bilge —sook my stupid brain!

you couldnae make it up!

Sun, 29 May 2011 18:11:51 +0100

Spotted in the staffroom at work:

Containing everything you need to help and encourage any of your students having difficulties with their reading & writing.

Pity they dinnae “eat their own dogfood”, it would seem, for inside:

oh the irony!

fanatic fantastic

Sun, 29 May 2011 15:28:00 +0100

The great thing about the intarwebs is that, whatever the subject area, you’ll find it has a dedicated following. These guys are so fanatical about their VWs that they’ve set up a forum to discuss everything about VW.

T’would be a churlish man indeed who would point out that it’s spelt “volkswagen” and not “volkswagon” –especially when they’ve made that nice banner and registered the http://www.volkswagondeals.co.uk domain name and everything.

none of the above

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:06 +0100

It’s all very well having a sham referendum on whether or not to change the voting system. But, at the end of the day, the government will still win every time.

“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” —H. L. Mencken

evil bloodsuckers

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:16:00 +0000

i’m reading dracula again at the moment and this time i remembered to mark a quote i’ve been meaning to note down, every time i’ve read the book, previously.

first off, as given on several legal advice websites, a description of the rights of bailiffs:

The bailiff cannot enter your house by force, but they can legally enter your property through open windows or unlocked doors, so make sure all your doors and windows are locked or closed!

Once the bailiff has been inside your house by entering peacefully, they can call again at a later date and enter your house without your permission, forcefully, to remove your goods.

and now, from dracula, dr. van helsing explains the limitations on a vampire’s freedom to enter the premises of his victims:

He cannot go where he lists; he who is not of nature has yet to obey some of nature’s laws- why we know not. He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please

m’lud - i rest my case!

disqus-ted [not of tunbridge wells]

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:15:43 +0100

i did mention it in passing, in my post yesterday, but it really deserves a post of its own.

what an absolute steaming POS disqus is! - i’ve tried about half a dozen times now to migrate my comments from wordpress via blogger to tumblr, utilising disqus and its promise of making your comments acccessible from wherever you choose to lay your bloggin heid. i’ve spent literally hours, trying every possible combination of settings and ‘tools’ on the disqus site -all to no avail. the closest i got to success was that some of my comments briefly appeared on some of my posts but, it was a fleeting moment of success and they soon disappeared again.

the frustration of wrestling with this crap is not helped by the fact that disqus’s own fecking tools dinnae even work; their wordpress plugin bummed out with an error every time, after exporting a few comments - forcing me to manually import an XML file onto their hidden manual import page. their migration ‘wizard’ [migration fuckwitt more like!] disnae work either and, as i said before, comments appear and disappear seemingly at random.

at the moment, when i log into disqus i can see all of my comments listed twice, but even this surfeit of uninformed opinion is not enough to register on the blog. every post still has a stubborn ‘0 comments’ underneath.

well, i’m giving up now.

hopefully disqus will at least manage to do one thing right and manage my comments from now on, but it looks like the previous ones are lost in the blackhole that is the disqus API. so, apologies to anyone who’s taken the time to comment in the past.

at least i now know why they chose the name disqus - after two days of wrestling with this crap, i feel like throwing it as far away from me as i possibly can!

tumblrweeds

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0100

in another futile attemp to kick some life back into this moribund blog, i have just spent the best part of the day importing bilge -sook my stupid brain! blog from wordpress, self hosted on my server into tumblr.

what a bleedin’ palaver, an’ no mistake guvnor!

for a start, there is no direct import from WP to tumblr, so you have to first export your WP blog to XML, then convert that to a blogger XML script, then set up a blogger blog and import the posts to that, then export them all again from blogger to tumblr.

as if that wasnae palaver-ish enough, if you want to at least make a futile attempt to preserve the comments from your WP blog, you have to sign up with disqus, intergrate that into your WP blog and then export your comments to disqus from WP. this is probably the most frustrating part of the whole process as disqus has got to be without doubt one of the most useless web applications i’ve ever come across in my life!

none of the abovementioned shenanigans is is officially supported by wordpress, blogger or tumblr –thanks guys!– but, thanks to some helpful third party scripts, it’s all ‘sort of’ doable [eventually!]

the whole procedure is explained by julioangelortiz in his post here.

it covers the basic steps and -with the exception of the comments system- i got there in the end, but i found a lot of the procedures needed multiple attempts and various tweakages to get it all working. a lot of this was doubtless due to the fact that my WP was self-hosted and i wanted to use the same domain name, when i moved it across to tumblr, so i had to do a lot of find > replace on the XML files to fix what would have been broken image links.

well, we’re up and running again now. anything which is still broken is probably your fault.

now - will this change of scenery encourage me to kickstart the good ship bilge back into life again? that is the question.

fugly

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:18:55 +0100

yes, i know it looks like a bag of shite at the moment, but i just upgraded to WP3 and it broke my bilge-theme. o well, at least i’ve made the first tentative step towards reviving this moribund heap of anger, bile and drivel.

watch this space!

[but not with too great a sense of expectation]

fugly

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:18:55 +0100

watch this space!

[but not with too great a sense of expectation]

fugly

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:18:55 +0100

watch this space!

[but not with too great a sense of expectation]

oink!

Thu, 21 May 2009 09:30:00 +0100

some of you may have read the scurrilous reporting in the daily telegraph the other day, which claimed that, over the past several years, i have habitually been robbing banks and mugging old ladies.

i would like to state quite categorically that these incidents were merely administrative errors on my part and i intend to pay the money back in full. i would also like to express my disgust at the behaviour of the [former] speaker of the house of commons, who ~~allowed me to get away with it~~ overlooked this administrative error for so long.

i now consider the matter closed and earnestly trust that the police do too!

oink!

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:30:40 +0100

i now consider the matter closed and earnestly trust that the police do too!

oink!

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:30:40 +0100

i now consider the matter closed and earnestly trust that the police do too!

oink!

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:30:40 +0100

i now consider the matter closed and earnestly trust that the police do too!

blinkered

Sun, 17 May 2009 14:48:00 +0100

y’know what? - three times in the past week or two i’ve had some dumb bitch almost slide sideways into my van, as they’ve either pulled out of a parking spot or changed lanes [without indicating] as i’ve been driving alongside them.

on each occasion i’ve glanced down to see some moslem woman in the full darth vader outfit, driving along, blissfully unaware of my presence - obviously with no peripheral vision whatsoever, due to having her head wrapped in black cloth and peering at the road ahead through a small rectangular slot - this in spite of the fact i’m driving a van 6 metres long and 3 metres high.

i wonder how long it would be before i was pulled over by the pigs and charged with ‘driving without due care and attention’, if i got behind the wheel with a set of horse blinkers on, so i couldnae see what was at the side of me either? not long i reckon. but obviously it’s fine to similarly limit your ability to see the traffic around you - as long as god told you to do it.

still, i suppose we should be grateful that the allah disnae demand that women wear a blindfold when out in public!

oh - and before anyone accuses me of being racist - islam isn’t a race. so get fucked you politically correct cunts!

an ode to BT's customer service

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:59:00 +0100

yes the title is ironic!

with BT briefly in the news this week, because they’re having to lay several thousand people off because of “lower than expected profit forecasts”, it seems an ideal time for me to post about my latest fun with ‘britain’s most loathesome corporation’:

about fifteen months ago, i had to sign up for phone and broadband for BT, because i needed to have a new phoneline put in and BT still have a monopoly on this, even tho’ in theory the telecoms market is supposed to be ‘free’.

anyway, needless to say it wasnae too long before BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome coporation’ started to fuck with my mind on a regular basis.

for the first three months, they sent me red bills and disconnection letters for both my phonebill and my broadband bill - even tho’ i’d set up a direct debit on both accounts. so six times in the first three months i had to ring their bangalore call centre and explain to some semi-intelligible, non-english speaker on the other end that i had a direct debit set up on the account and shouldnae be getting red bills. each time i was assured that the problem was sorted and would never happen again. you can guess the rest.

then there was the download speed: my broadband was supposed to be 8MB, but i rarely got above four. now i’m aware that you never get the maximum rate, but i know for a fact that my local exchange supports up to 12MB, so i’d have expected to at least hit 5 or 6MB fairly consistently.

next came the mysterious ‘additional charges’ which started appearing on my bill every month; a quid or two here and a quid or two there. after reading the small print on my contract, it transpired that BT will charge you if you go over your monthly download limit and this was what the ‘additional charges’ were.

‘fair enough’ you might say, apart from one small detail; BT’s terms & conditions say that they will email you to advise you when you’re getting near your download limit for the month and then email you again when you hit your download limit, thus warning you to cut back on the ~~porn~~ er… ‘educational material’ downloads, before you start getting charged extra. needless to say i never got any emails from them at all - just extra charges on every bill.

on 5th march, i emailed BT support about this:

on my latest broadband bill there is a one-off charge of £5,04 for ‘option 1 - 10GB excess usage’. i would like this charge removed please. the fair usage policy states that:

“If you exceed your monthly usage allowance your service won’t stop working; you will be sent advisory emails to your BT primary email address if you reach 80% of your usage allowance each month and further notification if you then exceed your allowance in a particular month….”

before excess charges will be applied.

i have never been sent any emails warning me that i am approaching my usage limit, nor have i received notice that i have exceeded my allowance, yet these excess usage charges are being applied. therefore, as stated above i would like these charges removed from my current bill and would ask you to abide by your fair usage policy in future, by informing me by email when i am approaching my usage limit and again if i exceed it.

on 10th march i received the following reply:

Thank you for your e-mail dated 5th March 2009. It has been logged under the reference number 090305-008907.

I understand from your e-mail that you have been billed for excess usage on your Option 1 Package, though you have not received any warning e-mail about this earlier. I deeply apologise for the inconvenience.

I would like to inform you that we have a dedicated desk for this issue, The Fair Usage Policy desk. You may contact this team at 0800 707 6044 open 08.00-17.00 Monday-Friday.

I would like to inform you that any technical query BT’s Technical Helpdesk has to be preceded with customers being validated. As I was unable to pull up any information related to your account from our records I am unable to proceed with your query in the mail. Therefore, for any future queries or issues related to your broadband connection I would request you to provide the following details to help us you assist you further.
1. Your BT landline number on which the BT Broadband service is active.
2. Your primary BT e-mail address.
3. Your Account number.

followed by several paragraphs referring me to their fischer price “how to plug in your modem and turn it on” pages. oh. and actually i had already included my BT landline number, my BT email address and my account number in my original email.

so i emailed back on 11th march:

thank you for your response to my complaint. however, it has not addressed the complaint i made.

for a start, i don’t know how the person who responded to my email was unable to access my details, since i supplied my phone no., account no. and email address when submitting the original complaint via your contact form.

secondly, i chose from the options to complain about my bill as it was showing extra charges. i have been informed that i should have contacted another department [fair usage] about this and been given a phone no. to telephone them. why did your operative not pass my email to the appropriate department? how is the customer supposed to know which internal department deals with which kind of complaint? also, if the complaint is to be referred to another department then give me an email address to contact them. if i wanted to conduct this correspondence by phone i would not have used email to initiate it in the first place.

thirdly, i note that [at the end of the email you sent] the matter is marked as ‘resolved’. it most certainly is not resolved. being fobbed off with a cut’n’paste “it’s not my department. ask someone else” reply, is not resolving an issue. it is buck passing.

please address my complaint, pass this email to someone who can address it, or give me a contact email for someone who can.

the next day i received another reply:

Thank you for your e-mail dated 10/03/09 about charges on your bill for BT Broadband Usage, I am sorry for the delay in my reply and the poor level of service you have received.

I tried to contact you today on the telephone number you have provided sorry, I was unable to speak with you.

I understand that you have requested for your email to be passed to the relevant team I am sorry that I have no available alternative email address for the fair usage department.

You can call the number you have been provided in previous email or for further support and advice on BT Total Broadband Fair Usage Policy you can view details at the following link below,

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php?p_sid=&p_faqid=10495&cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=401&p_cv=2.401&p_cats=346,401

You will shortly receive a survey via email asking you how I dealt with your enquiry/complaint today. I would love to hear your feedback to help me improve my customer service skills further

and would appreciate if you could take a few minutes to complete the survey.

If you have any other questions please reply to my email and I will be happy to assist you.

on the face of it this seems reasonable but for fuck’s sake! - “I am sorry that I have no available alternative email address for the fair usage department” - this is something i’ve had from BT in the past and it makes me want to headbut the wall; you ring them up to complain about something and they fob you off onto some other ‘department’. then when you ask for a contact number or email for that department, they tell you they don’t know it.

so the biggest telecoms company in the UK disnae have an internal phonebook? - are these people for real?!

OK. by this stage i was fed up to my back teeth [or should that be buck-teeth?] of pissing around with BT and their interminable incompetence backed up by their couldnae-care-less customer service. so i decided to look around for another broadband supplier. unfortunately most of them seem as bad as each other. the telecoms/broadband industry seems to attract more than its fair share of shyster corporations. however, in amongst the reams of bad reviews i read on various customer forum websites, O2 seemed to get a slightly less bad press than the rest and [coincidentally enough] my sis works for them, so - a couple of weeks later - i got in touch with her and asked her to give me the unbiased verdict on their broadband.

she then tells me that she can get me a ‘friends & family’ discount, which will allow me to get O2’s top package for the price of their cheapest one. [thanks sis! - you couldnae have told me that six or seven years ago, could you? - and saved me paying through the nose for crappy broadband all this time].

oh well, better late than never!

so i was faced with a tough choice; continue paying BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome corporation’ £18 a month [plus miscellaneous random additional charges] for 8MB broadband, which in reality is little better than 4MB… or move to O2 and pay £7,50 a month for 20MB [theoretically] broadband, with unlimited downloads and 500 free web-based text messages thrown in. hmmm… a tricky decision…?

i told my sis to put the wheels in motion and, at the beginning of april, i emailed BT again, asking for my MAC code. by law they have to send you your MAC code within 5 days, but needless to say i got no reply. so i emailed again on 6 april, reminding them of their legal obligations and asking for my MAC code again. this time, i did get a reply. sent 14th april. it included my MAC code and also the following:

Thank you for your e-mail.

I am sorry to hear that you wish to leave BT broadband however we must advise you that your broadband package is still under contract until the 09/11/09 and as such if you were to leave at this stage you would be charged for the remainder of this contract period plus a £45 early cancellation charge.

You may also be charged for your vision subscription as this is also in contract.

“weird?” - i thought handsomely. “i’m sure my 12 months contract with BT ran out ages ago.”

so i checked through my old emails. i find it always pays to keep written evidence when dealing with the less-scrupulous organisations which seem to cross my path with annoying frequency these days!

sure enough, i find the following, dated 11th february 2008. ie. 14 months ago:

Thank you for your BT Total Broadband order.

We are currently processing your order and within 48 hours will send a further email confirming your activation date.

You have ordered the following:

Option 1 - £12.99 for first 3 mths - 12 mth contract. £17.99 per mth thereafter.

the same day, i fired off another email to fuckwitt central, attaching a PDF copy of the contract email:

hi.

i think if you check again, you will find that my broadband package is no longer under contract. your minimum contract period now may be 18 months for new sign-ups. however, when i signed up for my broadband package, the minimum contract was 12 months. i still have the confirmation email from when i signed up in feb 2008, confirming that my contract is for 12 months. please see attachment.

thanks

silence. lack of reply. no answer. zilch. zero - in other words BT customer service performing as normal.

anyway, i’ve got my MAC code now, so i send it off to O2 and get set up wi them. no need to go into detail about that - the star of this story is BT, but the reader on tenterhooks can relax in the knowledge that i’m now cruising along at around 10MB on O2 broadband.

fast forward to 11th may and i receive my final broadband bill from BT. see if you can guess what it’s going to show before you click on the thumbnail to view the full-size image:

sigh! - back onto the oul’ computer again. i emailed BT on 12th may:

re bill: F017 90.

this bill includes a cancellation charge of £113,44, supposedly for “stopping a BT service within a minimum time period”.

i have already contacted BT before this bill was issued and sent a copy of my original contract which showed it expired on 11th feb 2009. therefore i will not be paying this spurious cancellation charge.

i have cancelled the direct debit on this account and will not be making any further payments, as i consider the account clear. in actual fact, with the cancellation charge removed, that leaves BT owing me 34 pence. however, having heard your latest dire profit forecast on the radio this morning, i have decided not to pursue this sum. keep the 34 pence and put it towards buying a dictionary wherein you can look up the meaning of the words “customer” and “service”.

two days later, on 14th may, i received BT’s reply:

I am sorry to know that you are unhappy with the cancelation charges. However, let me clarify this to you.

I can see that there is a one off charges of £113.44 on your bill. These are the cancellation charges to stop the Broadband services before the contract period end date.

You were under a contract for Broadband for 18 months and you had cancelled it on 29/04/09. Whenever you sign up with BT for any services, calling plan or for Broadband, there would be an automated verbal contract for 12 to 18 months and if you cancel the contract before the minimum term expired, you will be charged for the early termination charges.

I am sorry to say but these are the standard charges which needs to be maintained. I would kindly request you to make the payment of the final bill as soon as possible.

I hope I have been able to clarify and if I can help with anything else, please reply to me via e-mail and I will be happy to assist.

Thank you for contacting BT.

by now i’m beginning to think i’m a character in a kafka play, but i drag myself out of my padded cell for long enough to type another email to BT:

hello.

[for the second time - please read the attachment before sending
cut’n’paste reply this time!].

my contract for broadband was for 12 months - *not* 18 months.
attachment is the original email from BT, confirming my broadband
order details and is dated 11th feb 2008. therefore the contract
expired in feb 2009.

thanks

this morning [17th may] i receive the latest response from BT:

Thank you for your e-mail dated 15/05/09 regarding the cancellation charges.

I am sorry that you are unhappy about the cancellation charges in your bill.

I have checked your account and can confirm that I have sent a request to the offline department to refund the cancellation charges from your account. You will receive an amended bill once the refund is done.

Just to make you aware, if you want to learn about our latest offers and promotions please click:

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayPnSHub.do?common_selectedPrimaryNavIndex=2

Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

halle-fuckin-leujah! - mind you, i shouldnae celebrate too soon. what’s the betting that i still get a red bill and threats of court action for not paying the £113?

and did you notice the bit about clicking the link to learn about their ‘latest offers and promotions’? a couple of days ago they also sent me a glossy leaflet, offering me a discount of £1,50 a month on my broadband rental - after i’d already cancelled my account because they’d refused to remove miscellaneous extra charges of less than £1,50 that they’d been adding to my bill in the first place.

tell me. it’s not just me is it? - they really are fucking insane!

blinkered

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:48:49 +0100

on each occasion i’ve glanced down to see some moslem woman in the full darth vader outfit, driving along, blissfully unaware of my presence - obviously with no peripheral vision whatsoever, due to having her head wrapped in black cloth and peering at the road ahead through a small rectangular slot - this in spite of the fact i’m driving a van 6 metres long and 3 metres high.

i wonder how long it would be before i was pulled over by the pigs and charged with ‘driving without due care and attention’, if i got behind the wheel with a set of horse blinkers on, so i couldnae see what was at the side of me either? not long i reckon. but obviously it’s fine to similarly limit your ability to see the traffic around you - as long as god told you to do it.

still, i suppose we should be grateful that the allah disnae demand that women wear a blindfold when out in public!

oh - and before anyone accuses me of being racist - islam isn’t a race. so get fucked you politically correct cunts!

blinkered

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:48:49 +0100

still, i suppose we should be grateful that the allah disnae demand that women wear a blindfold when out in public!

oh - and before anyone accuses me of being racist - islam isn’t a race. so get fucked you politically correct cunts!

blinkered

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:48:49 +0100

still, i suppose we should be grateful that the allah disnae demand that women wear a blindfold when out in public!

oh - and before anyone accuses me of being racist - islam isn’t a race. so get fucked you politically correct cunts!

an ode to BT's customer service

Sun, 17 May 2009 12:59:44 +0100

yes the title is ironic!

anyway, needless to say it wasnae too long before BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome coporation’ started to fuck with my mind on a regular basis.

‘fair enough’ you might say, apart from one small detail; BT’s terms

an ode to BT's customer service

Sun, 17 May 2009 12:59:44 +0100

yes the title is ironic!

anyway, needless to say it wasnae too long before BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome coporation’ started to fuck with my mind on a regular basis.

‘fair enough’ you might say, apart from one small detail; BT’s terms