Chip, Pin & Cheque

I can't believe its been a few days since my last rant, life must be getting easier or I'm getting lazy.

Anyway, I was out shopping again today, and like most people I pay by credit card and these days Chip & Pin is used. Now I think this is great, its quick and simple, but yet again they somehow manage to screw up the implementation. Lets look at how simple this is, the cashier says £100 please, you flash the card and slip it into a little machine that's in front of you and enter the pin, simple eh, well no, why ?

Because somebody has decided when designing this system to make it impossible to actually put the card in at the correct time, there seems to be a millisecond when you have to put the card into the machine, too early your screwed and have to start again, too late your screwed and have to start again, why can't it just use the bloody card that's in there, all this timing issue really pisses me off.

Lastly, cheques, well the hell do people still use cheques, for Christ sake, you have to have a Switch (or whatever its called these days) to use a cheque, so just use the damn card, you get a receipt and its quicker and doesn't piss-off everybody in the queue behind you, shops should ban cheques, they are no longer needed in today's world.

Smoking

I guess I should really start by saying I am not a smoker, but most of my friends are and my view is simple, if I want to go out and see my friends I have to put up with them smoking.... now that's out of the way, the real rant.

I was driving home today at around school closing time, I spotted 6 young lads, around 13-14 I would say walking home (they had school uniforms on which shows they are under 16), all smoking, and of course trying to look "James Dean" in their "hey look at how big I am" type of way, and this got me thinking.

Will my daughter smoke ? (I hope not), but also, how easy is it for kids to get access to fags, and this brought me onto this, why the hell is the legal age to smoke only 16, this is utterly stupid, I couldn't even spell my own name at that age (too pissed all the time), but as smoking is so bad for you, shouldn't we be making it harder to young people to smoke, lets make it really hard, change the law so you have to be 21 to smoke, and while we are at it, change the drinking age to 21 as well (now I am over 21 I can say that), we bang on all the time about the effects of smoking, changing the minimum age will help I am sure.

Buying Beer

I was having a beer last night with a friend who had just come back from Hong Kong, as we got more and more drunk, we started talking about the differences in drinking establishments, one thing became clear, Briton seems to be the only country where we still have to fetch our own drinks, what I mean of course is we have to get up out of our seats, walk to an over crowded bar, push your way in (because there are always people who stand at the bar which is annoying!), try to grab the attention of some dim wit to serve you, shout your order at them, wait while its poured, pay for it and then carry it back to your table.

Anybody who has gone outside of the UK will of experienced the wonderful thing that is called a waiter, where you sit at your table and somebody brings your drink to you, so how come this so called civilised country we live in is so backward, I want waiter service. Going back to idiots who stand at the bar, would they also stand in front of the checkout at a supermarket, no I think not, so bloody well more your arse away from the bar and at least make the terrible journey of buying drinks that bit easier until at least waiter service makes it way to the backward country,

Home Buyers Report

OK I said to myself that I would limit my rants to one a day, I guess 12:40am counts as the next day, but I am sure by the end of today I will need to rant about something else... so why create rules that you know are going to be broken.

Anyway, this rant and I am sure more to come is about stupid government decisions. I read tonight that they are thinking about canning the planned Home buyers Survey, why ?, because it will not contain enough information about important things such as a Survey. it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if the new report doesn't contain all the information that buyers currently demand today then the current process is still going to be followed, but the seller has an extra burden of this stupid report, so what's the point of having this new report.

What's wrong with the government, the idea of the Home Buyers Report is actually rather good, but like everything, the way they want to do it is all wrong, just like ID cards... but that we will leave for another day.

My suggestion is this, when they want to implement something sensible, don't get stupid politicians and under/over ministers and civil servants to figure out what needs to be done, just get Mr Average off the street to sort it out.

Renault Roof Racks

I purchased a Scenic for the wife last year, nice car, does the job of carting the kid around and no earache for me... sound.

Now I am a keen cyclist (a very fat one, but still keen), so off I went to Halfords to find a Roof mounted cycle carrier that would fit on the Renault supplied roof rack, well after trying 4 different brands, none of which will fitted the Renault roof rack, the poor guy shaking his head, he went off for some assistance. Upon returning I was informed that the Renault roof rack is massively oversized and that I will struggle to find anything that will fit them apart from Renault carriers. Now how much are the Renault carriers compare to the off the shelf, double the cost.....

Royal Mail

What a complete bunch of charlatans, the news about the latest price changes (sorry increases) based upon letter weight and size, how confusing is that going to be. I got a parcel delivered this morning, very nice postman, he said to me, "good job you are in", I said "yes, I hate going down to the sorting office to pick up a missed delivery", he then told me that things have just got worse, the sorting office is now only open to 12:30pm instead of 6:00pm, to "save money", hang on, what about servicing your clients, most people who miss deliveries work during the day, that's why they are missed... this leaves us no other option than to get up early and head for the sorting office along with everybody else who has to work for a living.... what a nightmare.

I've left the best rant till last though, about 2 months ago I sent out a package recorded delivery, and it went missing, OK, some things are going to go missing, that's a fact of life, so I asked what I needed to do to get compensation, I was told to go to the post office, get a claim form and fill it in. I did this, took the form back to the post office and handed over the form. Guess what.... they have only gone and lost my form as well, when I asked what can I do now, the answer.... nothing.... as I don't have a proof of postage (attached to the form) and the original receipt for the item that was lost (attached to the form), I can't claim. Call me a cynic, but isn't that just brilliant, easy money for Royal Mail, just loose all the claim forms.

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Rant Update - Royal Mail have just got back in touch with me, they have apologised and said they will give me my full refund, I should have the cheque within a few days.... result.

Sainsbury's

Let me start by saying I actually like Sainsbury's, the self scan is brilliant, but this is not about complementing Sainsbury's, it about ranting about some of the stupid things they do, lets start with my visit last week.

Like most busy weekends, the car park was packed, but hold on, I found a space, in I drove to find a bloody big tree in my way, which meant the arse of my car was sticking out, waiting for some unsuspecting mother, too busy checking on her baby to notice my car sticking out, an accident waiting to happen. What possesses people to stick a tree in the ground in the middle of a car park, all it does is stop me from parking properly, it looks shit, its a maintenance issue and no doubt adds 1 pence to the price of milk.

As normal in summer, it was raining (we will leave the weather for another rant), so I took my 2 year old daughter out of the car and ran to pick up a trolley. Now, there were about 300 trolleys, 200 under cover nice and dry, but these where the little silly ones that only hold a bag of sugar, the one I needed, the one with a seat to park my daughter where not under cover, no these trolleys, the ones with seats in, where left out getting soaked, brilliant I thought, lets sit my daughter in a pool of water and watch her catch a cold. So in I went to find the duty manager to have a rant, when I pinned him against the wall and asked why these were left out in the pouring rain, he said that there was not enough covering for all the trolleys, OK I understand that, but why do they put the trolleys that little people sit in out in the rain and cover up the ones people don't sit in, he refused to answer, but this is the point he made his biggest mistake. He said, Sainsbury's are aware of this situation, that is why we have a towel dispensing machine to dry off the trolleys, oh dear, hook, line and sinker. I kindly requested that he came outside and attempted to dry my trolley, which to be fair to the man he did, anyway, 30 minutes later he was still trying, why, because the towels they provide have the absorption of a piece of glass, all they do is push the water around, totally useless for drying... he agreed and said he would do something about it... like I believe that.

On a final note... and back to the car park, why do they put up bloody big signs at the exits on the car park isles, meaning you can't see if anything is coming, causing a slow edging out process hoping that you don't meet the mother checking her baby coming the other way.