There is probably no god.

Check out these buses

Grrrrrr with HMRC

Trying to sort out tax and pension.....

How do you find out your tax office - call them you think? To get through I need to tell them my NI number, my name, my DOB, my addresses and my employer. So my NI number is recognised but something about the other information is wrong so they won't speak to me.

So let me get this right - they know my name, my DOB, my addresses and my employer but I don't.

So how do I get to speak to them? Well I have to tell them the right information but yet they won't tell me what I'm getting wrong.

Does it not occur to them I might know these things and they might have something wrong!

So now I have to send them details of what I think my name, my DOB, my addresses and my employer are with proof that they are all these things and then they'll "consider my case". But I don't know who to send it to because they can't tell me my tax office because they can't verify who I am so no one will take my call.

Maybe I'm the person who sends them all that bloody money every bloody month - they don't mind taking that, do they?

Annoyed of North London (but who knows what my name is or where I actually live as obvioulsy don't).

stop the petitions

I do not like this current trend to try to govern our country by media petitions.
Petitions against Brand and Ross and X factor were one thing. The Sun readers signing a petition against harringey council is quite another. Its ridiculous.

Perspective needed (and why I also hate the Daily Mail)

People get a grip.

Tamsin is SO right in condemning the current witch hunt of Brand and Ross from the media and Daily Mail readers who should be more worried about the state of the environment and economy.

http://living.morethan.com/2008/10/29/whats-wrong-with-this-picture/#comment-3034

Tragic?

This car is really being driven now by someone working where i do. Who would have thought.

So tired

Of travelling to and from work everyday. First time in over a week haven't got a taxi home. And it's raining. Crappy day at work. Too much to do before computer lost me 3 hours. Too many ideas and not enough time to act on them. And its raining. And the bus sucks. Days like these get me dreaming of running away to Devon and living a simple life. Could i do it? Would it still rain?

Marc Ronson

Is putting on a good show. However my friends would prefer to watch from the back where the sound is Shit and i can't see. So i'm on my own with just my blog to talk to but a great view. The venue has run out of beer from the over crowded bars and the cloak room had hour long queues before closing as its full which is Shit. Did they not expect the people they told tickets to to turn up? Hammersmith sort it out or i won't be back.

Perfect spring day and why i love london

15 mins early for a meeting in town and just enough time to enjoy some moments by the river. Its been a horrid week at work with no one understanding what a deadline is. But after this meeting i'm going home; i'll deal with the implications monday. But for now i'll feel the sun on my face for a few moments more.

Hungry pirates

Lost Pirates on the tube

Well it made me laugh. It is a tuesday lunch time after all. I'm quite suprised they are allowed underground with those swords.

My resolve crumbled

Mr L now owns a Wii. My worry is nothing will now ever get done in the house. However, as Tamsin points out it is actually quite good fun (Tamsin's Blog: The open road). I'm actually far better at virtual bowling than in real life. And I'm sure the boxing could actually keep me fit...

Chickens

This has been excellent so far. Hugh and jamies programmes about the way chickens and eggs are farmed has really got us thinking. Looking at the state the chickens are in has made me decide i def don't want that inside me. Free range for us from now on. Actually we were pretty good before and we mainly get our meat from waitrose which seems to have a good record. Watching jamie's programme last night did though was really open our eyes to thinking about where the egg and chicken in other food comes from. Also where the meat comes from when you eat out. Paying extra now doesn't seem silly at all. If only i had time to make everything i eat from scratch. I also appreciate that some people are on really tight budgets and demand cheap produce. I'd love to see britain eradicate indoors intensive farming but think it would be worse if the supermarkets then went and bought cheap eggs and chickens from abroad which is what would happen. British farmers really are in catch 22. So i think hugh and jamie are doing the right thing targeting consumers. And i for one have taken notice.

British Gas took £600 from our account

Can you believe they are allowed to do this?

Earlier this year they wrote down a reading wrong and said we'd owed them £600 for electricity. We complained and they admitted they were wrong and would correct it. Next bill - we were £600 in debt. We reminded them they said we didn't owe it. They agreed and said they'd fix it. We decided to leave. They told us we owed them £600. We pointed we didn't and they agreed. We left.

Today they take out £600 without telling us.

I've just been at a conference about web 2.0 and how brands should be using it for research. One theme that came out is that they should be monitoring the negative conversations that are being said about them. So I hope someone from British Gas reads this and realises how crap their customer service is and tries to improve it.

Imagine if i walked into their office and took out £600 worth of equipment. Surely it would be called stealing. So how can they be allowed to get away with this?

We've had to contact our bank to try to get money back and we'll be charged for this let alone charges for going overdrawn and our time in sorting it all out.

I just can't believe that big companies can get away with such blatant disregard to their customers in this day and age!

We've recently just lost lots of money because of Fly Be and Lloyds TSB crap travel insurance and i was going to write about that..

Fly Be cancelled the flight we were meant to take to Inverness. This meant we had to get a different flight to Glasgow. We had to rearrange our car hire - which cost more as we would now pick up from one airport and return at another. We'd booked a luxury B&B near inverness which as we arrived in Glasgow 12 hours later than we were meant to be in Inverness obviously didn't make and they charged us the full price. Plus we had to pay for another hotel. Fly BE refused to refund this money as they cancelled the flight because of safety worries (although they told us at the time it was because the plane had a light on they didn't know what it was). So we thought - at least we have travel insurance - but guess what it doesn't cover this. I'd like to therefore ask what the fuck does it cover if it doesn't cover losing money on holiday.

So Lloyds TSB, Fly BE and British Gas - you are all money sucking big corporations that don't have a clue about customer care or customer service that i plan never to use again in my life and i hope you all go bankrupt and catch horrible corporate diseases.

OK so not a well written blog - but at least it has got it off my chest

What a joke

Johnson is Tory mayor candidate - Boris to be mayor???

Lets hope not.

Has he not noticed that bendy buses are actually very good - especially if you are getting on at a crowded bus stop or in a wheel chair or have a push chair etc etc.

And actually the congestion charge is working pretty damn well and is attracting interest from other major cities in the world (e.g. New York).

He's going to give us all bigger houses.. er ... Nice idea but I'd like to know how

Now I was never a fan of Ken when he was a politician but i think he is a great Mayor.

To all those who voted for Boris because they thought "he was funny": Please stop. It won't be funny if he fucked up the greatest city in the world.

there are 16,000 people out there who don't deserve to call themselves Londoners. Hopefully they'll be to busy watching repeats of have i got news for you to vote in the real Mayoral election.

Although if we are all really lucky they are actually Ken supporters who thought that it might be amusing for Ken to say he beat a monkey in the race for Mayor.

However, on the up side - thank fuck he has nothing to do with education now. Please Boris - go back to presenting TV where you can be funny ......

Kubb

The history of Kubb is shrouded in mystery and there are several theories about the origins of the game. Most of these agree that Kubb evolved in Scandinavia and is over 1000 years' old and came about as a way for the Vikings to wile away the long summers' evenings. It is occasionally suggested that it may have developed in Northern France, but seeing as the Normans were originally from Scandinavia, the source was probably the same.
It has been suggested that Kubb evolved into the version played today from an early form where the Vikings used to play with the skulls and thigh bones of their victims of rape and pillage. Then as Christianity swept across Northern Europe, it was no longer deemed politically correct to kill people for the purposes of a friendly team game and so the Vikings started using wooden blocks instead. The more probable and mildly less gruesome (but far less interesting!) theory is that Kubb started off as a game played using the off-cuts resulting from chopping firewood. This is supported by the fact that in Swedish, the word "kubb" means block of wood

Glastonbury 2007

My favs were:

Just Jack

Mr Hudson

Lily Allen

I want to go next year already!!

Wet holidays

Two holidays in England in the wettest June ever. However, they were fun. Glastonbury was great, made even better by the people we were with and a fab gazebo.

Scotland was beautiful, even through the rain clouds. For once on holiday I really relaxed (in Scotland rather than Glastonbury) and its taking a few days to get back into the hecticness of London life.

The Olympic Logo: Mr L's letter to the Guardian

As the debate rages on about the Olympic logo this is Mr L's letter to the Guardian:

Dear sir / madam

Instead of the traditional vilification of anything different (Edgy symbol of digital age or artistic flop, 5/6/07) the London 2012 team and their brand designers should be applauded for having the courage to create a brand that is truly innovative and unique in the sterile field of corporate Olympic designs.

Leading edge design often makes us uncomfortable at first, particularly if we are outside the main target group. This brand is explicitly aimed at young people, who have been marginalised by previous Games and are almost certainly not to be found voting in online petitions or frequenting the comment pages of the traditional media. Maybe they do have reservations themselves, but none of those opposed to the brand seem to have thought it worthwhile to ask for their opinion. This may prove to be the greatest justification of all.

Sadly, the only thing more predictable than the rush to condemn will be the scramble from the same people to jump on the acceptance bandwagon in a year’s time, when the new brand is a showcase for London as a continuing leader among world cities - brave, bold and embracing change.

Yours faithfully

Glastonbury pre meet

We had a great planning meeting for Glastonbury yesterday.
I'm soooooo excited.

I feel rubbish today - but I'm sure I'll feel worse in 4 weeks time!

Wet bank holiday

What a wet miserable bank holiday weekend.

I have been to the gym though so maybe the rain isn't all bad. I've also been painting my front door just as I said I would. That wouldn't have happened if it had been lovely and sunny. It is just drying at the moment. Although nothing is really dry at the moment as it has been pouring down with rain.

A rainy afternoon likes this makes me want afternoon tea. A crumbly scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam. That reminds me of being in Exeter when it would often rain and we'd go for a drive and have scones and cream or eat them at home in front of the fire.

I've also joined Facebook. I'm still getting to grips with how it works and of course find it funny "poking" someone. You can search on your school and university. I left my school 12 years longer ago than anyone else who is already on it. So I think really does prove the point that we are a generation to old for these social network sites. Saying that - there were quite a few people I knew on it. A clever little thing goes through your address book and tells you which of your contacts are on facebook. There were a couple of people I don't know at all but most surprising was seeing my little bro on there. However the thought of poking him is just to wrong for words.

Tomorrow we're having a pre glasto meet up. I'm getting really excited about going but starting to have doubts about how well I'll be able to cope with it now - it's 7 years since I last went and I am a lot more into my creature comforts now. Mr L and I went and bought a tent yesterday. It was pretty heavy carrying it home (well that is what Mr L said) and he got my thinking about having to carry all my things from car to campsite at Glastonbury. Phew - worn out already.

It is certainly going to be a very different Glastonbury experience than I've ever had before. I always used to work there. This meant less traffic queues arriving and leaving. Staying a week. Safe camping and therefore a pillow, lilo, far more clothes than i really needed, a hot meal every day, a tent with a constant supply of tea.. etc, A shower, a proper flush toilet..

However it did mean I missed some of the bands. Although actually I don't care much for "bands", rather the acts I wanted to see. This year I'm looking forward to seeing Mr Hudson, Just Jack and Jamie T if they are playing.

Lets hope the weather gets better in the next 4 weeks. Last year on this day I was in the desert in America. Standing at a spot where 4 states meet. It was a lot hotter!