Tuesday, April 05, 2005
General Election
Milliband out in front for election!
Prime Minister Tony Blair has been to visit the Queen today to seek the dissolution of Parliament, thus commencing the countdown to a general election on May 5th. His close friend and advisor David Milliband, MP for South Shields, and Cabinet Office Minister of State, was first out of the traps in the race. His first election leaflet landed on our doormats before the announcement of a general election was heard this morning.
I find that absolutely astounding! He obviously had the Prime minister's confidence to arrange delivery with the Post Office a few days ago.
The Liberal Democrat candidate Stephen Psallidas, in a letter to the Shields Gazette, wrote defending his party's record in Newcastle, where they have announced the lowest increase in Council Tax in Tyne and Wear, a whopping 1.7%. It's such a shame that his Lib Dem colleagues in South Tyneside could not have campaigned for a similar type of rise here, instead they went to bed with New Labour and won us a trifling 4.9% increase. With such political harlots as supporters, Mr. Psallidas may find the going a little awkward at times.
The BBC has join the blogosphere with an election blog "The Election Monitor", I shall be monitoring it to find how far to the left Aunty leans!
"The Election Monitor" - click here
Keele University has already set up a site that will provide you with just about any type of information that you requie about the election, parties, polls, past results, newspaper comments etc.
"British Government and Politics on the internet" - click here
The site will be invaluable for students studying for A level (or whatever it's equivalent is these days)
So the gloves are off, the phoney election is over, and we hope that postal ballots won't become an issue after the findings of wholesale electoral fraud in Birmingham. Local Government Minister Nick Raynford vowed to step up safeguards against the sort of fraud carried out in Birmingham, which the judge described as something "which would disgrace a banana republic."
Read more - click here
Bullying Bookworms
On a different note, I have been unfortunate enough to suffer a long running dispute with World Books and it's subsidiaries in Swindon. My complaint originated in December of last year when I emailed eTSP to complain about them continually sending books that I had not ordered, and continually having to arrange for them to be collected by couriers, and pay the carriage costs! They replied to my email five weeks later!! By then they claimed to have despatched a book about learning Excell spreadsheets (as if I needed it.) I emailed again to tell them it had not arrived, and wasn't wanted anyhow, they replied three weeks later telling me it would be collected.
By now you should have the picture of this complaint - to cut a long story short, I have written six letters of complaint to them, asking to close my three accounts, they wrote back just once, two weeks ago, demanding payment for the book that I do not have or want. I write again to assert that I do not have the book, I receive another letter yesterday demanding payment again plus another £5 for late payment and a threat to call in debt collectors!
My patience had now been tried to it's limit, so I decided to visit the Trading Standards Office at South Shields Town Hall, and, may I say, that the service I received from one of their officers was excellent. She telephoned the call centre in India, and showed me a trick about touch tone phones that I wasn't aware of (if you want to talk to a human being, don't press any buttons at all, the phone system will assume that you don't have touch tone dialling and will divert you to an agent) she was quite firm with the agent, and now I await the arrival of "non delivery form" which ought to sort the whole matter out.
If only these big companies could make it that easy for the ordinary customer!
A big thank you to the Trading Standards Officer!
_________________________________________________________________
Prime Minister Tony Blair has been to visit the Queen today to seek the dissolution of Parliament, thus commencing the countdown to a general election on May 5th. His close friend and advisor David Milliband, MP for South Shields, and Cabinet Office Minister of State, was first out of the traps in the race. His first election leaflet landed on our doormats before the announcement of a general election was heard this morning.
I find that absolutely astounding! He obviously had the Prime minister's confidence to arrange delivery with the Post Office a few days ago.
The Liberal Democrat candidate Stephen Psallidas, in a letter to the Shields Gazette, wrote defending his party's record in Newcastle, where they have announced the lowest increase in Council Tax in Tyne and Wear, a whopping 1.7%. It's such a shame that his Lib Dem colleagues in South Tyneside could not have campaigned for a similar type of rise here, instead they went to bed with New Labour and won us a trifling 4.9% increase. With such political harlots as supporters, Mr. Psallidas may find the going a little awkward at times.
The BBC has join the blogosphere with an election blog "The Election Monitor", I shall be monitoring it to find how far to the left Aunty leans!
"The Election Monitor" - click here
Keele University has already set up a site that will provide you with just about any type of information that you requie about the election, parties, polls, past results, newspaper comments etc.
"British Government and Politics on the internet" - click here
The site will be invaluable for students studying for A level (or whatever it's equivalent is these days)
So the gloves are off, the phoney election is over, and we hope that postal ballots won't become an issue after the findings of wholesale electoral fraud in Birmingham. Local Government Minister Nick Raynford vowed to step up safeguards against the sort of fraud carried out in Birmingham, which the judge described as something "which would disgrace a banana republic."
Read more - click here
Bullying Bookworms
On a different note, I have been unfortunate enough to suffer a long running dispute with World Books and it's subsidiaries in Swindon. My complaint originated in December of last year when I emailed eTSP to complain about them continually sending books that I had not ordered, and continually having to arrange for them to be collected by couriers, and pay the carriage costs! They replied to my email five weeks later!! By then they claimed to have despatched a book about learning Excell spreadsheets (as if I needed it.) I emailed again to tell them it had not arrived, and wasn't wanted anyhow, they replied three weeks later telling me it would be collected.
By now you should have the picture of this complaint - to cut a long story short, I have written six letters of complaint to them, asking to close my three accounts, they wrote back just once, two weeks ago, demanding payment for the book that I do not have or want. I write again to assert that I do not have the book, I receive another letter yesterday demanding payment again plus another £5 for late payment and a threat to call in debt collectors!
My patience had now been tried to it's limit, so I decided to visit the Trading Standards Office at South Shields Town Hall, and, may I say, that the service I received from one of their officers was excellent. She telephoned the call centre in India, and showed me a trick about touch tone phones that I wasn't aware of (if you want to talk to a human being, don't press any buttons at all, the phone system will assume that you don't have touch tone dialling and will divert you to an agent) she was quite firm with the agent, and now I await the arrival of "non delivery form" which ought to sort the whole matter out.
If only these big companies could make it that easy for the ordinary customer!
A big thank you to the Trading Standards Officer!
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Curly Born in 1956
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