Gripe of the day - What is yours?

[svenrico]

[QUOTE=Craig380;3133343]The words of Nye Bevan ring ever more true:

"What is Toryism but organised spivvery?"

Nice one. Seems to becoming ever more apparent these days.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Sir Trev

Your insurance company will not want to know. If you have windscreen cover it will be outsourced to one of the major suppliers, like Autoglass, and they'll tell you to speak directly to them if you try. Technically your insurance company takes the premium from you and you are therefore their customer but I tried that and basically wasted my breath.

For a lot of cars you will almost certainly want to go the insurance route in any case. I was quoted over £500 when I tried to source a fix of my own following yet another no-show by Autoglass. The heated screen in my Ford is excellent on a frosty morning but that plus the mount for the traffic sign recognition camera behind the rear view mirror makes for a flipping expensive replacement.

Yes, I know you need to pay the £60 excess or whatever through an insurance claim ,and the insurance company specify the windscreen repair company that has to be used, but a complaint to the insurance company or broker can't do any harm.

[svenrico]

Home service contract. I have emergency repair cover with British Gas for central heating, plumbing. electrics, drains and annual boiler service. The contract is for annual boiler service which I take to mean once in 12 months. The thing is they overrun the 12 months and can't fit me in until January next year which will be 17 months since they last serviced it. The excuse being they have had a lot of call outs to vulnerable customers. I would have expected they should have the capacity to cater for emergency call outs and annual services ,otherwise what is the point of having an annual service contract, you might as well arrange your own heating engineer about 6 months in advance which should be enough notice ! Surely they aren't fulfilling their contract ?! I used BG because they have their own engineers but I think they are starting to change that by sub letting work.
ps another point is the idea of regular maintenance is to hopefully avoid a breakdown. If it broke down I would have to pay £60 excess to call them out (and they would probably then say they couldn't get spare parts and write it off !)

[Seeker]

It is getting harder to keep up:

Government can now strip people of their citizenship without warning. (I assume that must only apply to dual citizenship people, else it would be illegal).
HS3 scrapped (breaking another manifesto promise).
Social care cap watered down (benefiting well-off pensioners, but not poorer ones)
MPs second job plan also watered down and "punishment" becomes vague if they spend too much time on it. (Labour's plan was defeated).

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by svenrico

Home service contract. I have emergency repair cover with British Gas for central heating, plumbing. electrics, drains and annual boiler service. The contract is for annual boiler service which I take to mean once in 12 months. The thing is they overrun the 12 months and can't fit me in until January next year which will be 17 months since they last serviced it. The excuse being they have had a lot of call outs to vulnerable customers. I would have expected they should have the capacity to cater for emergency call outs and annual services ,otherwise what is the point of having an annual service contract, you might as well arrange your own heating engineer about 6 months in advance which should be enough notice ! Surely they aren't fulfilling their contract ?! I used BG because they have their own engineers but I think they are starting to change that by sub letting work.
ps another point is the idea of regular maintenance is to hopefully avoid a breakdown. If it broke down I would have to pay £60 excess to call them out (and they would probably then say they couldn't get spare parts and write it off !)

your better off with your home insurance company adding it on as extras. BG as a bunch of awipes of the biggest order.

a boiler service is around £100 from your local plumber. have you thought about a contract with your council (they dont just serve council house tenants) to service your boiler, it will be a lot cheaper than a contract from BG.

[embee]

Originally Posted by Seeker

It is getting harder to keep up:

Government can now strip people of their citizenship without warning. (I assume that must only apply to dual citizenship people, else it would be illegal).
.......

Part 1 Section 9 of
https://publications.parliament.uk/p...7/210187v1.pdf

It's steeped in legalese (as you would expect) with cross references to the British Nationality Act 1981 (which I haven't waded through). It would appear that that the Home Secretary is awarding themselves powers which essentially make them judge jury and executioner. There appear to be means of appeal but if someone hasn't been informed of the decision by the Home Secretary I'm not sure how you are expected to start an appeal. This is one for the lawyers, maybe I should engage Mr.Cox at £900/hr.

We are getting towards the thicker part of the wedge, we went past the thin end some time ago ............

[Bibio]

dont blame your government for the way the public vote. lets face it we know the torries are all out to get what they or their mates can so why do the English public keep voting them into power????

the rest of the union gets dragged down by the majority single member. if we really are stronger together then its about time we had a more representative voting system.

[embee]

Originally Posted by Bibio

dont blame your government for the way the public vote. .......

I take your point, but it's a bit like saying you shouldn't blame Hitler for the way the German people voted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_...deral_election

I happen to agree with your sentiment regarding how/why the people of England voted for Johnson, and yes they voted for the "Get Brexit Done" slogan and Johnson the cheerful clown rather than a particular candidate, it's the way populism works and Cummings et al (the brains behind the front man) were well versed and successful in the art.
It doesn't excuse the creeping power grab and disrespect for parliamentary democracy and decency. The way things are progressing it does look a bit like the wheels might come off by the time of the next general election, the reality might just have dawned by then, but then again there's no predicting whether the flock will actually wake up or will fall for the same old lines again. I wouldn't like to predict it. 70 million people voted for Trump second time round.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by Bibio

dont blame your government for the way the public vote. lets face it we know the torries are all out to get what they or their mates can so why do the English public keep voting them into power????

the rest of the union gets dragged down by the majority single member. if we really are stronger together then its about time we had a more representative voting system.

Of course we should blame the government if they put promises in their manifesto and then break them.

No new taxes (a stupid promise) but broken
Triple lock on pensions (another stupid idea) and broken
HS3 (now makes HS2 less credible) but a promise broken

The public don't pay attention to politics until it either directly affects them or MPs are perceived to be working to different rules, then the outcry starts. (as in the expenses debacle).

Our governments are frequently elected by the personality of the leader and the Conservatives are brilliant (mostly) at picking PMs that tell people what they want to hear. Boris is a Pollyanna character and people respond to this (misplaced) excessive optimism - they don't want to hear about the problems with the NI Protocol they want the "oven ready deal" to fix everything when "Brexit gets done" (for example).

What most didn't expect was for our Prime Minister to run away and hide when difficult questions need answers.

My neighbour kept telling me: " I don't like Corbyn". When asked why, she said: "There's something about him". I asked if she'd looked at his policies and, of course, she hadn't. When I mentioned some of the ideas he had, she thought they were a good idea but still wouldn't vote for him.

BoZo told us we were getting a land of milk and honey and people believed - that's the problem. If something sounds too good to be true, it generally is. We elected a clown and got a circus. (as you may have surmised, I didn't vote for them).

Most of our media leans right and they are superb at destroying the left wing parties/candidates (although left alone they do a pretty good job themselves).

First past the post electoral system is a disaster.

[chris8886]

Originally Posted by Seeker

First past the post electoral system is a disaster.

And you think the proportional representation idea of the Lib Dem's is better? Because it wouldn't be, we'd get even less done as a government/country because there just be even more arguing, bickering and the like trying to come to an agreement that all are prepared to go along with. You have to rule by majority and if you don't like what happens in that time campaign to change it the next time voting comes round and vote a different way.