Oo-er, I might have a few days to myself next week, if so i’ll be getting to grips with the C&H website as this is far too long over due - apologies Nic
Vodafone are rip-off robbers!!!
Way back in April, I posted about my search for a new mobile phone. Well it appears not only was I not offered the right phone (even by my request) that was available, but as time has gone on my vendor (Vodacrone) has been made all too aware of my unhappiness.
Now, to be completely fair I like the systems employed by this once great company - but their sales people are nothing more than cut-throat sharks!!!
I listed that I wanted a robust phone with qwerty keyboard, quadband, and wifi. I told them I would like something like a Blackberry. I was told that I could not have one as these were for business tariffs only. They sent me a Nokia E65 which is one hell of a clever phone, there is nothing this thing cannot connect to. I was away for the two weeks after it arrived so fell foul of the ‘14 day returns policy’.
So why don’t I like this phone - well it’s crap because it dials numbers and connects to the internet all by itself!! This is a ’slide’ phone, if you lock the keypad and place it in you inside jacket pocket you would thing it would be safe - NO WAY, if that slide moves just one millimeter it unlocks the keyboard! - and then you end up connecting to the internet, ringing friends in Australia and all manner of stupidity…
So I complained about it - they told me to buy a case for it. In fact every time ‘they’ have phoned me and ask if everything is alright - I tell them the phone is not alright and is not working in the manner it was expected to.
Last week I get a call from Vodacrone and they tell me what a wonderful customer I am, they say they’re giving me a second line with hundreds of free minutes and that for nime months they’ll only charge me £10 a month for it. On top of this I will get unlimited internet and a new fone.
The new phone was a Blackberry Curve and didn’t do what they said it would do - no wifi!!! The software is slow and frankly crap - though the video is pretty darn good.
However, I looked into their tariffs and realised I had been fooled yet again!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today I spent over an hour trying to get through to these people. I told them I wishd to return the Blackberry and talk about my primary tariff - I then went on to complain about my phone.
This is the outcome;
Extra line canceled and Blackberry to be collected.
I can upgrade my tariff, but I have to keep the same Bag of SH*T phone. But the lady did tell me something VERY VERY interesting… I could of had the phone I wanted in the first place all along… I was and I still am livid!!
It turns out that they claim I can only upgrade this phone 72 days before the end of the co
ntract, but they’re happy to take more money off me far a) selling me a product not fit for purpose b) being mislead and lied to by a sales person and just to add insult to injury c) the lady noticed that the deal on the second line for 9 months at £10 has been then reset to 3 months!!!!
Not a surprise that they rip us off and do dodgy stuff when they sponsor the most expensive Formula 1 team in the world!!
I told her they could have this crap phone back and I would place the sim card in a old cheap phone - she told me that I should ring their customer service as there is a possibility (at a cost) that under these circumstances that my phone can be changed.
BOLLOCKS: Vodafone was better when Ian Heath worked for them! (and that’s saying something)
Ahoy Me Hearties
It would appear the Royal Navy has actually done something right for once… a change from being Lily-livered when in waters close to Iran
From the BBC
The Royal Navy has repelled a pirate attack on a Danish cargo ship off the coast of Yemen, shooting dead two men believed to be Somali pirates.
The Minist
ry of Defence (MoD) confirmed the incident took place on Tuesday, when HMS Cumberland crew members tried to board a traditional wooden dhow.
The Yemeni-flagged vessel was identified as having been involved in an earlier attack on the Danish ship
An MoD spokesman said the pirates were shot in self-defence.
After initial attempts to stop the dhow failed, the Royal Navy launched sea boats to encircle the vessel.
The British seamen were fired on and shot back before the dhow was boarded and its crew surrendered.
Third death
An MoD Spokesman said: “Two foreign nationals, believed to be Somali pirates, were shot and killed in self-defence.
“A Yemeni national was also found injured and later died, despite receiving emergency treatment from the ship’s doctor.
“It is unclear whether his injuries were as a result of the fire-fight or a previous incident involving the pirates.”
A post-shooting investigation is being carried out, the spokesman added.
Details of the incident emerged when Russian navy spokesman Igor Dygalo revealed the frigate Neustrashimy (Fearless), from its Baltic Sea Fleet, had also tried to rescue the Danish vessel MV Powerful.
 HMS Cumberland is taking part in Nato anti-piracy operations
|
He said the two warships repelled the attempted raid after the pirates fired weapons at the Danish ship and twice tried to board it.
HMS Cumberland, a Plymouth-based Type 22 frigate, is currently deployed on a piracy-fighting mission in the Gulf of Aden as part of a Nato taskforce.
There has been a rise in attacks on merchant shipping and aid shipments in the area.
The boarding took place 60 nautical miles south of the Yemeni coast, inside the Maritime Security Patrol Area.
The MoD said the boarding operation was conducted “in accordance with UK Rules of Engagement”.
Pirates have been causing havoc in one of the world’s busiest shipping areas, making the waters off the Horn of Africa some of the world’s most dangerous.
The pirates prey on one of the world’s key shipping routes, which leads to the Suez Canal, the transit point for up to a third of the world’s oil.
Rocket grenades
Pirates have hijacked more than 30 ships so far this year, twice as many as last year, with the ransoms paid to them by governments or ship-owners far higher than in previous years.
The pirates are equipped with speedboats and armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
They have taken millions of dollars in ransoms and their actions have led to a hike in insurance costs for shipping and threatened humanitarian supplies.
A Turkish-flagged tanker with a 14-man crew became the latest victim of the pirates when it was hijacked off Yemen on Wednesday, according to the Anatolia news agency.
Last month, a maritime watchdog said that Somali pirates were responsible for nearly a third of all reported attacks on ships.
11 - 11 - 11
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent over the fields of Europe in 1918.
This was the moment the Armistice came into being, having been signed by all sides only hours before.
The meaning of the word Armistice is ‘cease-fire’. It did not mean surrender or triumph and while it was called the war to end all wars, it was the reason for the second world war.
Each generation that passes forgets the true horror of war, we feel as individuals and nations that under certain circumstances it is alright to wage such operations – until the cost has becomes too great to bear. This was the exact reason for the Armistice – the countries simply ran out of men and money to fight.
It’s so easy to pour scorn on modern conflicts and for the most part it is important to maintain an army, but the oldest book of warfare ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tsu is the most coherent guide
to such activities and is largely ignored. As such we, as a global people, will continue to suffer the, pain, anguish, thirst and hatred for war. The aftermath of which is so often the hardest part – and so greatly forgotten about.
In the Commonwealth we symbolize the massive loss of life and whom those, for our freedom they paid the greatest price with the enduring flower that grew relentlessly in the fields of Flanders - the Poppy.
It is at this time of year when we start wearing them to remember not just WW1 & 2 but all those conflicts before and since. Certainly since the end of WW2 more than 60,000 British servicemen and women have died in operations around the world, this obviously does not even start to cover the numbers of other nations.
If people ever travel to Fr**nce or Belgium you will find over 980 cemetery’s of war dead from WW1. These silent towns and cities of men can range from and few hundred to many tens of thousands and a visit to trenches will leave you in tears. But it is worth the visit.
Please, try to ‘feel’ today - and remember that at 11 am, we stop everything.
Now this is hilarious - Monks brawl in Jerusalem
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Fun
Some fun from satirical news site NEWS BISCUiT
A number of Satellite Navigation systems have been recalled after the voices giving directions have become over-familiar and prone to racist and sexist opinions. The GPS devices are only supposed to give spoken directions to drivers but have been coming increasingly confident over the past few months, and now manufacturers have received a number of complaints about inappropriate and offensive comments.
‘I just wanted taking to South London,’ said one London commuter, Jennifer Thompson. ‘Turn left down Brixton Road…’ it said, before adding, ’This used to be a lovely area…’ Other comments have included ‘Turn right onto Blackfriars Bridge. Though we’re probably not allowed to call it that anymore…’ and ‘Turn left onto Church Lane or ‘Mosque Lane’ soon, I shouldn’t wonder the way things are going…’
‘I tried ignoring it…’ said Ms Thompson, ‘but as we went past the Caribbean Law Centre, the Sat Nav began to sigh and tut and then this whole racist tirade came out. ‘And how come we have to have them reading the news? I mean it’s our news, ain’t it, and why don’t you never see no white runners in Team GB – cos it’s us that’s being discriminated against that’s why…’
Women drivers in particular have also complained of some Sat Navs patronizing them or just laughing at their choice of lane or driving speed. ‘At the next exit, turn left, luv. If we ever bleedin’ get there,’ and ‘You have reached your destination, dear. Though the person you are visiting has probably died of old age.’
The devices in question are being collected at designated stores and will be reprogrammed in Germany. ‘I tell you what I don’t mind yer Germans so much…’ said one of the machines. ‘I mean, if you look at it, a lot of what Adolf Hitler actually said made a lot of sense…’
Yer know when….
My sleep pattern is fried, completely fried. I’m so shattered that I’m in a daze - yet I can not sleep. I don’t start work until 4am tomorrow morning and I have so much to do, but can’t because I need full concentration. I want and need to finish the stuff for the C&H website and when I tried to finish the photo I’ve working on and hour ago - I totally screwed it up. At least I didn’t destroy my previous work on it.
You know when you’ve been playing music on your headphones too loud and you get th
at partial deafness - I just did that with my guitar and amp in my livingroom. Considering I live next door to a Police station it’s a wonder why I haven’t been arrested - really!.
Did I mention I love my Marshall
This made me laugh
I’m not sure why I found this funny at all, maybe it was just the simplicity of the ending
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A night from Hell and hours pushed to the last minute
Last night (18:00) I was told to take a milk tanker to a dairy in Devon, then after unloading and washing it, pick up another tank (this time of cream) and take it to Westbury. straightforward huh?
NOPE.
Firstly the dashboard on the (less than one year old) MAN lit up like rock concert light show, however while these remain amber, they’re ok. As I pulled through the gate onto the road they all turned red. A few more yards and ‘STOP’ in big letters were coming up on the instrumentation displays (followed closely by audible warnings) and loads of fault codes started appearing.
These days most modern trucks are effectively ‘Fly-by-Wire’ and not much like the ones on Top Gear the other night. So these warnings are a little like the things in get in aircraft - albeit they don’t scream ‘Ground, Ground’ at you or mention the word ‘Eject’ in a loud panicking manner. Needless to say I stopped and walked across to the the garage where two fitters came across and spent half an hour comparing fault codes to their meanings in this little book. With each new code that came up it was oddly like watching someone bleed to death and they seemed to simply get more and more pale with every listed problem.
Finally, in their magnitude of skill, training and wisdom they turned to me and suggested that I might want to park this unit up and get another one as in their view the faults were so serious they didn’t even want to drive it back in to the yard!!! (cheers guys).
After what seemed like half the night, we found a truck that wasn’t booked to go out (not bad considering how many trucks this company owns - hundreds!). Saddled up in another MAN TGA I finally set off 2 hours late.
Now, I needed to drive up the A377 running out of Exeter as this is the only good road to the Dairy. However, as I approached this small roundabout to take a left turn onto the A377 - the road was closed and a diversion was in place. I followed the diversion and realised very quickly that this was taking me off into deepest darkest Devon and roads I didn’t know. I rang the office and explained (as best I could) where I was and was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to turn around before the end of the next village.
Apparently there is this thing called ‘Bickley Hill’ and I would not be able to get to the top of it weighing the full 44 tons that I was. This I thought was a shame, you see I like a challenge and the one single thing that amazes me about the MAN (other than the incredible low end torque) is it’s traction control. There are no diff-locks on these things, but when you press the Traction Control button - strange things start to happen, like the lifting of various wheels, the movement of suspension in order to maximise the weight over the drive wheels. In all other respects the MAN TGA is not nice, it has a lot of electrical faults and the interior is just tacky. Here is a video of one being ice tested
I managed to turn around in the pitch blackness so if anyone waking up this morning wonders what the hell happened to their front garden or why their cars are now parked nextdoor - I wouldn’t know anything about it, but could recommend a trip to the your local home improvement store for the purchase of some outside lighting.
So back to Exeter, on to the M5, then on to the A30 and come off at Winkleigh (near where Jennifer Saunders apparently lives), head to North Tawton and turn right to head back to the dairy from the other direction.
Now driving from the A30 to North Tawton is ok in a truck, hair raising, but ok. However, you can not drive back that way with a fully laden truck because of yet another hill - one I have been stuck on before in a DAF 95. The other thing to note here is that Milk Tankers often don’t have any baffles in them (unlike the 8 they put in a fuel tanker), so the liquid moves around freely and makes the whole thing really quite dangerous sometimes. It’s the reason that tankers leave so much room infront of themselves while crawling along in traffic on the M4 and M25 - not to give idiots room to nip in and slam their breaks on - the gap is their so we don’t kill the occupants of the car in front!!! Because while we have the brakes full on, 28000 ltrs of milk will literally push the vehicle forward several feet.
So, I had to bring a tank of butter cream back!! I rang in and we came to the conclusion I would have to drive back in the opposite direction to Oakehampton via North Tawton and Jacobstowe to join the A30 then head back to Exeter on the M5 before hitting the A303 traveling east.
Finally at 03:40 in the morning I arrived at Westbury where I was told that it would take at least two and a half hours to off load, then they need to add 600 ltrs of water to help flush the pipes down.
Now at this point I’m looking at my watch and thinking in terms of the driving hours regulations. The 
maximum duty time is 15 1/2 hours and by the time I would be tipped, I’d be having 2.5 hours remaining to get back. Well that was what I thought… at 06:30 we put the 600 lts of water in and it didn’t come back out! So we messed around for a while then I removed the hose pipe from the tank and tried flushing it trough with high pressure water - thus covering myself from head to foot in Butter Cream!! The water didn’t want to come out of the other end of the pipe, so we set about trying to flush the hose from both ends until eventually a rugby ball sized lump of cheese shot out. I’m not kidding here, I have a strong constitution for things - but this thing was so gross, I could have puked.
I then had the race of my life literally against all the driving regulations, road regs and the clock. I hit our yard at 15 hrs 29 mins and got a bollocking for driving too quickly into the yard - go figure..
I did however sleep well.
Did you see Top Gear last night?
Well I assume it was last night as I watched it on iPlayer - I couldn’t stop laughing!!!
The team decided to have a go at some mild Trucking, I say mild because they didn’t have
any weight on, they didn’t have to load or unload a truck, they didn’t try a half loaded tanker or tipping in a given spot, OR the one true skill of a Truck driver - reversing!!!
But that didn’t take anything from what they did do. Considering the challenge (buy a truck for £5000 and do it up) of coupling up and driving forwards they entertained the life out of me!!
Clarkson manged to ‘toast’ his truck, May trashed his own Grand Piano and the Hamster lost his load completely. And to finish off they had to drive through a fi
xed obstacle. In Clarkson’s case this was a 12 foot high wall - this is after he required medical attention for getting his gearstick to rape him in the butt after some serious cornering!!!.
I would love to see them get trained up properly and get challenged to take a secure load across Europe.
If you didn’t see it, it’s available to watch on the BBC iPayer or to download from HERE
I would recommend one little thing to the TG team - BUY HANS DEVICES !!!!! as well as the use of neck braces.
Flight to the US for a massive £8!!!!
Nope, I not joking - Irish budget airline Ryanair are announcing the prices tomorrow (mo
nday). However, their Business Class prices are set to become some of the most expensive.
So how is Ryanair going to do this? Well they’re going to take advantage by acquiring aircraft from other ailing airlines… Also (and here is the catch) all taxes etc WILL NOT be included in the price, and this goes for any and all refreshments etc.
