….Sucks 
Day of exchange and the buyer pulls out. That means the estate agents have to try and chase up other people who put in offers, but they’ve probably found somewhere else by now. Failing that it means we have to find a new buyer and unless it happens quickly, it puts the whole purchase in jeapordy as well.
The sooner the system is changed to tie people in more with at least a small deposit the better
There seem to be 3 types of people who frequent post offices
That is it. There literally is no middle ground.
It is over 6 hours later. Noone has acknowledged that helpdesk call!
We’ve got the confirmation letters from both the estate agents through that everyone solicitors have begun soliciting, so hopefully we’ll be looking to move house in the middle of July. End the end, we went for a nice little 2 bedroom semi in Shirley, only about 10 minutes walk from where we currently live. I think the best thing about it is that after looking at about 15 houses, it was the only one where there were no annoying niggles - Living room too small, bathroom accessed via bedroom etc. It’s also in really top shape, so although we will redecorate to our tastes, there is no work needed initially.
The sellers dug their heals in with the price but luckily the flat sold for the valuation (actually slightly higher than I thought it would) and we have an excellent buyer who is paying cash so hopefully there won’t be any niggles 
In other news, the reality that I’ll be 30 soon becomes ever more obvious as I’ve now entered my 30th year. Had a nice evening in a Japanese restaurant with friends which was perfect after the adventures of the previous weekend at Mark’s stag do - Pics to follow when I renew my Flickr membership.
It’s been an expensive couple of weeks after a miscalculation on my behalf led to a taxi journey that cost £58 which I only managed to get down to £45 by an embarrasing sob story and plenty of piss taking by Joy! Then the next day, some chav smashes the passenger side window of my car and 2 others parked next to it. Now most people who know me would say that I have a fairly positive attitude with things like this, and I certainly think the police have got far more important things to be getting on with than investigating a smashed window. What I did find a really needless waste of resources is that after informing me that they wouldn’t be taking any action, I was asked to answer all sorts of questions on things like my age, ethnicity etc and was also visited twice by “Victim of crime” support officers who offered all sorts of councilling! The last thing I want to do is sound like a middle aged Daily Mail reading London taxi driver, but I really think that public services would be improved by focusing on the resources themselves, rather than bureaucracy and target levels.
On a positive side though, I’ve hopefully secured a nice little source of games by reviewing them on a website belonging to work. Joy did the first review for Mercury Meltdown Revolution on the Wii which you can read here. I really enjoyed this game on the PSP but it plays fantastically on the Wii-mote and is definately recommended.
Finally, after a bit of a lull on the Geko front, we’ve changed rehersal studios to Planet Sounds in Southampton, as noone actually lives in Winchester anymore. Although the whole place smells and feels full of damp, there is a lot more space and I think it will definately be a positive move We had a gig last night which was the first time that I’ve not been driving to for ages and I used the oppertunity as a scientific experiment to establish whether or not my playing ability would be affected by the intake of many pints of lager. The conclusions so far seem to be that it does, but it’s funny.
Every morning, I am woken by the sound of Razorlight - “Stumble and Fall”, for this is the alarm on my phone. On Friday, I was woken, not by Razorlight, but by a strange grating sound emanating from my phone. Unfortunately, this was the last sound my phone was to ever make. Luckily I had my phone for 12 months and was able to cancel the contract and go on a hunt for a new whizzy model.
At work, the reception of all the networks is pretty poor, with the exception of Orange who recently put in a mast when we threatened to ditch them as the preferred supplier. All networks have good coverage at home, so Orange seemed the best choice. Apart from food shopping and console pre-orders, I don’t really go to the shops very often, especially for tech stuff, and prefer to make all my purchases online. As I was on call at work, this was an emergency though. I was soon to be taught a lesson in consumer hell which would re-enforce my viewpoint that the general public and high street retailers are all imbeciles and to be avoided at all costs.
Dodging my way past the burberry wearing ASBO kids with their orange girlfriends and prams full of a variety of different coloured babies, I made my way to the Orange shop in West Quay. Being a good consumer, I had already picked the phone and tariff I wanted before hand. Mobile phone retail employees I am sure make most of their wages on commission. I knew exactly what I wanted and there would be no having to tirelessly explain what WAP was, I was the perfect customer. Instead, the 7 year old member of staff could not have looked more disinterested that I was to provide him with his 50 quid commission to buy his next piece of tasteful car modification equipment from Halfords. After filling in the application form, he decided to inform me that I would require “Something” with my address on it as a form of identification. Grrrrr.
Having gone home, picked up my motor insurance certificate and a wage slip, returned to town, fought my way back the same chavs no queuing for their Xmas presents in Elizabeth Duke I presented the documentation to the child who had served me before. “Oh we can’t accept those” says he, “It has to be a utility bill.” “Ah, but I am all electric which is paid through a meter, and my phone is with Bulldog and billed online” says I. “Well we can’t sell you one then” he replies. So there you go. France Telecom, if you are reading, don’t worry that I have proof of 2k a month going into my bank account and that I own a car registered to the address on my application form. The fact that I can’t demonstrate paying 30 quid a year to the water board clearly makes me unsuitable to be sold a phone from one of your shops.
I next attempted Phones4U. The salesman who greeted me, having taken a brief rest from his gunslinging and herding was a lot more enthusiastic. I explained the situation and was told that Phones4U are able to debit your bank card £1 and refund it immediately as way of address check. I told him the phone and tariff I wanted and I could see the pupils of his eyes turn into dollar signs as he shook my hand for the 6th time. The same set of questions we repeated over again. “How long had I been with my bank?”, “Have I ever left a gate open in a field?”. The credit check was complete, and the application had been accepted. The salesman beamed a happy smile and shook my hand again. It felt as if this deal could not even be rivalled by an Apple/Microsoft takeover.
There was a problem however. The shiny new phone I had chosen was a 3G model. The tariff they had processed me on was not. Not a problem you would think, a small amendment would sort that. The price is exactly the same each month. The amount of minutes are the same. How would that be any fun though? Far better to cancel the application and start another from scratch. There is nothing I like more than filling in how many pets I have owned in my life and my bank managers favourite football team for the third time that morning. The application was submitted however, but rather than a grin resembling that of the lovechild of President Blair and a Cheshire cat, the salesman’s face dropped as the words “Customer application limited exceeded” flashed back at him through the monitor.
So thank you Orange and Phones4U for an eventful morning. Through various bureaucratic reasons, I am not able to use your network. A fact later confirmed that evening by trying again that afternoon online. Instead, I managed to get the same model for the same price on 3 (with the advantage of half price line rental for the first 6 months). The phone was delivered the next day and the application process took less than 2 minutes online. I now intend to spend the rest of my life as an agoraphobic hermit type creature at home similar to Matthew in “Game On”.
Oh, and I also lost my parking ticket in Phones4U meaning I had to pay 13 quid get my car out.
UPDATE : Fan-fucking-tastic. I get home from work and what do I find? That would be a letter from Orange confirming the direct details. Further investigation shows that the Orange Shop (the one who wouldn’t accept my ID) went ahead and set it up in my absence anyway. This despite the fact that they wouldn’t accept any form of ID from me and didn’t give me the phone :/
http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=752
I’m sure most people reading this are clever enough to have worked this out themselves, but lets just analyse the statistics briefly. From their own figures, there are around 500,000 East Europeans in Britain, so we are actually talking about 1 in 10 claiming some form of benefit. Doesn’t really sound like that much does it? But what does “Benefits” actually mean? The Express would like us to believe that Benefits = Dole, but in fact it doesn’t. Over 35,000 are receiving Child Benefit - £17.45 a week for the first child and £11.70 for subsequent children. This by the way would be the same child benefit that every parent in the country is entitled to, and I don’t believe has risen much since my parents were claiming it 15 years ago. Makes quite a dent into the 55,000 “Sponging” immigrants doesn’t it?
The next largest “Benefit” claimant is just over 17,500 Working Tax Credits. Thats Working tax credits, so for people in employment as a sumplement of a very low wage. Again, hardly what I’d see as dole scrounging scum.
Let’s get into the real nitty gritty though. The “Jobseekers” allowance. Again, going by the Express’ own figures a whopping 859 claiming £57.45 a week. Now bearing in mind it has been a while since I did maths, I calculate that as 0.17% of Eastern European immigrants are claiming JSA. A quick google reveals that compares with 3.2% across the nation. In other words proportionally speaking, for every East European claiming JSA, there are 19 native Britains claiming it.
What does this mean for the country though. The argument often made (not by me) is that migration is only of benefit to the country if it is of beneficiary to out economy.
The IPPR report also finds: · Each immigrant generated £7,203 in government revenue on average in 2003-04, compared with £6,861 for non-migrant workers;
· Each migrant “cost” the country £7,277 in government spending last year, compared with £7,753 per non-migrant.
Nick Pearce, director of IPPR, an independent thinktank, said: “Our research shows that immigrants make an important fiscal contribution to the UK and pay more than their share. They are not a drain on the UK’s resources.”
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/election/story/0,15803,1470898,00.html
Of course, how many papers would “0.17% of East European immigrants claim JSA” sell to Nick Griffin’s bunch of merry little men?