Bits and Pieces

Following our move, real life has dominated my time somewhat and I am preparing to return to the UK tomorrow for ten days to work before taking a month off, hence the light blogging of late.

Sometimes I wonder at the world; not only has BT’s serial incompetence persisted in that they issued me with “my first bill – and thankyou for choosing BT” but they had not disconnected the “new” account as requested. When calling them, I was advised that I had signed up for a year’s contract. No, I explained, I had not. The “new” contract was a piss-poor attempt to overcome the inconvenience caused by their initial incompetence. I’ll be damned if I am paying this bill. I have written to complain in true Victor Meldrew fashion and I’ll take it to the ombudsman if I have to. Thinking of Victor Meldrew, the older I get, the more like him I become…

I’ve got my Internet connection up and running. For those in France without Haut Débit, Vivéole might just be the solution. I’m paying just under €40 for a 1Mb connection. Although this sounds slow, it is on par with the so-called 10Mb connection I had in the UK and for a similar price. Given the struggle I had with dialup, it’s wickedly quick, so I’m satisfied. If I want to spend another €30 per month then I can upgrade to a 2Mb connection. I’ll see how it goes.

Some of the news stories have passed me by and I have therefore not commented. I’ll leave that to others. Comments left on this blog caused me to engage once more with Neil Harding. I had stopped attempting to engage there due to a degree of intransigence that was too frustrating to bother with. Indeed, a recent post displays a degree of irrational ranting that makes some of my more anger driven tirades positively lucid:

It is YOU who have made the Labour party rightwing, it is YOU who cannot claim innocence over Iraq, or the Thatcherite greed of the few that has run us into recession and eroded our public services and made the poor pay more tax than the rich. And ultimately it will be YOU that inflicts on the liberal majority yet another Tory government that is morally bankrupt (aided and abetted by a undemocratic electoral system).

Neil likes to claim that he is not tribal because he has criticised some Labour policy and doesn’t like Gordon Brown. True enough, but come the crunch, he will place his cross next to the rose and pay his subscription come renewal time.

Politicians behave the way they do because they can get away with it; it is not our fault that they are such nasty, corrupt venal parasites, it is theirs and theirs alone. Those of us who belonged to the party and realised that it no longer represented our ideals had a choice; try to change it or walk. Frankly any attempt to change it from within was doomed to failure, the executive will do as they damned well please. Walking and denying them both my vote and my subscription fee was the only honest and decent thing to do. So, no, it is not my fault that they are such utter, utter bastards.