Gas bills, Electricity bills etc., are a nightmare to understand. Lils' bills just mirror what Labour always do, which is confuse everyone, and take the money.
Just as I found out how to save £30 a month on my mobile, BT pulled the plug on the deal! I still haven't a clue how to understand how they charge, and all manner of spreadsheets and downloads are hopeless.
So, after a long term at my local evening classes, I've reverted to the old methods like these...
It is a nightmare Scrobs (very funny, I have never seen the semaphore sketch) getting the right deal. I think for good mobile deals you need to ask a young person, because they tell each other which is best value. BT are just shit. My Dad is currently having an argument with them.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens with the new communication style when you get a frozen shoulder?
Better still get your company provide you with a mobile phone.
ReplyDeleteI should have taken the driving job at Virgin. This would mean company:
- insurance
- rail travel
- mobiles
- trans Atlantic air travel
- DVDs
- parties
- coke
- a draw to stay on Branson's private island (true !)
Hmm, Gas board.
ReplyDeleteI'll see your Python sketch and raise you a Yes Minister.
Kev, are there any jobs going driving trains for Virgin?
Lils - they are out there to confuse!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to do a spreadsheet on the probablilities of being ripped off by 1)BT, 2)The electricity board and 3)Nulab.
I reckon, on all three counts I'd find all my money being pissed up against the wall by incompetents.
It really does come down to cheating the government as often as possible - you know it makes sense...
Welome back Elecs - we need you here in our hour of despair!
ReplyDeleteI still rate Branson, as I'm afraid that I can still remember wandering into his first store in Brighton, and being intimidated by the long hair and big moustaches' listening to albums, on mattresses, in the big front window!!!
I just didn't fit, being a newly-married sprog, and also couldn't afford the disks anyway!
It used to be a pastime at lunchtime, to get away from all the other pillocks, (except for Chris, who decided to jump off Beachy Head a few years later), but including Pete (who finished up with a huge FSA problem).
I used to just stare at the labels and move on...
How are you Mate, anyway?
Pips, that's so funny - I love it!
ReplyDeleteYou raising me a clip will deffers bring a new one, but I have to go and watch 'New Tricks' now, otherwise, I'll be in the serious position of a clip round the lughole from her indoors...
You keep in here Our Kid...x
Dear Mr Scrobblebubbles,
ReplyDelete[Blogger has informed me that this posting was too long, so I have had to split it which I hope will solve the problem. Apologies for taking liberties with your bandwidth]
This posting illustrates perfectly why we Grumpys have finally decided to quit and buzz off to our secure little hidey hole far far away from Nosepicker McStickyfingers and the rest of the poofs in Downing Street and the Marxist claque in Brussels. I know we "retired" a few months and then returned - but that was caused by a minor hiccup to our long standing plans which has now been successfully ironed out. Grandad is a modest chap but he spent much of his life in economic and finance work and first saw the writing begin to appear on the wall when those who were pulling Bill Clinton's strings (and now probably those of his wife) instructed him to pass into law the conjoining of high street retail banking and investment and commercial banking; an absolute NO NO in banking terms. He described it as foolish and dangerous and said it would lead to great trouble and distress. Knowing something similar was likely to follow in the UK, since then we have carefully watched minutely every action of our politicians. Things began to come nicely to the boil with the so-called dot-com bubble when brainless investors declared a young girl with a cat and a computer had suddenly produced a billion pound company overnight and out of thin air. No product, no history, no accounts. Lunacy. That little bubble went pop quite early on and we were not affected as we had no investments in that sort of idiocy. The simmer continued gently with the ever increasing house prices. Grandad used to have a small graph showing average salaries (which hardly ever moved) against house prices which rose almost daily. It was obvious for anyone with eyes to see that this could not go one. How could anyone earning £20k before tax ever hope to service a £250k mortgage which, by the time the compounding had been done would amount to nearer £800,000. The sums simply did not add up. We continued to watch. However, on the afternoon that Snottyfingers announced the £5billion pension grab changes, grandad was on to our fund manager and cashed in the lot within 24 hours. The proceeds were despatched to our hidey hole offshore and have since been earning a steady if unspectacular (but tax free)return annually. We eventually decided in 2002 that it was time to get rid of our house and rent while the money was there for the taking, so we put it on the market for what our agent said he could get for it and sure enough 3 weeks later we had a firm offer from a thick Indian who paid us over 3 times what we had paid 10 years previously and over 5 times what we considered it was actually worth. The vast majority of that substantial amount of cash too followed into our offshore fund.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteAnd now we both have new passports and ten years permanent resident visas, so we have left the tip that the UK has become for pastures not exactly new for us as we have visited our little cottage overlooking a beautiful bay at least twice a year since we bought it in the 1980s for really quite a pittance. We have made new friends in the village and happily we both speak the local language fairly fluently. It will see us out now I think. We do not have a land line phone installed so we will not be able to browse the internet any more. The major advantage of this is that folks of our advanced years do not need all the daily boiling blood pressure, frustrating but helpless feelings over much of what the politically correct garbage and other mendacious crap we read or get fed via the BBC. We spent the better part of 130 years between us working honestly and diligently doing our bit for the UK (or England if you prefer) and were really quite proud of our country in a quiet sort of way. Basic things (health service, utilities, transport etc) worked ok most of the time, most companies were there to help rather than screw you, kids got educated properly and many did very well by their own efforts. Take a deep breath, look outside and note what you see - wheelie bins with chips, cctv cameras all over the place, a useless politicised police force, once the finest armed forces in the world engaged in 2 illegal wars and reduced to penury by a one eyed Scottish Communist prat, and from overseas, our so-called "government" is simply a laughing stock.
So, in a nutshell we have had enough and we have been careful enough to secure more than sufficient resources to ensure our futures well away from Scottish poofs and nosepickers and Marxist theorists in Europe.
We shall honestly miss all our blogging/commenting cybermates, and you all know who who are, so from the bottom of our hearts Grandad and I thank you for keeping us in turn, mildly irritated, bloody annoyed, screamingly helplessly infuriated - as well as most of the other emotions from amused smiling at the sharpness and unalloyed wit of many of you, to those who more than once occasioned the necessity to change the grandmotherly undergarments (it happens when you get to our age you know) when creased up in uncontrollable hysterical laughter.
En passant you may be wondering how I managed to type all this if I no longer have a computer. Well, the answer is that we have stopped off en route to spend a few days with one of our regular commenting gang who has kindly offered us accommodation, victuals and transport free of charge – which is nothing less than is to be expected from somebody I have known since we were both in the infants schools at the age of six in South London.
Bye everyone; it has been fun.
GG - so envy you and will miss you. Have fun and I hope you get a dongle soon ;-))
ReplyDeletex
Pip, Thanks. Just checking my last emails before closedown and dropped by here by chance.
ReplyDeleteFinal contribs chez Lakes. We leave for the airport in 20 minutes. Bye and look after yourself.
GG xx
Virgins bills are equally baffling though EK...
ReplyDelete