School Traffic

I went out early this morning and thought how lovely it was with so little traffic on the roads. I think we all know that during school holidays rush hour traffic is now where near as bad as when kids are in school. I believe there are 2 main reasons for this 1. parents taking time off work and 2. kids are not being driven all across the town, and this is the part that really annoys me.

Children should be forced to go to the nearest school to where they live, we should not allow kids to go to another other school, if a parent wants their child to go to a "better" school then move house, let me point out that I have 1 child and 1 on the way (god help me !), my kids will go to the nearest school, I do not have double standards here. The government are really backwards on this, they say choice is good, but cars are bad, do they realise how much traffic is created by allowing kids to go all the way across town, driven in Harrogate (like Chelsea) in big 4x4's, this situation is stupid, do they understand how much congestion and pollution is created by these useless trips.

Kids should automatically have a place in the nearest school and should be forced to use it, make this so and stop all the nonsense trips now.

BT

Today I had the misfortune of my BT Landline failing, well sort of failing, I could make outgoing calls but could not received incoming calls, if it were the other way around I would not of bothered calling BT as this would of saved me a fortune in calls the wife makes, but as is typical, BT got it to fail the wrong way around.

So this mornings task was to call BT to tell them about my fault. The first mistake was using my faulty telephone to call them (remember I could make outgoing calls), I got through to the automated testing line, it was all very good, it said it was going to test my line and off it went, then something surprising happened, it recognised that I was in fact using the faulty phone and said I would need to hang-up and it would call me back, but of course it couldn't call me back because I could not accept incoming calls, I guess it was kind of daft to call the fault line on my faulty phone.

I had no choice but to hang-up, spend 10 minutes going through all the options again before finally arriving in the queue, which I was informed was 45 minutes, but offered me the choice of a call back, luckily it asked me for the telephone number on which to call me back. 45 minutes later I got a call, I was impressed.

This is where the fun started, I said I could not receive incoming calls, so he rang my number and guess what ? it worked !!!, this guy then informed me that he actually tried the number before calling my mobile and it didn't work, so he tried again and it failed. He then decided it was an intermittent fault so ran a line test, this came back with a fault, but the fault was internal in my house which means it was my telephone which BT are not responsible for. So I asked if there was a way to test this out, I suggested that I remove my telephone and he could run the tests again. We did this and the test still said it was a fault within my house, now, I have no cables plugged into any BT socket and yet, BT are still insisting it is my fault, I asked the guy, how could that be ?, he didn't know but informed me that there would be a charge for somebody to come out and fix my line for me, even though we have proven its not my equipment, all because some stupid test system claims the fault lines in my house.

I suggested to him that they will come and fix it for free otherwise I will be using NIL within a couple of days, I am waiting for a call back from BT with their answer, lets hope they don't try to call me back on my landline !

Buildings and Builders Part 2

An update on my building work, firstly its on-time, so these people on the TV who are always late must be idiots because I have found managing the time easy, of course if everything was going well though there wouldn't be anything to rant about.

There are 2 main areas of building work, the first one is time and as I have said this is fine, the second on is budget, this is not great. Now admittedly, some of the additions have been done to me adding extra work onto the build or changing the plans, but I have one additional piece of advise where it comes to cost:-

Wait until the builder has given you his revised total before telling him:-

a) He did not get that second skip so that money should be knocked off
b) The velox window is smaller than specified so that should mean some off the bill
c) He took 1 day off to sort some other stuff out, therefore that should come off the bill

Basically, only start knocking things off once he gives you the final bill, because what I have discovered is they simply nod their heads and say "OK Yes I Agree", then they make-up twice the work and give you an even bigger bill than when you started because you have annoyed them.

Be warned and learn from Ranting Mike.

Slow Drivers

Now OK I am fairly fast driver but I am not a maniac and I very courteous to other road users, but today I had my fill of people driving at 35-40 mph on A roads. It was dry and sunny, visibility was excellent, a perfect driving day really, but time and time again I came up behind idiots doing 40 mph.

There should be a minimum speed limit and people should be tested to ensure that they can drive at that speed, I heard one fellow once say that it is his choice to drive slowly if he wants, well that is total bollocks and incredibly selfish to all other road users.

The fact is simple, if you don't feel you cant drive at 60 mph use public transport as you are not fit to be on the road.

Weather Men

It was only a matter of time before the weather came into a Rant, brilliant summer... my arse, 4 weeks of great weather and a totally shit August does not make a summer in my book.

Yesterday I woke up and checked thee weather forecast, the weather man said showers in the Harrogate area, showers !!!! I would not like to see it if they said heavy rain, it pissed down from 8am to 2pm, so much so that the road outside my house was flooded, it stopped for 2 hours and then proceeded to throw it down again for another 4 hours.

Come on guys, you are paid loads, you have access to millions of pounds of satellites and computers and you still can't get it even remotely right, if I was to screw up in my job as much as you do I would be sacked, if your excuse is the weather is too unpredictable then just stop giving us a forecast, a wrong one is no use to us, go and become a postman instead, that's another job you keep even though you are shit.

Beer

Now being a full bodied (aka Fat) bloke, the last thing in the world I should be ranting about is beer, but I feel time has come to put an end to it.

Over the years I have been drunk, very drunk and like most people I have been so pissed I can't even stand up or remember what has happened, but with the advent of modern technology, there is nowhere to hide from the terrors of alcohol and it seems that while you try your best to avoid those embarrassing moments, modern technology seems to get you and reminds you forever of the stupid things you have done while being pissed as with Patrick & John .... oh dear.

Rhyl Cycling Club

Now I am a keen cyclist, most of you will know that 4 members of the Rhyl cycling club were killed a few months ago, it came out later that the driver of the car that lost control had defective tires.

Last week this arsehole came in front of magistrates, these fuckwitts decided to ban this twat for 6 months and fine him £180, this man killed 4 people. Now of course when he got into his car that day he had no intension of killing anybody, but that does not bring these poor people back.

The magistrate stated that the defective tires had no contributing factor to the accident, what a complete pile of shit, how come hundreds of car passed that spot without crashing, of course it contributed to the crash, how the hell could it not, that’s why we have laws to ensure tyres are legal, these fuckwitt magistrates have made a mockery of the law, they should be sacked instantly, I have utter disbelief in this decision, its just yet another fuckwitt decision by magistrates and judges in this stupid country, people get payouts of thousands in personal injury for being fuckwitts, but when a real crime is committed they bottle the verdict, complete wankers.

Buildings and Builders

Its been a while since my last rant, I've been having a loft conversion and all those hours of watching TV programmes like Property Ladder are coming back. Usually story, over time and over budget, but even I was surprised to hear, within 15 minutes of starting, that the new stairs won't fit !!!. Instead of boring you will all the horror stories, I thought I would change tact, instead of ranting, I will give some advice... lets call it things I have learnt about buildings and builders (1 week into the loft conversation).

• Never make decisions about things when you are offsite, wait until you are there before giving the go ahead
• When the build says everything will conform to building regulations, don't believe him and get building regulations in and ask them
• Don't believe word the builder says, use the internet to research what he is saying, they will says what is easiest for them
• Write down every decision made
• Builders are not your friends, even though they try to make out they are
• The work will be over budget and over time
• Expect every phase of the build work to have problems
• Never agree extra work or changes without agreeing the extra cost first
• Ring around yourself for extra materials, don't assume the builder will get them cheaper (they normally add on a handling charge !)
• When the roofer starts, expect him to condemn the roof and try to sell you a complete rebuild
• Apologise to your neighbours before the work starts

Hopefully my 1 meter by 1 meter loft space will be complete close to the original date and won't cost more than the house was to build.