Tax Man

2 rants today... well it is Christmas day

I got a letter from the Revenue yesterday reminding me that I had not yet done my tax return, OK that's fine, I have not done it yet no worries about that.

What was a worry though is that all of a sudden, my middle name was wrong, in fact, they had my surname as my middle name !, so I was Michael Prytherch Prytherch. I have been been doing tax returns for what seems like most of my life for some unknown reason (which must be the subject of another rant at some time), and they have never got my name wrong, well how can they, its all tied into the National Insurance number etc.

So why has my name been changed, with all the shit about the government departments losing CD's etc, this to me is just yet another indication of there total and utter incompetence, and it worries me.

Whilst on the subject of sending CD's, why the hell are they still sending out stuff by CD, they must surely have high speed connections between them these days to transfer files !

Rip-Off taxies

At 6:35pm on Christmas Eve after a few drinks I caught a taxi from the main Taxi Rank in Harrogate, its only 1 1/2 miles to my house (no comments about how lazy I was... I was pissed) and I wanted to get home quickly to put my daughter to bed.

To my utter shock I was told it was double time, and to even step foot in the taxi cost me £5.40, of course I was 300 yards down the road when the taxi driver told me this, I of course complained like hell but still took my ride home, which cost me £9.20 to do 1 1/2 miles, as the taxi driver said, he doesn't make the fair, the local council do, not that he would be complaining about earning more money, after checking the council web site, the Christmas Tariff comes into force at 6:00pm Christmas Eve and runs until 6:00am on the 27th December.

What annoys me about this is that Christmas Eve is NOT a public holiday, everybody works on Christmas Eve, OK so I got a few sneaky hours off to have a beer or twenty with the boss, but I was still working, also I was not getting paid anymore than normal, so why should the bloody taxi drivers ?

Rip Off Laws and Airlines Taxes

I had to cancel a flight a few weeks ago, I had booked the flight with Jet2, through talking with some people I discovered that although I cannot reclaim the Air Fair I should be able to reclaim the Taxes, as it turns out the airline do not pay the taxes if you do not fly, as the taxes were £41.95 I thought it was worth a go, so I did some research and also called Jet2.

Firstly the law is an arse, even though these are taxes, there is no law which forces the airline to pay back the taxes, now how can that be, I know that things like VAT have to be paid back, why is the law different for airline taxes ? this law needs changing now.

Secondly Jet2 charge... and wait for it £40 Administration fee to refund the tax, which basically means nobody will bother, or so they think. How can they justify charging so much, its a total joke, from what I have seen the only fair airline is Virgin who don't change.

It should be law that the tax is refunded less a "reasonable" administration fee which should be the same for all airlines, and this refund should be automatic.

I am now waiting for my £1.95 to be refunded to my credit card after a formal request to Jet2.

BBC Sports Personality

I watched the show last Sunday and I must admit to be utterly disgusted by people voting for losers, now I understand that its called "BBC Sports Personality" but lets face it, its not about that, its about winners who we like.

I could not believe that the England Rugby team won the team award when they have won jack shit in recent times and came away from the world cup exactly the same as everybody else (apart from South Africa).... with nothing. Instead the British Track Cycling team who are the best in the world, a sport we topped the medal table at the World Championships, gets nothing, how can that be, a team of losers win against a team of winners.

I was ready to rant about another loser, Hamilton winning the overall award, but thankfully, the British Public (as apposed to the so called Experts who voted for the Team Award) voted for a Winner and WELL DONE JOE, after 10 years of being at the top you deserve it.

Its about time we took a leaf out of the Austrians and brought back pride in winning and stopped saying well done to losers.

Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2008

Now I bought this game for my PS3 hoping it would be the best yet, but boy oh boy is it totally rubbish, I am so disappointed, its the most unrealistic golf game I have played, my main areas of criticism are:-

• Putting is too easy and also the putting stroke it not realistic, you always get a full swing even in 5cm putts
• If you drive onto another fairway you are always out of bounds, real golf is not like that
• Drive into a hazard it at always drops the ball next to the hazard, in real golf (yellow staked markers) you can drop the ball as far back as you like
• You put draw and fade onto the ball before you strike it... that's not real golf
• If you hook or slice the ball, even just a little bit it takes 20% off your distance, again not realistic

Overall performing a drive or hitting a fairway iron is too hard, putting is too easy, its a horrible golf game, don't buy it, well... buy my copy off eBay.

Samsung U600 Mobile Phone

Its been a while since I have ranted, its something I need to put right, so here is the first of many posts.

I have had this mobile phone for a while now and there are some features which are driving me mad, how anybody could design a phone with these features is beyond me.

1. It has a stupid touch sensitive Start and End buttons which you are forever hitting by mistake, what's wrong with normal buttons you press
2. When you set the alarm it defaults to the current time.... who the hell would want to set and alarm for NOW !!!, why can't it just remember the last time I set the alarm
3. If you make an appointment and you forget to set the alarm you cannot edit the appointment and put an alarm on, deleting and reentry is the only way
4. When you set an alarm on an appointment it puts the Alarm set symbol on the phone, therefore if the appointment if 2 months away I have the alarm set icon permanently on, which means I cannot tell if I have set a real wake me up alarm.
5. If you have more than one number on a contact you cannot set a default number to call
6. Text messaging is a nightmare, the End button is actually the Back button when entering text and the button labeled Back (one of the horrible touch sensitive buttons) is the End button which cancels the entry, and also if you hit End by mistake is asks you if you want to save it to drafts or exit, there is no way to cancel the End
7. When the battery is running out it plays a stupid tune every minute, just to make sure the battery run out even quicker
8. It has no Ring Ring as an incoming call alert, I am old, I don't want a stupid piece of music
9. When navigating around the phone it plays a stupid noise, the only way to stop the stupid noise is to turn off all sounds apart from incoming music

I could go on, the people who designed and wrote the software need shooting, the phone itself is lovely (apart from those annoying touch sensitive buttons), its just a shame the software designers were not as good as the hardware people.