounce name, has stirred from it’s centurion slumber only to cause disruption, greif and annoyance to thousands. However, the news is once again doing a sterling job of reporting only those who are directly affected by the shenanigans of one Eyjafjallajoekull. Turning to the wider picture, not only travellers are suffering from the plumes of debris.

Businesses that rely on international visitors are starting to feel the pinch. For example, hotels. Currently my hours have been cut to the bare minimum and staffing levels decreased to a skeleton workforce to save money wherever possible. Without international guests being able to enter UK airspace, the guests numbers plummet, revenue drops and staff face cut backs. But then again this is a bitter-sweet deal as the managerial company are rolling in fully booked London branches of the hotel chain as airlines cough up for hotel rooms for their stranded passengers.

It’s been estimated that this whole volcano issue is costing airlines and travel companies £130million a day in accommodation, food and reimbursements to all those individuals who cant get out of or back into the UK. Although some insurance firms are managing to weedle their way out of claims by stating that a volcanic eruption is an act of God. This brings me to my second point…

As an atheist I do not believe in a higher being, or a God. I do however appreciate all religions and honour their belief systems as long as those beliefs do not involve the persecution of others or the forcing of beliefs onto those who do not seek it. So why should the British tax payer fork up £20million for the Pope to visit the country. Surely the Roman Catholic coffers should cover that. And before I get classed as being anti-Christian, I would have the same views about financing a visit from the Muslim scholar of Islam or a Buddhist Teacher. Religions should not be nationalised, financed or organised by the presiding Government as religions are a personal attribute that should remain personal. Unfortunately the United Kingdom is still associated with the Church of England, and as such all those appearing in court are requested to swear upon the bible. What place does religion have within a legal structure. A Satanic worshipper who is giving a witness account in court will happily swear upon/to the bible as it holds no fears. A devout Christian will most likely swear upon the bible and tell the truth as they are more afraid of being judged by their God than the consequences of their crime. And there it becomes clear, religion should be abolished from public sectors such as court rooms, or at the very least, offer all the sacred books for different believers to swear upon.

Third tonight is an age old debate, sparked by a recen discussion with friends. Should capital punishment be brought back. As this is such a lengthy and diverse topic I will dedicate a whole post to it soon.

For now, thanks for reading.

I was stood on Canterbury West’s London bound platform staring at my train that was a meager 40ft from the station, sat stationary!

In December, the bosses at SouthEastern trains developed a wonderful new timetable accross their network. Originally there was three trains an hour from Canterbury West to Charing Cross, formed of one express train and two stopping services. The newly revised table has axed the express service and a stopping service and replaced it with one Hi-Speed train!

My journey from Canterbury West to Waterloo East would range from 1:30 to 1:50 depending what train I caught, but now it’s just under two hours! I could opt to pay the £4.00 upgrade ontop of my normal extortionate train fare to use the hi-speed service and then be shot through the country side at spectacular speeds only to arrive at St. Pancras… the other side of London. I would then have to spend a further £2.80 (£4.00 without an Oyster Card) to get accross London to make my connection at London Waterloo. Basically I would have to spend an extra £13.60 every week, that’s half my fare! And here is the icing on the cake, my full journey on the normal service takes 2:43 and the journey via hi-speed – 2:43. The underground journey obliterates any time saved by the super fast speedy train as I would still end up catching exactly the same connection at London Waterloo!

I understand that Southeastern has to make their money back on these fast bullet style trains but it’s almost like being forced on one. It’s not just me that feels like this. Thousands of commuters from the south east have been screwed over by the introduction of these carbon monstrosoties. The official line from Southeastern Railways is a glorified, beaurocratic “Tough Shit”.

National Express anyone?

For my Non-UK readers, our postal service is operated through a state owned company, Royal Mail. Now you have this simple understanding I’ll continue…

As many people are aware, the Communications Workers Union has successfully balloted a national strike action for Royal Mail workers. This means our post will be grinding to a halt for a few days… but what is this hoo-har really about?!

To be honest, I’m not sure, the governments not sure and I don’t think the actual workers are too clued up either. The official word is over pay and working conditions, however, the CWU has released the letter they sent to Mark Higson, Managing Director of Royal Mail, and reading it makes for light humour. The CWU offered the following “compromises”…

• • That Royal Mail will reveal their business plan for the whole of the planned transformation programme.  This will create an open environment that will allow Royal Mail and CWU to reach a 3 year agreement aimed at providing long term stability for the business, employees and our customers.
  • That Royal Mail recommit to the key principle which underpinned the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement i.e. that “change will be introduced by agreement”.  This means Royal Mail will unequivocally agree planned 2010 change, including the rollout of new walk sequencing machines.
  • That we agree, in principle, that improved Job Security arrangements and a new benefits package that rewards postal workers for delivering  success for the business will form part of the final agreement.
  • That Royal Mail agrees the principle that budgets should not drive staffing levels and that what constitutes a fair days workload will be based on transparent and agreed standards with the Union.  We should jointly consider utilising independent experts in the field of work measurement to facilitate a resolution to all workload issues.
  • That Royal Mail are prepared to step back from imposed change and resolve all current local disputes by agreement.
  • That Royal Mail agrees to an independent enquiry into the bullying and harassment of postal workers and immediately ceases the use of unagreed HR procedures.
  • That Royal Mail are prepared to jointly approach the Government on the urgent need to find a resolution to pensions and regulatory issues.
  • That the national parties clear our diaries to allow for an intense period of negotiations to resolve all outstanding issues and conclude a comprehensive national agreement.

In this time of economic instability, the CWU have put their union members at risk – it’s career suicide. No company will reveal fully potential job losses, it’s just something that we have to live with. If you do a good job and you strive for excellence then you shouldn’t worry. I work in the Hotel industry, one of the most unstable job markets around at the moment. Staff turnover is high, pay is low and there’s always the chance your job will be axed if you don’t perform!

The postal market is saturated with other postal carriers; DHL, HDNL, CityLink, Fedex, POD – just to name a few, and to be perfectly honest, they are so much more efficient and better at deliveries than Royal Mail and their own courrier service, Parcel Force!

So my word to all the CWU representatives, I support your right to picket and strike but, enjoy while you can because I have a feeling you’ll be out on your arses soon enough!

Here is the letter from the CWU to Royal Mail’s big boss: http://is.gd/4uODD

Well I thought I had overcome my annoyance and fear of Apple, however, it was all reinstated 25 minutes ago when my iPod (during a routine software update) crashed and died a horrible death. I’ve had to reinstall iTunes on my PC, backup my playlists, restore my iPod to factory settings and then re-sync all my apps, music and notes.

Steve Jobs you’ve done it again!

Today I have launched a new site, Adzi.NET Takeaways! The single site for takeaways in Canterbury, Kent. You can view restaurants and takeaways by cuisine category, download menus in PDF format and read reviews! Take a look at http://eat.adzi.net

I’m currently sat on the South Eastern train service from Canterbury West to Waterloo East! The train arrived about 5 minutes early, as usual, and waited to depart! As we pull into Ashford International, on time, an announcement is made saying that we will be waiting for 12 minutes as we need to wait for another service to depart! 28 minutes later and we’re still at the platform! Now I’ve just heard that the service will terminate at London Bridge! One station before Waterloo East, because the train is so incredibly late. So instead of recording the train as late, it will now be completely stricken from any records as it never arrived in it’s final destination! Watch out South Eastern Trains because I’m in your tail gunning for a refund and compensation! Instead of arriving in Fleet at 22:18 it will be around 11pm… Cheers!

After I wrote this post, I made a connecting train from London Bridge to Waterloo East where the pre-pubescent train guard challenged me for having the wrong ticket! I replied that my ticket allowed me on any route through London on the overground network. He started shouting saying I don’t know what I’m talking about! At this point I told him to formicate himself, preferably with something large and pointy! This absolute monkey starts writing out a penalty notice to my disbeleif! He’s tried to issue me with a penalty fair for £20.00 for the “wrong ticket”! At this point my station stop came, I wasn’t going to be delayed so I told him to post it to me but, and I quote…
“if that slip drops onto my doormat I will be going for your job so think carefully about whether my ticket is actually illegal or wether your just a fucking idiot! Have a good night!”

As a lover of technology, I love the fact the one of the greatest rights a human has, voting, could soon be fully electronic. The principles of electronic voting are simple…

1. All votes can be tallied on individual machines within seconds, rather than hours or even days with the ballot papers.
2. All votes can be sent to a central server where within another few seconds, a computer can tabulate the results.
3. All votes are securely recorded on memory devices so any audit trails can be followed.

Now here’s the problems that I see…

Scenario 1 – Corruption

Mr X votes for Candidate A by pushing a button or touching the screen. The vote is logged and recorded. If the memory device that stores the vote corrupts, that vote is lost and Mr. X has lost his right to vote. His vote wont be counted. Now what if two thousand people use that same machine and the votes are corrupted, two thousand votes are lost which may actually lead to a completely different result.

Answer:This is a hard scenario to tackle. We can only rely on the manufacturers placing in backup devices and transmission sequences that ensures every single vote is counted. Time will only tell and thorough testing would have to take place, such as a mock election to give us a true picture.

Scenario 2 – Track My Vote

Mrs Y votes for the orange party. The underdogs, the yellow party, wins but doubt is thrown over the vote tallies. How can we trace everyone’s vote when voting is supposed to be a secret.

Answer:Trust! We all trust that corporations are keeping our data safe and secret. We all trust that the banks aren’t broadcasting our transactions to Mr & Mrs Busybody. We all trust that our ballot papers are counted and not ‘lost’, but throw in a computerised voting system and that distrust clouds our vision. We all see computers as great tools for business and personal use, but the majority of computer users don’t fully understand how that computer fetches our emails, access the word document or creates that pretty PowerPoint presentation. So how can Average Joe trust that a voting computer will accurately and securely tally his vote? We all have to believe the manufacturers specification of “There are many fail safes built in”. These fail safes may be backup storage that is rewritten every time a new vote is cast, transmission of individual votes so no storage takes place locally, uninteruptible power supplies. But what if all these failsafes fail. With paper ballots, we can see how many people turned out to vote, if a district ballot box is a few votes light then this can be traced to the electoral officer presiding in that district. Although the votes are secret, the numbers of voters arent. This principle can be applied to computer systems, but people will always have that worry that their name will be attached to their vote and if the vote for one of the publically despised parties, such as the BNP and their racists and hate filled policies, they could be criticised and fall subject to hatred. On a tangent, I fully support the campaigns to take down the BNP, however I also fully support a persons right to vote.

Scenario 3 – Bin Laden Stole my Vote

eTerrorism and malicious hackers may see the electronic voting system as a play ground to test their latest attacks and scripts. Nothing is 100% secure, as our British hacker, Gary McKinnon, proved when he infiltrated US government systems. So how can we trust that our vote will be transmitted and not tampered with. Remeber, attacks can also come from the inside. Whos to say a corrupt IT voting official wont change the results.

Answer: I havent got one. The way a voting system works is still a closely guarded secret. Are the votes held locally on the individual machines or are they transmitted each time someone votes? Who knows!

Electronic voting has many advantages, but, it has a fair few pitfalls too. Time will tell…hopefully.

How many Vegetarians are tired with boring dishes from the shops that taste like and closely resemble wall paper paste? I used to be vegetarian but I was tempted to the dark side however I still enjoy my mums homemade nut loaf! It tastes fantastic, has a fantastic texture and simply put… It’s not just for vegetarians!
I manage the website and the administrative side of my mums business, 24 Carrot Cuisine. We’re expanding our product range by offering hampers stuffed with home made delicacies and some of the finest speciality foods the UK has to offer. I would appreciate everyone who reads this (vegie or not) to comment or email me anything that you would like to see!
Thanks,
Adam