I wasn’t sure whether to use the moon photo for this challenge, but decided I would as it is undeniably ‘up’.

The next two photo’s are not quite as ‘up’ as the first, but I enjoy taking photo’s from these sort of angles. I would have liked to taken some from the top looking down too, but that was not possible with either of these subjects.

This is Herringfleet Smock Mill in Suffolk. It stands in marshland beside the Norfolk Broads (England, UK)

Just some spiral steps attached to a building on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk (England, UK)

After wandering around a garden center for a couple of hours with my camera, taking quite a lot of photo’s of various flowers and not being completely happy with any of the results, I ended up taking a few of some roses growing in my garden and settled with this one.

As I took this fairly close, you can’t see just how huge and rambling this bush has become over the years. It looks wild, but I like it like that so I do very little to it & prefer to let it just go where it likes.

I tried to contact a human at facebook help centre, but that was, on reflection, a really stupid waste of time. Of course I didn’t get a reply. Oh I had the email telling me that they had received my message and that while they couldn’t always respond to each individual case, they would look at it. Well thanks for that.
So anyway I left it at that & logged out.

Next day I log into facebook and have actually forgotten that I was banned from posting on walls. I looked at a few of the humour pages that I have subscribed to and even managed to comment on a few of them. Then, all of a sudden, facebook remembers that I’m not supposed to be doing that & throws a message up saying something like “Hey, you can’t do that, we told you before that you are restricted from doing this because of your previous spammy & irrelevant posts”. WHAT? Spammy & irrelevant? Cheeky bleepers.

Well I decided that if I was being punished for using the features of the site & being prevented from socializing on a social network site that I wasn’t going to stand for it. So I sat down.

I decided to abandon that account and start a new one, which is what I did.
The only problem with that is that I have to now start building my profile & pages up again. Adding new photo’s & such and also making sure that any other applications/sites/etc that are linked to facebook are linked to the new account.

This is partly the reason for this blog entry. I want to make sure that I am linked properly here to the new account. If I’m not then this will have been a monumental waste of time. Wish me luck.

I will be making use of The Daily Post and other bloggers who are also doing this. It would be nice to get some feedback, comments etc. So if you don’t already read my blog, please have a look. Any & all encouragement is greatly welcomed.

My Son works as a KP in a hotel and his shifts change regularly, but generally once they are up on the board they are set. Just recently however the company has been playing this new game called ‘let’s change the rota at random & not tell anyone until it’s too late for them to do anything about it’.
This happened one time a little while ago and now again today.

He had booked a CBT course (that’s compulsory basic training for a motorcycle, for anyone who doesn’t know) with a local school and they managed to fit him in on Monday morning and said that he should be finished by 2:30pm.. which would leave him 30 minutes to get to work from the training centre. That would be pretty close, but we could do it. So it was all set, booked in, £25 deposit paid and all good to go.  Ah, but no, people got in the way. People again, those hideous creatures that always have to be flexing their muscles & messing with other people just because they can.

He got into work today (Sunday) and discovered that the rota had been changed and he is now on an early on Monday morning. They didn’t have the decency to ring him & tell him about it. Just waiting until he turned up at work this morning and found out for himself. Of course the rider training centre isn’t open on a Sunday and he is meant to be starting at 8:30am tomorrow. So he will have to ring them and leave a message on their answering machine that he can’t make it. There goes the £25 deposit.

Are companies allowed to do this sort of thing? Surely if you have been given work times a week in advance then they shouldn’t be allowed to just change them at random like that. Of course I know the answer to this already. Companies can do whatever they want. It’s a case of ‘Well if you don’t like being treated like shit you can always leave, there are plenty of other people waiting to take your place.’ So there it is. That’s why there is no loyalty to employers any more. they would rather get rid of someone who is a good worker and who knows the job and get in a completely new person who they will have to train up, rather than have a bit of common decency.

How is anyone supposed to make plans and organise their lives when bosses can just do this sort of thing?

I’m sure everyone has been in similar or worse situations at work and as I say, I know the reason why it is like it is, but I don’t think it should be. Yes there are loads of people out of work, but if everyone stood up for themselves and had any self-pride or dignity left & refused to be treated like something worthless, the employers would have to change their attitude or the country would come to a standstill. Again, of course I know this will never happen, but in an ideal world…

Well about 3 years ago, maybe a little less, I applied for a credit card from them. I got it and all was fine while I was spending on it, of course.

At the time I was working & earning reasonable wages, so I decided to take out a payment protection insurance so that in the event of my becoming ill & being off work, or should I happen to lose my job I would be covered. That was what i was told anyway.

A couple of years later I did have to leave work due to a back problem. The problem was quite bad, but despite that I tried to keep working. While I could not do the job I was doing when I took the credit card I took another job that I thought would be less strain on the back. This turned out not to be the case, but at least I tried.

So anyway, I got a bit behind with payments and Capital One reminded me that I had the insurance and suggested that I get in touch with Axa to make a claim. Well, what they actually said was “To see if I was eligible to make a claim”. This was the first warning to me that something was not entirely as it should be. I was told nothing of the possibility that I might not be eligible to make a claim when they sold me the insurance. So I got in touch with Axa and had to go through a whole series of forms that had to be filled in by my doctor & I had to send them wage slips  & such. This went on for a month or more and it turns out that because I was not actually registered as unfit for work by my doctor for a certain amount of time continuously (my own fault for taking another job I guess), I was not eligible so they closed the claim.

This means that although I had been paying £5 a month for a few years into the insurance plan, I could not claim it back now that I needed it. So my first thought (well my first thought was actually ‘what a rip-off’) was that they could take all the £5 I had paid over that time and take that off my balance. No such luck. Capital One said I needed to take that up with Axa and Axa said I needed to take it up with Capital One. See where this is going right?

Capital One phoned me up almost every day telling me that I needed to pay the balance or I would get more charges. Being unemployed I could not pay the balance and I told them so. The charges kept going on and eventually the charges put me over my agreed credit limit. So I get charged for that too. Let’s remember here that I did not spend over my limit, it was their charges that put me over. No amount of explaining on the phone would make a difference. Aside from the fact that they mostly couldn’t speak very good English, they have to stick to this rehearsed speech that they are obviously taught & told to stick to.

Eventually they get the message that I am unemployed and cannot afford to pay the amount and they tell me that it will be passed to a collection agency. Well i thought that’s OK, I will make them an offer of what I can reasonably afford to pay and at least the interest & charges will stop. When I spoke to the collection agency they tell me that Capital One wants the entire amount in one go. Ha. Funny. I explain to them that I am unemployed and that it is impossible for me to pay that. I also explain that if I could afford to do that I wouldn’t have been passed to the agency in the first place as I would have been able to pay Capital One. This makes no difference of course. They tell me that Capital One wants at least 5% of the total balance per month as a minimum payment. This would be around £45 a month. I told them I could not possibly afford that on unemployment benefit and made them an offer of £25 a month. The told me they cannot accept this and they would have to hand the whole deal back to Capital One to take whatever course of action they decide.

S now I am waiting to hear from Capital One again to see what they have decided. I have never heard of a collection agency refusing to accept a reasonable payment. I believe £25 a month to be a reasonable payment from someone who is unemployed. I would still like to know what happens to all the £5 I paid every month into the insurance plan. Do they just get to keep that?  Is that legal? probably.

Time & time again I see examples like this and then I hear & read that the best course of action when you are in debt & can’t afford to pay is to get in touch with the people you owe and explain your situation(which I have), offer to make a payment that you can realistically afford to stick to (which I have) and that they would rather sort this out with you than go through legal proceedings. This just does not seem to be the case.

I will update this when I have more to say.

A Piece of Buckingham Palace

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unique novelty gift package actually gives you a chance to own a piece
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Inside every gift package is a hand selected fallen leaf from
outside the walled gardens of the official residence of Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth The Second.

Each gift set also includes an elegant gold coloured frame and a personalised certificate for displaying this special gift.

Once the leaf has been dried and pressed – a simple process
you can do at home yourself – you can mount the leaf in the frame
along with a certificate.

You can print a certificate at home with the included template, or
send off a stamped addressed envelope to have one sent back to you.

This is a truly unique and personal gift. It’s a perfect Christmas present for fans of the royalty.

Grab this hot deal of the day now!

Features:

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This is a novelty gift item:
Our supplier confirms that every preserved leaf has been scooped off
the pavements of where the Royal Trees overhang onto the streets and
are accessible by the general public. However this still remains a
Piece of Buckingham Palace! Please also note that “The
Society for Horticultural Science and Preservation” is also a
novelty organisation and these words are purely used to enhance this
gift product…it still remains a great gift idea for the
Grandparents or maybe an office joke, where you can actually claim,
“I own a Piece of Buckingham Palace”.

Tags: BuckinghamPalace, leaf, framed, gift, humour

A lot of folks can’t understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
Well, there’s a very simple answer.
Nobody bothered to check the oil.
We just didn’t know we were getting low.
The reason for that is purely geographical.
Our OIL is located in ……  The North Sea
Our DIPSTICKS are located in ……… Westminster!

Any questions?
NO? I didn’t think so.

The short version of the story is that while recording a show the pair decided to prank call the Actor Andrew Sachs (probably most fondly remembered as Manuel, the Spanish waiter in The Fawlty Towers sketches) and during this call swore & there was a mention of Russell Brand sleeping with Mr. Sachs’ Granddaughter.
Russell Brand has since resigned from Radio 2 broadcasting and made a public apology. Jonathan Ross has also apologised and since been suspended, the show was also not broadcast. There is an investigation under way.

Mr Sachs has decided not to inform the police (yeah, they probably don’t read the news) and says he isn’t going anywhere with this as he is not out for revenge.
His Granddaughter, Ms Baillie however is apparently “Thrilled” that they have been suspended and feels that justice has been done, she also said that Brand & Ross were “Beyond contempt”.

The BBC News story

Have your say

OK, so maybe it’s just me again, but is this all just a tad over the top? Somewhat blown out of proportion?
So they made a prank call. They realised and admitted that it was a silly thing to do and that while they got caught up in the moment, they went a bit far, but to sack them for that seems insanely disproportionate to the ‘crime’.
They are both known for their ‘colourful’ language and attitude and their sometimes close to the knuckle humour, after all isn’t that why they are so successful? Is it not this same trait that has now got them into so much trouble that has kept audiences faithful to their shows for so long? Can the BBC really afford to lose them?
Of course I realise that just because someone is successful doesn’t mean they can do exactly as they please, but they have both apologised and admitted that they were foolish for making such a prank call. A prank call that it must be remembered they didn’t try to hide. They knew that their voices would not be concealed, their names would be known and I believe they sincerely thought it would be taken the way it intended, as a joke. Their biggest mistake as far as I can see was that of being poor judges of character.

Prank calls can be really nasty and the general public are exposed to this on a daily basis with little or no protection. The police are never interested in the really scary prank calls that people are hounded by, threatened by, abused by and scared by. The best advice I have heard anyone get in response to reporting a prank call on a mobile phone is the suggestion of getting a new number.
Those that scare & humiliate random (and not so random) members of the public know they will get away with it, yet two celebrities do it with humour in mind (and let’s face it, nobody was harmed or terrified by this) and they stand to lose their career because of it. Chalk up another point for our selectively unbalanced system.

Is this really the crime of the century? Highest unemployment for who knows how long, fuel prices, food prices, energy price increases, hundreds of new & crazy rules & regulations created, many on a daily basis, our private lives being snooped, rights being removed and that’s not to mention the other global problems that we are faced with, but put all that aside as we have to deal with the Brand & Ross crime first.
Let’s release known terrorists, let’s lock up pensioners for not paying Council taxes, let’s let the frail freeze to death, let’s fine children for throwing a chip on the floor to feed a seagull, but first let’s sack two celebrities who must make up a considerable portion of revenue for their bosses for making a prank phone call.

Tags: RussellBrand, Jonathan Ross, Andrew Sachs, BBC, Prank call, News

What this is actually all about is the Government once again doing what they have become so adept at of late and that is nationwide urine extraction. Yet again they take it upon themselves to ‘protect’ us with yet another ‘brilliant’ scheme that we have no say in, no right to challenge, in some cases no idea about and yet again takes away more of our ever dwindling rights.

“Rights?” I hear you ask. “What are these rights you speak of?”

How many of you have heard or read about this plan to tap into all emails and calls in the UK?

Before I started this particular post I rang the Daily Express to check that it would be OK for me reproduce their story in the October 6, 2008 newspaper, but they said I would have to pay. I shouldn’t have been surprised at that, after all it’s not about awareness is it? It’s about money, as with most things.

I could have just gone ahead and copied it out word for word and I doubt they would have ever found out, but I try to do the right thing. It makes no difference anyway really as I am quite capable of rewording the entire story so that I do not break any rules.

So anyway, as it stands, the new snooping plans propose to monitor all telephone calls, emails and text messages (and even log every website visited by computer users nationwide) in Britain at a cost of £12bn, which will be paid for by taxpayers. GCHQ have already had £1bn of your money to get this going.

As somebody from the anti-identity card group No2ID has already said, If you or I carried out this same kind of snooping it would be a crime. Also, consider the Government’s recent record of keeping information safe, how many times have they ‘lost’ sensitive information?

Even their own watchdog warns that such a scheme would be “A step too far for the British way of life”.

Apparently the aim is to set up a “live tap” on every electronic communication in the country. MI5 already carry out limited monitoring of emails and ‘net use.

This is all being done under the huge ‘combat terrorism’ umbrella along with attempting to stop computer fraud and internet-based paedophile rings. These reasons are all things that people should not question, we should put up with any amount of intrusion if it helps beat these things. The problem is, it wont. There will always be terrorists, paedophiles and fraud.

A few statistics:

Last year 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain, this works out to 1,800 every second. About 3 billion emails are sent every day, that’s 35,000 every second.

No2ID spokesman said: “This database could have no practical use at all. It would be so big, it would be impossible to find anything useful.”

This information is from a headline story printed in the Daily Express Newspaper on Monday October 6, 2008.

I couldn’t find that actual article on their website, but this UK News article is part of the same story and several responses in the ‘Have your say’ section below the main story.