Labour’s new poster campaign, submitted by a Labour activist, features a picture of David Cameron and the text “Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s”.
Labour are once again in the pocket of their union paymasters. Strikes are happening, more are planned…
Following this article on Conservative Home, I decided to have a crack at making a billboard poster.
Click for a larger image.
We all knew that Kingston Communications offer an expensive and dire broadband and telephone service. Karoo have recently had to pull the plug on disconnecting customers without any warning or evidence of copyright infringement. They can afford to be like this because they’re the sole provider of telephone and broadband services in Hull, and they’ve made it far too expensive for competition to move in. Their monopoly means they can treat customers how they want. Customers have no option but to be without telephone and internet services if they want to ‘take their money elsewhere’ as punishment for a shoddy service, as there is no ‘elsewhere’.
I’ve recently been trying to get a phone line and broadband installed for my student house. On 31st July I phoned at 9am and they carried out a credit check. I was told this would take until the 3rd or 4th of August at latest, and that they’d phone me back with the conclusion. On the 5th I received a letter informing me I must pay a £100 ’security deposit’ if I wanted to be connected as I either had bad or no credit rating, and that this wouldn’t be returned for 12 months. I presume it’s the the latter as I always pay bills on time. It wasn’t quite as straight forward as this however.
Karoo received a phone call from me requesting to pay £100 to them by card. I was told that this wasn’t possible, it had to be a postal order or cheque. I don’t require a cheque book, I’ve never wrote a cheque, not one company I use requests this as sole payment. Postal order was my only option. I was told I could speed the process up if I took my postal order to their office in Hull. The people downstairs would simply give it to the people upstairs. I promptly set off, having to pay £10 for the privilege of purchasing the postal order.
Once I arrived at the office there were three technical support staff, only stationed there for pre arranged appointments. Along side them were a bunch of telephones where customer service could be contacted. I spoke with the staff who wouldn’t take my payment upstairs, instead gave me a prepaid envelope and insisted I had to send it there. When I glanced at the address it was in fact that same office building.
This is where I am to date, 6 days on without even starting to set up my phone line and broadband service. I don’t even have an account with them yet as they won’t open one until the £100 is paid. They’re able to exploit their customers because we literally have no alternative. We have no market competition to turn to in order to punish a bad company. Ofcom desperately needs to step in and change this situation.
Never mind the argument of liberty, that has already been won in the hearts and minds of the British people when it comes to the mass database and control of a central ID card system. The left have been greatly in favour of trampling on individual liberty and increasing the amount of pies the state can finger. Yet following twitter today reveals a different objection to ID cards from them. They see that money could be better used in other areas, favouring education as a prominent example.
I’m somewhat shocked at their apparent realisation that not everything is possible, that money and wealth are actually required to get things done; that the wealth of a nation matters.
I posted previously about Tesco’s ridiculous alcohol policy enforcement. I argued that a 40 year old man with his daughter would not get the same treatment as us students experience, with the demanding of ID from everyone not just the purchaser. It appears Asda have got that one step further and ID’ed a 15 year old child because her father was buying a bottle of wine! You can read more about it here.
This needs stopping it’s absolutely ridiculous. There is no law against you purchasing alcohol whilst with another person whom doesn’t hold ID or is not of age.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. Generally if a big shop is required a few of us go together in a vehicle. Contrary to what student life might have you believe, alcohol isn’t purchased on every occasion. We just buy lots when there’s a special offer on! Sometimes only half or one of us will purchase alcohol, and the rest will simply be shopping for food. It’s during this circumstance where Tesco’s policy on alcoholic purchases becomes an authoritarian law unto itself. If the individual buying the drink looks under 25 then they’re ID’ed, which is fair enough, we have laws in this country that stop under 18’s from purchasing alcohol. Tesco extend this policy to anybody you’re with! If there are four people doing four different shops and all paying separately, they all must provide identification or the customer cannot go through with his or her transaction.
I cannot fathom the reasoning behind it. All the policy serves to do is inconvenience legitimate customers. Let’s pretend there’s a bunch of teenagers, one is old enough and is purchasing alcohol, the others are not of age and they plan to go out of the store and get lashed on the streets of Hull. To bypass this policy all they need to do is send the person of legal age to the checkout. It’s no skin off their nose attending different tills, after all they’re not old enough anyway. The policy doesn’t work.
If a 40 year old man with his 13 year old daughter came to purchase alcohol, again I doubt there would be any problem. No ID would be required as the gentleman is clearly over the age of 18, and yet evidently the child is not old enough but must not produce identification. Why are groups being treated differently? As far as I’m aware the contract is between the customer and the supermarket, not whomever the customer might have arrived at the store with. If said customer decides to purchase alcohol so that under 18’s can get drunk on the streets then that is for the police to deal with, not for Tesco to attempt, and fail as mentioned earlier, to enforce.
I’ve not blogged much lately. Some say it’s because I’ve not had anything exciting to talk about, others just think I’ve been lazy. I’ve recently purchased an iPhone, along with Wordpress and Twitter applications which should result in a lot more updates from me! If you’re not already following me on Twitter, you should! You’ll be notified of all the latest blog entries as well as the exciting cut and thrust of my day to day life.
The National Union of Students (NUS) appears as a separate institution to a regular student. Students don’t feel their membership, their union of people, they see a discount card – it goes no further. Is it any wonder when regular students who rarely care about the majority of issues discussed, have their voice withdrawn from the debate when an important issue arises?
You need only look as far as the latest scheme to be launched by the NUS. The funding blueprint proposes a scrapping of the tuition fee system and an introduction of a graduate ‘contribution’. Don’t let their slippery words detract from what they mean though, they mean a graduate tax that successful graduates will be paying on their income for the next 20 years. An earnings based tax which takes more from the most financially successful. The proposed system removes responsibility from people’s lives. No longer will students have to make a decision about whether university is for them; whether a degree is going to pay off in the end. It’ll be the natural progression from college. Finish your A-levels, go get a degree, and why not? The proposed system is a zero risk career path – you can’t lose, unless you happen to be successful, in which case you’ll be paying a small fortune for people to take degrees which are completely unsuitable for them. Higher education funding will inevitably turn into a bubble waiting to pop.
Who voted for their NUS delegate on this major issue? Not me sir, not in my name. I’m a politically active student and knew nothing of it so never had my chance to have the ultimate voice – in the ballot box. There’s a Facebook group against the proposals. We need a voice, a vote – if the elitists at the NUS are so confident that this blueprint is the will of the student body, then why not give us a referendum? It’s about time regular students took a stand and took back our union.
Greg Pope has represented the Hyndburn constituency for some 17 years.
He has announced in the Accrington Observer that he will step down at the next election for ‘personal reasons’ rather than his expenses that came to light last week.
Mr Pope had a 5,587 majority over the Conservatives in the 2005 general election and the European election results for Hyndburn were as follows: Conservatives 6037 Labour 5020 UKIP 3906 BNP 2731 Lib 1285
Currently no Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate is in place.
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