Saturday 23 November 2013

RANDOM WEEKEND WITTERINGS

It has to be once of St Vince’s great successes.

He sold off the Royal Mail at half what it was worth, after bankers lied to him about the value.

(Whoever would have thought that bankers would have lied when it came to money, Vince? Just like Daily Telegraph reporters. Can't trust anyone nowadays, can you?)

And now the postal regulator has told the company that it must improve services after missing key performance targets and warned that it could face fines.

RM (how can it still be called Royal Mail when it’s a private company? Should it not pay someone millions to come up with a name like, say Consignia?) has a target to deliver 93% of first class letters the next day, but in fact managed only an average of 91.7%.

In some areas (unspecified, but I wouldn’t mind betting that the Highlands and Islands will be amongst them) it was as low as 62%.

Isn’t it amazing that a private company (with all the efficiency advantages that that apparently brings) can be so pathetically bad at working to its targets. After all a first class stamp isn’t exactly cheap these days.

In response to Offcom’s report, the Royal Mail said it was "disappointed" that it hadn't met all of the service targets required.

Oh well, that makes it all right after all we're a tad "disappointed" too.

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If you live in the Dundee area and you are thinking of getting some dry cleaning done, take my advice and walk right past Aberdeen Valet Service in Broughty Ferry. Not only are they outrageously expensive, but the staff must be the most disinterested and impolite I have ever come across. Only my opinion of course.
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Camergold
Mind you, someone has given her dress lessons.
She's got rid of her granny's curtains

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I read that a Liberal aristocrat, Lord Purvis of Tweed no less,  has been given the job, by Nicky Clegg, of bringing the Labour and Tory parties together with his own, to have a common agreement on what to do when (they refuse to accept "if") there is a NO vote.
Lord Tweed of Purvis, or something else stupid and pompous

They are hoping that they can agree a raft of new powers for Scotland, not an unreasonable thing to do, given that Devo Max is what most Scots said was their preference, at least until Cameron ruled it out.

But I was just wondering why would we believe anything that they said. Quite apart from the British government having form on this kind of thing, the Liberal Democrats must be the most unreliable party ever when it comes to making promises.  Ask students in England, and what was that about electoral reform?

Oh yeah, nothing.

Then there is the matter that both Alistair Darling and Michael Forsyth raised way back when we were discussing the third option on the referendum... You can't offer any new powers to Scotland without the approval of the UK parliament. 

So what the Noble Purvis has been charged with doing is getting these people, all of whom are desperate for power and the money and self import that it brings, to agree that they will all have the same stuff in their manifesto. Yep, that's going to happen.

Of course that it won't happen is no great big deal to them. They are politicians after all. What they say today is footsteps in the sand tomorrow, forgotten like it was said 500 years ago. And it just seals the deal that a shape shifting Liberal is in charge of it.

But on the off chance that they manage to get it into their manifestos, who here thinks they will actually act on it. I mean seriously...


Pfffffffffffff, snigger.
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Dump the lot. Labour Party policy since 1900
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The Greenest Government ever in the history of the universe
 is going to dump all the Green Crap that Cameron believed in with all his heart,
(like he has one) and soul (or that) and... Oh, pass me a bucket.

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And one last thought

...and it is only a thought. Christmas is nearly upon us, and I suspect that some people anyway, are running around, credit card in hand, wondering what to get old Old Uncle Ned or Auntie Betty.

Now, I don't suppose any of you were going to buy me anything, but just incase you were... what I'd like more than anything else is a donation made to help people like this wee lad in the Philippines.
Really, I have everything I need (well, unless you were thinking of a Ferrari).

35 comments:

  1. Could you not put your dry cleaning on expenses tris ?
    I'll have to ask my butler where he takes my ermine robes to be cleaned. Costs a fortune.
    Will the Philippines get a share of our £12Bn overseas aid budget or is that money just for Indian space programmes and African leaders mercs and BMW's ?

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    Replies
    1. Ahhh, well you see, your lordship. You would be able to get it on expenses, as I suspect you get your butler is as well... but I'm not a belted earl, so nope, I had to fork out... but actually my mum gave me the money, so, I still will have enough for food.

      But yeh, I suggest there must be cheaper places to go. and you'd have to go a long way before you got such disagreeable staff... Tesco probably.

      The Uk doesn't give aid to people who need it Monty. As a memebr of the House of Aristocrats you know that well.

      It gives money to people who are likely to buy arms from the Uk. After all, it's England's only exportable manufactured commodity.

      Need has sod all to do with it.

      Keep up...what do you get that £300 + a day for?

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    2. Printing anti-windfarm leaflets! Just joking as he is worth every bawbee.

      Risk of a no vote.

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    3. I was wondering if he couldn't get my Ferrari on expenses CH...

      If that old Tory witch can get a house for her daughter in London, I should imagine a Ferrari would be a piece of cake.

      Yes, Labour needs to get its act together. Was it a disaster as Nuclear Ned says, and if so why would they want more of it?

      Delete
    4. tris...My £300 a day doesn't actually go very far . Once I've paid for my flights, hotel and a reasonable meal then there's barely enough left for a trip to the theatre ( and you try staying awake after a long day in the House ).

      cynical...my office will arrange any printing that I require.

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    5. Well, you don';t stay awake in the house. That's where you go to sleep. And of course if you took a little less liquid of a somnabulent nature with your luncheon, and perhaps didn't take 3 hours over that repast, you might find it a bit easier to stay awake.

      Not my place to question my blue blooded betters of course...

      :)

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    6. just do what most do, sign in or whatever recognition sytem they use and then bugger off. Luncheons at Westminster are quite good, well subsidised and the wine cellar in renowned.

      ~You really need to eat more in the Company Canteen.

      Delete
  2. You owe it to your fellow Dundonians to give more info on the dry cleaners!
    Mind you, folk in the Ferry like to believe they aren't Dundonians.

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    Replies
    1. Im not sure I want to air my dirty laundry in public Jutie...

      Well, OK.

      My mum gave me a pair of curtains she didn't want. They were clean, but pretty creased, so I thought that instead of ironing them I'd put them in the cleaners. I asked how much they would be, but they didn't know and made it very obvious it would be a BIG job to work it out, curtains being charged by the square cm.

      So rather stupidly I thought that it would be around a tenner... and left them to get on with it. When I went to collect them, it turned out that this relatively little pair of curtains cost £28 to clean. Yay.

      It serves me right for being too lazy to get an iron out.

      But they were rude and unwelcoming on both occasions.

      I seemed to be too much of a bother to them.

      So next time, I'll get someone to iron them for me.

      There you are... my dirty laundry!

      :)

      Delete
    2. It serves you right for being too fussy. I would just have put the curtains up for a while and hoped that the creases went away. :)

      But I do not blame you for being annoyed at having to pay £28; the curtains for my living room only cost me £20 when I bought them about 4 years ago, and they are custom made for someone who failed to collect them, so that I got a bargain, especially as they were exactly what I was looking for.

      Scaraben

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    3. I'm with Scaraben.
      Just hang them up. :-)
      Were they some kind of exotic silk and velvet creation?

      Delete
    4. Ha ha... Yeah, well I'm still waiting for the creases to fall out of the other pair I put up 8 years ago... although I gave up holding my breath some time ago.

      Jeez Jutie. This is Dundee. They were made of cloth... you know, material. I don't know what kind . Not plastic and Brownish in colour...

      Delete
  3. If Devolution is a Process then Powers should Flow Back as well as Forth

    Let us stop thinking about devolution as only being about powers leaving Westminster and going to Holyrood. Let's start thinking and accepting that powers can also flow back appropriately in order to strengthen our Union.

    One Nation Labour!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. cynicalHighlander, you should have included a warning with that link, "Reading this may damage your brain." It is a terrifying reminder of the way some unionists think. To pick just one bit of it:

      "For unionists, it is simply not good enough for Scotland to behave as if it only cares for itself. What kind of marriage can last which sees one spouse behave selfishly, with no regard for the other, or, in this case, others?"

      For decades, Scotland has subsidised the rest of the UK and been rewarded by accused of being a subsidy junkie, we have had policies forced on us that we are, collectively, opposed to, dragged into an illegal and expensive war, and so on. When we say we would like to manage our own affairs and our own finances, we are 'selfish' because we do not wish to continue being exploited for the benefit of London and the south of England. As for the analogy of a marriage, the second sentence in the quote is absolutely correct, but it is Scotland which has endured the selfish behaviour of Westminster. The article's author is like an abusive, exploitative husband moaning because his long-suffering wife is threatening to leave him to fend for himself.

      Scaraben

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    2. Yep... I agree with that.

      What? Why are you going? What did I do wrong?

      Jeezzzzzzz.

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    3. He is a freelance journalist but it reads like a BNP pamphlet.

      Delete
  4. hey tris...you should have googled the review for that dry cleaners...

    "Very poor customer service. Female counter assistant has a terrible attitude. Put a coat in and it was destroyed. Put a dress in and they returned it a day late completely ruined. Very unapologetic and unhelpful. Would never use again."

    https://plus.google.com/118068294153340216573/about?gl=uk&hl=en

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woops too late.

      I never use dry cleaners, and it never occurred to me to look them up. I think you can get dry cleaning done at a fraction of the price in the laundrette in Gray Street.

      Stupid me.

      I'll go look at the page, and maybe add something to it.

      Thanks for the info...

      Delete
    2. I've put up a comment on the site.

      Delete
    3. I read it...heck how does that place stay in business ? Posh folk fae the Ferry must like it I suppose

      Delete
    4. Probably they send the under parlour maid...

      Delete
  5. tris and the snp malcontents glee club

    I keeps reading this headline in the Unionist MMS

    ' Three nations held as slaves in London for 300+ years '

    Earlier, police said the nations had been "brainwashed" because of the fear instilled in them by their captors, and were held by "invisible handcuffs . they used cult-like techniques to brainwash their victims, it has been claimed.



    At the Angel Town estate Sara Habtemichael, 41, a mother-of-three, said: "It's so very sad what seems to have happened there.

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    Replies
    1. It is sad Niko. I've been in tears half the afternoon...

      And it's all you unionists' faults.

      You just don't care .

      Delete
    2. PS Glee Club, you cheeky git!

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  6. Dominic Grieve (thats the English Attorney General) thinks that forigners are all corrupt especially the brown ones from Pakistan where graft and nepotism are ripe. Of course good solid English stock would never think of cheating....how I had to laugh, don’t suppose he remembers all those MPs that had their fingers in the till or all those times when the Great British police have been taking back handers from the press, fitting people up, clubbing newspaper vendors over the head, shooting Brazilian electricians, conspiring to get rid of cabinet members. How about the fact that the top job in the land is given as a matter of birth not ability and the next person in line for that job is related to the current encumbant? Or that we have a special house of parliment for unelected placemen that is a watchword for stealing? Better Together?

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    Replies
    1. It does show just how completely detached from reality these people are.

      As you say, Dom (at least he, unlike so many from that area is not a "nondom"), Dom criticised foreigners for being corrupt, while he sits in a House of Corruption, right next door to another house of corruption with coronets on. The Met Police (and several other ones are as bent as nine bob notes, the press breaks the law in co-operation with the police, the royals are taking free rides on people's planes in return for invitations to royal weddings that exclude some prime ministers because of the party they led. Dom himself is part of a government that hand out billions in contracts to companies like Serco, G4S and Atos which regularly fiddle vast sums out of government for work not done, and a government which hands out seats in the house of Lords to anyone who gives them enough of their hard stolen cash.

      Bloody hell this little shit has a nerve.

      He said certain parts of Britian too. I wonder what he knows about Scotland as he is the ENGLISH attorney.

      He's all apologetic now, the nasty little racist creep.

      This is what he said...

      Mr Grieve said the corruption problem was growing because some communities are made up of those who "come from backgrounds where corruption is endemic."

      I suspect he really meant Eton and Winchester.

      Honestly they should try to keep off the free drink before they give interviews.

      Delete
    2. Actually, I just worked it out.

      The have demonised the unemployed and the disabled and sick, now they are starting on foreigners...

      Watch out... you're next.

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    3. Bugger, my son in law went to Winchester.

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    4. They are not all bad Snots. Although Grievous is a bad advert for them...

      Interesting to note that his mother was half French and he attended the Lycée français Charles de Gaulle in London.

      http://www.lyceefrancais.org.uk/

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    5. If you have enough money...

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  7. Replies
    1. That's a good editorial from a Labour supporting paper and should be read by everyone.

      Faint praise it may be, but given the source it certainly appears to show that the opinion of the press here is changing.

      And it's largely to do with the endless negativity of the Better Together campaign.

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  8. Still can't believe they ennobled Jeremy Purvis, he's a total no-mark. I suppose it typifies the entire 'upper' house though, its just been made a wee bit more pointless by his addition.

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    1. They enoble anyone these days. It used to be that the prime minister was made an Earl and maybe the FCS if he was good. Now they seem to send the under secretary at the Welsh office to the lords. There are nearly 800 of the buggers... all on £300 a day ...sheeeesh.

      Purvis... I'd never heard of him before this. I probably won't again.

      Delete