Thursday, December 13, 2007

I always thought that when you get older and earn more money, that life becomes easier and more enjoyable. Nobody told me that all that actually happens is you spend more as you earn more and that bills tht would have seemed horrendous ten years ago are the smaller, insignificant ones now! With a big mortgage, extension loan, car loan and school fees my monthly outgoings already top £3500 net. With all the other luxuries added on - you know lighting, heating, food.. we get through £5000 net a month. Its ok when we pull £7000 in a month but when contracts are is tight and I'm relying on the wifes £3500 its surprising just how quickly the overdraft tops out and the debit card gets refused at the checkout.

The UK stinks! I'm sick of giving so much of my money to the government each month and I'm fed up with the numbers of immigrants who are sweeping across our borders. Don't get me wrong, I'm no racist (though recently it seems that even having an opinion regarding immigration is deemed racist). For the record one of my sisters in law is Indian, my best mate is African and I have a circle of Polish mates I meet up with regularly.

The fact is though, that having been born and brought up in one area of the UK, I have seen the changes and experiened at first hand the rising population, the congestion, the foreign accents as I walk up the high street. A lot of this is because of a naturally rising poplulation - but its not been helped by the vast numbers of immigrants who have arrived.

There used to be clear divisions between towns in the UK, stretches of green farmland. London ws first to grow out of all proportion and now, what was separated by meadows is joined with flyovers, housing estates and shopping precincts. Greater London is forever becoming greater, taking in Chertsey, Virginia Water, Ascot, Bracknell, Wokingham and Reading in huge huge surge of development and humanity.

Driving from one side of town to the other was a task undertaken in minutes just six or seven years ago - now even on a Sunday a dash to B&Q can take all afternoon!

We live on an island. We pay taxes. Our taxes should make our lives easier. They don't!

Why do we pay so much fuel duty? Technology is such that alternative green fuels will have been invented, refined then stowed away in a dark cupboard until oil finally runs out. The reason? Because too many people make too much money to allow a cheaper, more efficient, eco friendly fuel to take a place in the world economy. Does the government know there are other fuels out there? I think sooo!!

So why don't they insist we use them? Because the oil companys are a. more powerful than the government. b. Because the government makes vast fortunes from fuel duty, 'rightly' collected from us motorists because the very use of oil fuel is dirty, poisenous and evil! and c. Because if there were a clean, sustainable fuel, there would be no more reason to charge duty, which would encourage more people out on to the roads, which would create more cost, not revenue for the government.

It wouldn't even be so bad if we received detailed accounts regarding govrnment expenditue each year, just like I have to submit for my company, then we could see where our money was going.

But our money goes into a vast black hole, the government are not accountable for the cash they choose to waste, we the population have become so complacent and tired of successive governments whose ministers are golden one day and dust the next. Government ministers used to be role models for all society. Now few are respected , fewer still give straight answers to straight questions and we the public expect nothing from them but greed, corruption and self promotion .

I won't bother to read this blog through. I'm quite sure it makes me sound like a sad past-it old git so at least its acurate.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Everywhere I look I'm being told my penis is too small - either that or I need viagra to guarantee the strength to satisfy!

Spam is getting out of hand.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Joe Average

Life is hard at the moment. Working for yourself isn't a guarantee to job satisfaction though
this week I should finish two contracts, meet the bank manager and trip down to Kent for another meeting with a new client. Last week was plain hassle.

Six months ago I won a job to produce a new web site for a recruitment agency. The job wasn't worth a great deal, around 3k, and the owner manager of the agency gave us a complete brief with site map, page content - the lot. It wasn't a hard job so why, six months later did I last week get a visit from a six foot six gorilla demanding the guys deposit back?

It was like a scene out of Eastenders yet I can't blame my guys for this one. I was warned off dealing with this particular agency right from the start and I ignored the advice. Firstly, we provided a full quote based on the brief we'd been given. We were going to build a multi-menu web site with a couple a attractive 30 second videos, a demographics profiler and online CV creator. Nothing too taxing, especially as we have developed what is (in my opinion), one of the UKs best and most user friendly content management systems.

In order to proceed we always require a purchase order and deposit. The deposit is so we can pay our sub contract programmers. Anyway, the minute the client said 'go ahead', he demanded several web designs and no less than six lengthy meetings. No problem, except we had started working without the PO or deposit. Something didn't smell right!

We asked for the outstanding items and were told again and again everything was in the post. After six weeks we began to realise the post office must be in a worse state than we ever imagined. On top of that, the client told us the brief by which we'd valued the job was defunct, out of date and that he was hiring a body to create new content. Then, the eve before my film crew were due to film the clips for the site, we got a mail from the client, who had been 'brainstorming' and now wanted a 10 minute this and a twenty minute that. Talk about kicking the budget to pieces. I, politely as I could, informed the client that what he was asking would cost a deal more than we had agreed and... we still hadn't even received the PO or deposit cheque. I suppose the problem was we had already committed time and still believed things would come right.

Then, out of the blue, a faxed PO arrived and the deposit was made. Hey!

But, immediately afterwards, after having agreed a design for the site, the client promptle informed us that he didn't want the design any more and wanted us to do another. call us soft, but we agreed. To this day we have two complete versions of the clients web site sat on our servers.

We built the menu system from scratch (two weeks), built the demographer (1 week) and had no less than six designs in the client file (in total two weeks). But we had a problem. we had no content. Then the client went on holiday, then his newly employed 'bod' never materialised despite promises to the contrary. Then, as we had finally decided to put the work on the back burner, the client had the gaul to call up and say the project was taking too long!

I 'grew up' in customer service and know when to zip it for fear of letting my feelings show but even I was having trouble keeping quiet this time. The deposit cheque was £1400. We'd spent £1500 on the programmer (who gets paid as he completes stages) (the remainder of the job was my profit). Guess what, the client said the whole thing was too much trouble and he would like to have his money back!

True, the client paid money for something he didn't get but he cost us a great deal of time and effort and buggered us about from the start. We take deposits for just this reason and I thought I was quite justified in turning down his demand, offering to let a county court judge make the decision whether we should pay back the money or not.

The client didn't like that but we had a stack of paper and web based 'evidence' of work carried out and I've very little doubt a decision would go to us.

So, last week, a large heavily muscled man entered our office and demanded cash. Frankly its the first time anything like that has happened to me. I managed to get rid of him eventually and immediately phoned the Police. What happens next I know not. If my blogs stop arriving you'll know my immersement into this sad 'soap opera' lifestyle has done for me. Lets see

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I said 'Please don't unplug the hard drive, I'm transferring 75Gb of movie files'.

That was Satuurday morning. Throughout the weekend I check the progress... 5Gb..17...29 and so on...

Sunday afternoon I'm up to 55Gb...getting there.

Sunday evening I watch 'Top Gear', go back into the study afterwards and... someone has unplugged the hard-drive...

Plugging it back in, I wait to see if the folder is intact..its not! What a waste of time! Going back into the living room I say, 'Someones unplugged the hard drive, I've got to start over again'.

The wife (of eighteen years), immediately rears up..'It wasn't me, don't come in here accusing me'.
'I'm not accusing anyone', I said, 'what's done is done. I'm just saying someone unplugged the drive and corrupted the work I was doing'.

I must point out that I have one son and two dogs, so it isn't a matter worthy of great intellect to work out that unless the dogs have suddenly developed super-skills, that it was my son or wife who 'pulled the plug'.

Given that my son was in bed prior to Top Gear and the fact my wife continued to argue her innocence loudly, despite the fact I wasn't bothered and didn't react, plus the fact that she got more annoyed by my lack of reaction, plus the fact she then stormed off to bed, I deduced that perhaps I had found the culprit.

Why is it that women, when confronted with obvious responsibility for something that breaks or goes wrong always deny and get shirty, huffy and obnoxious rather than simply say 'sorry dear, I forgot'?

It really wasn't a big deal. I can set the transfer up again, I didn't go 'storming in' accusing anyone. I was just upset because of what had happened. I forgot though, that men aren't allowed to get upset. Only women can.