29/06/2009 by paul.

It is no good, I cannot ignore the MP expenses issue any longer.
Every year, we get invited to the local Tory party garden party (sort of do). It is a good do…loads of wine, good food and good company (if you ignore the obvious political messages).  We are not political and only go for the food and wine, and the tickets are not that expensive.
We have just received this year’s invitation…..but…our local MP (who attends the do and makes a little speech) is one of those who has claimed to the maximum and has loads of other jobs (about 10).  So, on balance, I feel that I cannot attend. I just cannot let anyone, even think that I can support such an MP (regardless of whether I do or not….in fact, I think that I am now a floating voter ).
So, this guy has doubly pi##ed me off.  Not only is he up there with the rest of them, taking the pi## out of us all (and they still have not got the message…or don’t want to), but he is stopping me from enjoying a decent evening out…      

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07/08/2008 by paul.

Visited Mum the other day and my visit happened to coincided with meal time
The hospital trolly dolly delivered a tray with a pre-packaged meal, plus knife, fork and ’soup’ spoon, neatly wrapped in a knapkin.  With due consideration to Mum’s condition, the meal was a pre-mashed selection of meat and 3 veg. 
The tray containing the meal was left on the table in front of Mum. Now I know, that the nurse who looks after Mum (and she is a very attentive young lady…the nurse, that is) would have come along soon to feed Mum, but I thought that I would give it a go, and help Mum have her meal.
The food was pre-mashed, so it was clear which was the veg. (orange for carrots, green for …greens etc.), so goodness why they thought she needed a fork and knife.  Mum can hardly feed herself and the knife was certainly not needed, to say nothing of the fork, which wouldhave been downright dangerous. And, why I wondered, was a Soup spoon supplied. Mum’s mouth is not wide enough for the use of a Soup spoon, a tea spoon would have been more appropriate. 
Having had an attempt at feeding the mash with a soup spoon, we tried the pudding (fruit Yoghurt)…..with the Soup spoon.   Now, I don’t know about most people, but when I get a yoghurt out of the fridge, my preffered method of delivery of yoghurt to the mouth, is definately not a Soup spoon.  You do not have to be a rocket scientist to notice that a Soup spoon does not easily fit into a yoghurt pot.
Aaaaagh!
So how about this for a proposal………..I recall that when Elizabeth first started working for Waitrose, she had to spend time working at various stores, in a variety of roles, getting to understand some of the core “realities” of the business.
Ok, all you health administrators, it is now part of your training, and compulsurory for you to spend 2 days in a hospital bed. You will be bed bound and restricted in movement. You will suffer the indignaties of toilet and food training.
I will bet, upon completion of the training programme, you will put some changes in place          

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05/06/2008 by paul.

Mum has been banking with the same bank (highstreet bank beginning with the letter ‘B’) for all her life. So we recently decided to move her to an internet bank, since the new bank offers a level of interest on current accounts, that is well in excess of 10 times that offered by Bank ‘B’ to their loyal customers.
Having opened the new account and moved all her direct debits and pension payments to her new bank, she wrote to bank ‘B’, asking them to close her account and move the balances to her new bank.  Of course bank ‘B’ subscribes to the “code of banking”, so we anticipated that all would happen smoothly and quickly…..Hmmmmm!
Bank ‘B’ wrote back, informing Mum that they could not comply with her request, due to the fact that they were unable to verify her signature on her instructions. And, asking her to visit her local branch.  Of course, in her current state, she can hardly walk a few yards and no way can visit her local branch of ‘B’.
So she wrote herself a cheque for many thousands of pounds, drawn on bank ‘B’ and paid it into her new bank. The cheque went straight through without any problem. So, bank ‘B’, how come you cannot verify the signature on her letter asking you to close the account, but seem able to pay cheques (in fact many of them), without the slightest problem.  Do you operate some sort of  “selective” signature verifcation proceedure ? 
Well OK then, you can keep the account, if that makes you happy, but there will be nothing in it……Bankers ! (or should be spelt with a ‘W’ )  

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29/04/2008 by paul.

I was a bit upset at the beginning of the year, when I paid £1.11 for a litre of diesel, but now I have just paid £1.20 and just heard that the price is expected to rise to £1.50, by the end of the year.    Aaaaaagh!
I am sure that an economist could correct me, but I an equally sure that i recall, many years ago, being told that the cost of fuel was rising due to the (then) strong $. OK, so now the $ is weak, why is it not offsetting the other fuel inflation factors…..Those factors being - excessive tax (thank you Gordon), excessive profits - “BP and Shell profits jump”, and industrial action by a bunch of workers that wish to retain a type of pension scheme that most of us lost many years ago. All further aggrevated by the Chineese discovering the motor car and our cousins in the New World, continuing to enjoy the use of low cost fuel in some very inefficient motor cars.
I did recently read that fuel consumption on motorways can be reduced significantly, by keeping to the 70mph limit. Since most of my driving is on the motorway network, I have tried to save fueld by setting the cruise control to just under 70. I have to say that it is quite effective and I have certainly noticed a difference in my fuel consumption….but…most lorries seem to travel at speeds between 60 and 70, whilst most cars travel at sppeds in excess of 80. This means that driving at 70 is a real pain. You slowly catch up on the lorries, but get stuck because of all the cars that are wizzing past at 80+. It may well be more fuel efficient, but it is certainly a lot more dangerous   

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13/03/2008 by paul.

I have just seen that London has been declared the dirtiest city in Europe. I am not surprised, since everytime I go there, my heart sinks at the state of the place and the litter lying around.  Equally, I don’t know if it is the time of year or just me getting a bit more cranky, but there seems to be a lot more litter lying around everywhere. With a bit of luck, as the leaves grow on the country roadside bushes, all the poly bags and coke bottles will disappear…. to re-appear in the autumn.
There is an importer of food stuffs, just up the road from the office, and many lorries park up whilst waiting to gain access to the unloading bays. It is not unusual to see a load of plastic bags, neatly tied up and left by the roadside, after the lorres have departed.  So the truckers go to the trouble of putting all their bottles and fast food containers into a plastic bag, then tie it up and leave it by the side of the road. What on earth do they think is going to happen ? Is the litter fairy going to come along overnight and clear up ?  What is the problem with keeping the bag in the cab and putting it in the litter bin at the first motorway services they stop at ?
Equally worrying is the amount of lager and cider cans that seem to lie around on the roundabout that is at the entrance to the estate. I just cannot get into my head, an understanding of the mentallity of the dumbo,s that just sling all their litter out of the car/lorry window.
I thought I had a great idea…. then I noticed that Clarkson had beaten me to it, in last week’s Sunday Times. 
Instead of some of the looney, politically correct ideas proposed by some of the the current batch of govenment ministers, why can’t they propose something usefull (and earn their liberal expense regime) by making all suppliers of fast foods, responsible for the disposal of all their branded packaging. The suppliers would winge and lobby, but if the government held firm, then most of the excess packaging would soon disapear.     
Mind you, perhaps there is help on the horizon…in the unlikey shape of the ‘church of Rome’. I also read that the church has decided that there are now a few more “modern” …”mortal sins”…which include polution and damage to the environment.
Interesting to note that they have also added “excessive wealth” to the list….Oooops!, bet the cardinal who added that one will get a bit of a ‘career talk’  and be told to quitely drop that one off the list

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14/02/2008 by paul.

It is not that I am getting cranky…but, I did read an article recently, concerning workers in one of the 3rd. world countries (I think it may have been S. Africa….who would probably claim not to be 3rd. world…but any country that has leaders that think HIV can be cured through eating celery, or something like that….must be 3rd world) who are employed to pick / sort / pack grapes for supermarkets. The workers normally wear gloves to protect themselves from the pesticides that are sprayed on the grapes. However, workers are required to supply their own gloves, so many do not, since they cannot afford the cost of the gloves. As a result, they suffer from a variety of rather nasty skin complaints.
Now I know that on the packaging of the bunches of grapes in the supermarket, it advises you to wash the grapes, but how may of us actually do ?
If I buy grapes in the supermarket, I usually eat a load between the checkout and the car and then they are stored in the fridge, to be used for snacking purposes, and very rarely get washed. So, I have started to wonder ….if the pesticides on the grapes attack the hands of the workers (and the article had some rather graphic pictures to illustrate the point), what on earth is the pesticide doing to my insides…………Bugger !   another food product that I have to stop buying    

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11/02/2008 by paul.

Been having some serious thoughts about Organic.  Now and again, I buy organic veg. in the supermarket…. if it is going cheap ….. but do not really make a habit of it…but with the exception of tomatoes. A few years ago we visited the south eastern coast of Spain, as part of our search for a suitable holiday home. As the plane descended over the Sierra Nevada and into Almeria airport, the view out of the window was impressive, to say the least. The sun was reflecting of a mass of lakes and the whole area looked very picturesque…..until just before touch down, when we realised that the lakes were, in fact, massive areas of polythene. In reality, closer inspection revealed virtually that every bit of level ground (excluding runway) was covered with cities of polythene. The ground itself, seemed stony and dry, but inside the polythene cities, vast plantations of vegetables existed, with an emphasis on tomatoes. I subsequently understood that the tomatoes existed on a cocktail of fertiliser and pesticide. In addition, very few local Spaniards worked within the polythene cities and that the main source of labour wasNorth Africa…after all, goodness knows what effect prolonged exposure to the enhanced atmosphere in the cities might have and the locals were no fools.

With immediate effect, I resolved to move to organic tomatoes. A bit naive really, since it is clear that most other vegetables in the supermarket also come from Spain and no doubt, are being “grown” under similar conditions. So I really should be moving to organic for all of my vegetables.  My real problem is….that I don’t trust anybody, especially government advisory bodies.  History clearly demonstrates that today’s wisdom is tomorrow’s ridicule……

I read the other week, in the Sunday Times, a review of a book about the history of food additives. I meant to buy the book, but have now lost that copy of the Sunday Times and cannot remember the name of the book. Probably just as well, really.  But, whilst following some links in Wikipedia, the other day, I can across an entry on “Smartfresh” a “brand of synthetic produce quality enhancer based upon 1-methylcyclopropene” (what ever that is). Amongst other things, it is used as a gas to prolong storage life of fruit and is “perfectly safe”. Hmmm! like smoking was, not that many years ago, or the miracle development of hydrogenated vegetable oil,  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat ]   used for a similar purpose.       

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09/01/2008 by paul.

Many years ago, mum & dad had their mortgage with a certain building society….for the sake of arguement, lets call it the Halifax.  When the mortgage was paid off, the account was left open in order that the halifax could provide storage for the deeds. This service was free of charge. The halifax also provided the house, buildings insurance policy and automatically renewed it every year. Every year, even after the mortgage was paid off, the halifax automatically added the cost of the insurance policy to the mortgage account. This meant that the mortgage account immediately acquired a debt, onto which the halifax applied an interest charge. This in turn, meant that the total payment for the simple insurance policy increased from a position of “uncompetitiveness” to even greater “uncompetitiveness”. 
Last year, upon discovey of this, Mary visited the local branch of the b/society to
(1) pay off the accumulated debt and
(2) instructed the b/society to cease with this proceedure. 
That was early last year, so a few months ago, aware that the policy was due for renewal at the end of the year and that most financial institution’s track record for remembering instructions given to one of their branches, was not particularly good, I wrote on behalf of mum, confirming that they should “on no account” add the insurance premium to the mortgage account.   But, to send a new quote and if they were competitive, mum would send a cheque to cover the premium  (the letter was signed by mum). 
Guess what ? early Dec. the halifax  wrote to say that they could not comply with mum’s instructions and it was their policy to continue to automatically debit the mortgage account. They further added that, if mum wished otherwise, she should contact them to instruct as such   ????!!!!####
What the bl##dy hell did they [Ms Gemma Sharpe, Customer Service representative] think the original letter was for in the first place ?  
I felt the urge to contact their help desk and ask why such an obvious, “job experience” girl was allowed to answer correspondence from clients, but have long realised that, if you get shirty with help desks, you get nowhere. So I rang them and although they agreed that mum’s letter was clearly an instrution to change their method of charging for the insurance, they further wished mum to ring them direct.  Luckily martin was visiting mum at the time and he rang them, with mum present, and cancelled the policy.  
Paddy, has since renewed the policy, online with another company, at a fraction of the halifax price

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08/01/2008 by paul.

Am currently working my way through a load of old papers that are in mum’s correpondence folders. Amongst them are a number of copies of old wills, together with letters and accounts from the respective administrators of those wills (mainly solicitors).
Grandad mathews and great aunt mathews, being a couple of them. One in particular (Miss T. Mathews) makes interesting reading.
Total assets =£489.87, left in equal shares amongst 5 beneficiaries. The final account received fom the solicitors shows the following - 
Solicitors costs for administration of the will - £270.75
Balance, divided by number of beneficiaries = £123.75
Sum for each beneficiary = £24.75
So, the solicitor received £270.75  from the will and the beneficiaries received £24.75  each.
Hmmm ! There is a clear lesson here. If the will is a simple one (and I guess that most are), appoint a couple of the beneficiaries as administrators and keep well away from the professionals.

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