Desperate Times

I've seen some sh*t for sale on the local Facebook buy-and-sell groups, but usually sh*t in the figurative sense rather than the literal- stuff that any normal person would throw in the bin, or at least give away to the charity shop. But tonight this popped up for sale:

Owner retains copyright

This is someone selling a bed. Needless to say on last check there were no takers. Perhaps his asking price is putting people off- €51. You'd have thought he'd have been happy with a straight €50, but no, not this guy. Unless, of course, he's priced it at €51 expecting to be haggled down. 

I can imagine the look of pleasure on the buyer's face when they manage to beat him down a whole €1 and grab this bargain- the work that must have gone into filthing and sh*tting-up a mattress to this degree, coupled with the complete lack of shame in actually trying to sell it rather than burn it is surely worth €50 of anyone's money- the bed frame is just a bonus. 

Wall Walker

Some bloke advertised a load of non-slip tiles for sale on a local Facebook group.

A potential buyer asked "Are these wall or floor tiles?"

I suppose you need all the traction you can get when you're walking up your bathroom wall. 

Underqualified

It would be a vary rare and extreme case in the private sector if someone walked into a high-ranking position with no experience of the role or industry whatsoever, and one which no doubt would deservedly cause uproar from existing employees if it did.

Indeed, it's a difficult path to the top even for someone with a wealth of experience at the lower levels, despite those candidates often having more knowledge than those at the top in regards to the day-to-day operations.

Even when you are at the top, relevant experience generally limits movement from job-to-job; it's unlikely the current head of the NHS would walk into the position of CEO at a national chain of builders merchants, or that the current CEO of a supermarket chain would find himself Editor-in-chief at a national newspaper.

All this makes sense of course- why would you give such an important role to someone with no experience, particularly given that for any given job vacancy there will be a raft of candidates who do have relevant experience and proven track-records?

How is it then, that the only prerequisite for some of the most important positions in the country- education secretary, health secretary, defense secretary, home secretary, etc, etc- is to be an MP? How can someone with exactly zero experience in the sector or industry be put in charge of it, and moreover transition from one position to another as easily as changing their clothes?

It's no wonder that everyone- employees in the relevant sectors and laymen alike- complains about the running of things, because when you think about it it's sheer madness, and something that could only happen in government- no other organisation would be stupid enough to operate in such a way.

Greed

I hate greed- it's such an unnecessary condition yet one that manifests itself everywhere:

The person who piles his/her plate sky-high at the Chinese buffet or Sunday carvery then ends up leaving half of it. 

The person who gets all exited for the Euro Millions rollover and buys extra tickets, as though the regular lottery jackpot (of which the odds of winning are far far greater) isn't quite enough.

The person who frequents Hot UK Deals to see if there are any pricing errors on 2-litre bottles of pop so he/she can go and clean out the supermarket's entire stock holding. 

I once saw a bloke (who could regularly be found hovering around the supermarket reduced aisle and who would often intercept the poor store assistant before she could even get the product on the shelves) buy THREE birthday cakes just because they were on clearance. It went a long way to explaining his size.

Then you've got corporate greed, which I hate even more:

Companies prepared to destroy their hard-earned reputations by cheaping on products to squeeze a few more quid profit out of an item, or by trying to buy into the cheap-end of the market to milk every last revenue stream rather than focusing on the quality products upon which they built the name they now trade off. 

Companies who issue profit warnings and see their share-prices plummet because they're only going to make £1.4 BILLION this year.

Companies who'll cut every corner and dodge every responsibility in the name of profit, and the short-sighted approach of screwing a customer for their money once being preferable to gaining a customer for life.

Probably the worst example I've ever seen was when I worked for a company about thirteen years ago- and who thankfully have long since gone bust, ironically largely because of their greed and short-termist business models.

At some point this company decided to put charity pin-badges on the counter. You'll have seen these before in other shops and petrol stations, accompanied by a donation box. But this company didn't use the box- all the donations went in the till. Was this in the name of security, ensuring that some light-fingered Larry couldn't grab the box from the counter and make off with it? No- it was because the company was creaming off 50% of the donation money; money that the customer quite rightly assumed was going to the charity. Despicable.


Why is enough never enough? 

The cost of a bargain

Many of you will have come across a website called Hot UK Deals before. If you haven't, it's a site for posting offers, voucher codes, "deals" and other such bargains from retailers.

While it certainly has some decent members among its ranks, it is also full of loathsome individuals who will buy anything just because it is cheap; will take advantage of glitches or pricing-errors to bulk-buy 240 2-litre bottles of pop and cost a man (or woman) his job for their mistake; will exploit any loophole to their advantage even if it isn't to their advantage because it's not something they wanted or needed in the first place.

This place is full of examples of the worst traits of mankind, but for this rant I'll focus on one in particular- a £9.99 drill.

The HUKD community has been going wild for this drill, who's price includes postage. Yes- a drill that is £9.99 delivered. 

The drill is shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class, though no weight is given. From experience it will weigh at least a kilo, so based on Royal Mail's price for a small package, the postage will be at least £2.90. Take the VAT off the remainder, and that leaves you at £5.65. Then you've got the seller's profit to factor in- say £2 at a pure guess? So that leaves £3.65. And it's not made in the UK, so then you've got shipping costs. And then you've got the manufacturer's profit, and packaging costs, and material costs. 

So how much does the poor b*stard who's making this drill actually get paid? It's probably measured in grains of rice rather than bowls.

But apart from the moral dilemma of a drill that costs £9.99 posted, how good does the buyer expect it to be? The Royal Mail postage is more than the cost of the materials used to make it. Personally I wouldn't even dare plug it in, for fear that it would burst into flames. A product of this nature at that price can not be safe- there simply isn't enough money put into it to ensure that the material quality, workmanship or quality control are at the levels they need to be.

And yet the scroungers go wild for it. If they're lucky, their house won't burn down from using it, the chuck won't shatter and throw shards of metal into their eyes and face, and the worst case scenario is that somewhere in an far away land some child is being exploited so they can buy a piece-of-sh*t drill for £9.99. 

But you know, out of sight, out of mind.

Ignorance is bliss

I've always wanted a Corvette (the car, not the battleship).

While out shopping the other year I noticed a Chevrolet showroom, so thought I would pop in for a look. This was around the time that Chevy were doing a lot of TV advertising in the UK, showing their fleet of cars driving up a runway headed by the Corvette, then the Camaro.

I had a quick look around, and failing to see the sleek lines of the most beautiful car ever designed, the flagship model in Chevy's portfolio, asked the salesman.....

"Excuse me, do you have any Corvettes?"

He looked up at me blankly, and replied "car mats?" 

Is nowhere safe from junk?

I think I've seen it all now- a car launched into space. For what? What's it going to do up there?

Mankind have a lot to answer for. We fill the ground with sh*t. We fill the sea with sh*t. Now on the same news channel that's been campaigning against all the crap in the sea, I find them reporting with gusto that we're throwing crap into space now. 

I know this isn't the first instance of pointless rubbish being launched up there, but it's the first time I've seen it celebrated. And I can't fathom the rational from a man who's main selling point is that his cars are eco-friendly. 

With any luck the car will hit the satellite broadcasting this rubbish and we can go back to living in ignorance. But I doubt it. 

Spanish Driving

The Spanish are great people- friendly, welcoming, trusting, decent, and despite the rumours, hard-working. They also cannot drive. 

Rather than view the white line as a separator between lanes, they seem to see it as something to try and keep to the middle of, like the power line on a Scalextric track.

Entry slip-roads should be used in their entirety- if the opportunity to pull onto the motorway presents itself with a hundred yards of slip-road to spare, this should be avoided in favour of carrying on to the very end of the slip, even if this then means having to come to a dead stop because there is now traffic on the motorway. 

They will brake at corners- EVERY corner, no matter how broad-sweeping and no matter how slow they are already going on the approach. It's as if they were taught to slow down for corners without any real explanation as to why, so they do so unwaveringly. I had some joker right up my a*se yesterday for a good mile on a straight road; two corners later I've regained half a mile on him. I don't think accelerating through a corner is even on the radar. 

Then we have roundabouts. I was told very early on that the Spanish don't know how to use roundabouts, and it absolutely true. The outside lane does for everything, the inside lane is purely decorative. The transport authority had to issue guidance lately to explain how to use roundabouts- and even then buckled to convention rather than try and re-educate a nation of drivers.
Roundabouts also make great parking spots should you need to stop and make a phone call.

A couple of days ago we saw a line of cars pulling into the outside lane of the motorway, as if to overtake some invisible vehicle. The reason for which, it turned out as we got closer, was that there was a traffic cone- on the hard shoulder. 
At first this bizarre avoidance of a non-existent obstacle seemed to do nothing but reaffirm our opinions of Spanish driving- then it occurred to us; in a country where you can drive for miles without seeing another car, where three cars in front of you constitutes a traffic jam, where any road works are started and completed within a day at most, and where the roads are laid properly in the first place so don't require constant patching-up, most Spanish drivers have probably never seen a traffic cone- so seeing one on the hard shoulder was probably as strange and unnerving to them as seeing a pig dressed as a clown pushing a wheelbarrow. 

The right tool for the job

I've always been an advocator and new-adopter of technology, but one thing that drives me wild is mobile phone addiction, and specifically for this rant, the jack-of-all trades that modern mobile phones have come to be. 

And that really is what they are, in the original meaning of the phrase. They are "master of none". Much like the Swiss Army Knife; while it's a handy item to carry as an all-in-one solution, you wouldn't choose to use any of its tools in preference to the dedicated version; that is to say, assuming you own a knife, saw, pair of scissors, screwdriver, toothpick or some tweezers, and they were to hand, you wouldn't sideline them in favour of using the scaled-down version on your Swiss Army Knife.

The same then goes for phones. They make a passable attempt at offering an all-in-one solution for taking photos, listening to music, navigation, web-browsing- even office functions- but they fall far short of the dedicated products they attempt to pass themselves off as. They're not even that good at being phones, compared to their non-smart predecessors. People of my generation will remember when mobile phone battery life was measured in weeks, not hours.

While out driving the other day, I decided to check the route of the in-car sat-nav against that on my phone, just to make sure it was sending us the same way. I couldn't get a satellite lock, and not for the first time. Fortunately I wasn't depending on it, but in times past I have been and the one thing you can rely on is when you really need to use it, it won't work. You can't beat a TomTom.

The mind boggles when it comes to people watching TV and films on their phone. I have a TV for that, a nice big 50" one. Why, when I have that, would I chose to watch a piddling little phone screen instead? "Ah, but what about when you're not at home Rob?" I hear you ask. Why the f*ck would I want to watch TV or a film or any other video when I'm out?! 
If I'm out it's because I'm doing something- shopping, dining, sight-seeing. Not watching TV.

Or how about using a phone as your main sound-system? For a fraction of the price of one of these fancy bluetooth speakers you can buy a proper hi-fi that actually sounds good. In a world where everything visual has to be HD, or even 4k, it beggars belief that people are still choosing to listen to music on something that provides poorer sound quality than an old cassette player and less bass than a good fart.

The one that really tips me over the edge is using phones as a camera. Again, useful in some circumstances- getting a quick snap of something for reference later, or if you find yourself in an accident- but not as a replacement for a camera. Even the most basic of compact cameras is streets ahead of a phone camera. And worse still is the bell-end who uses an iPad as a camera. Just grow up.

Maybe I'm just old-school. Maybe it's because if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. But you can keep your £800 iPhone thank you very much. I'll spend £40 on a phone and the change can go on a TV, a hi-fi, a sat-nav, a laptop, an MP3 player and a camera, all of which will do their designated jobs infinitely better than any phone can.

And, for the record, people were using proper cameras- cameras that used film, no less- to take photos of themselves long before someone ever decided to stick a camera in a phone and some muppet coined the phrase "selfie".

Missing the Punchline

The advent of social media has provoked a surge in the circulation of scenario-based jokes. You know the type, the supposedly true story where something whimsical happened, often told in the first person.

The trouble with many of these is that the authors almost always have zero understanding of the concept and construct of a joke, or, more specifically, a punchline, so they always tag a little bit on the end that is completely unnecessary and shifts the focus beyond the punchline to a cringe-worthy finish. 

For example:

An ugly woman asked me for my number in the bar the other night.
"Do you have a pen?", I ask.
"I sure do" she replies.
"Well" I said, "you'd better get back in it before the farmer notices you're missing"
My dental surgery is on Monday.

The last line is pointless, totally superfluous. The line before it is the punchline, and thus the end of the joke. But somehow they seem to think the "dental surgery" addendum is the funny part, the line to end on. 

The wife is always reading me these things out when they appear on her Facebook. You can spot the writing style a mile off, and just know it's going to end beyond where it should, so while she's laughing away I'm just cringing.

While we're on the subject, if you find the need to tag "joke" on to the end of what is meant to be a humourous comment, it's odds-on that the comment itself isn't actually funny. It's either funny or it isn't; if it is, it doesn't need "joke" adding to the end as clarification. If it isn't, sticking "joke" on the end won't make it so.

So, if you're going to bother writing and sharing a joke, take the time to understand what a joke is first, and crucially, where it should end. 

Shopping

We went shopping today. Well really, we were just going to the builders merchants, but when we got there found it to be sited next to a shopping centre, so we quickly got distracted. 

One thing I've noticed is that, unlike us Brits who having chosen our goods want to get them paid for and out the door as quickly as possible, the Spanish seem to relish their time at the till as much as their time spent browsing. It seems it's part of the whole shopping experience to them, and they'll think nothing of spending ten minutes f*cking about at the till, gabbing away, emptying their purse or bag out over the counter for no apparent reason- anything to drag out their time there for a bit longer. 

I got stuck behind one such lady today in the Guess shop. I wonder if she really knew what shop she was in, as she didn't come across as Guess's target market. I was starting to wish I'd brought a packed lunch, and even after paying she managed to loiter at the till for several more minutes- not really doing anything, just savouring the moment. By the time she'd finally finished all the creases had fallen out of the T-shirt I was about to buy, so at least she saved me the job of ironing it. 

Next we went to ToysRUs, whereupon I was immediately made to leave my Guess-branded carrier bag behind the till. Fair enough, I thought, before turning round and noting the first person I saw in front of me had been allowed to keep her massive handbag on her person. If you were a detective, who would you pick as the potential shoplifter- the woman with distractive kids and a massive handbag, or the bloke carrying visible evidence of having just spent money in the most expensive clothes shop in the centre? Oh well, no harm done. 

On to the builders merchants- think Wickes or B&Q. I knew exactly what I was going for- some kitchen cabinets for the garage- and had thought ahead to take a print-out list from their website just in case I couldn't find them and the language barrier posed a problem. I couldn't find them. 

The wife spotted a service desk in the middle of the kitchen area, so took up position behind the couple already being served. Ten minutes later when the member of staff manning the desk had managed to finally free himself of the couple, the wife approaches, asks where to find these particular cabinets, and is pointed straight to one of the two people at desks behind this bloke and who had been sat there all along doing f*ck-all and could have at any point offered assistance had they been so inclined. 

So then, for no apparent reason, we have to supply full contact details- name, address, etc- before we can have access to these off-the-shelf cabinets. Then the guy takes my print-out and puts it all in his computer, double-checking and triple-checking it (it was only three cabinets). Then, he prints out a piece of paper- one that looks suspiciously like the piece of paper I handed him in the first place- and tells me to take it to the other end of the building and present it to another desk, and they will get my cabinets. I can't figure this guy out. He could have just sent me straight to the other desk in the first place. Maybe he was bored- but not so bored that he felt like asking the wife if she wanted assistance for the ten minutes she was stood at the previous desk waiting to speak to someone. 

The whole process from the wife joining the queue to me having the cabinets on my trolley took about forty minutes. In the UK, people would just walk away before waiting that long. But then this is Spain, and we didn't come here to rush around like idiots- you've just got to go with the flow.

An Before H

This one gets my goat. More so than people who say "pacific" when they mean "specific". And I've just heard it yet again on the news, where is seems even Sky's coffers won't stretch far enough to pay for someone who can speak properly. 

"A" precedes words beginning with a consonant.
"An" precedes words beginning with a vowel. 

The trouble with the letter H is, of course, that sometimes it is silent. So, what on paper should be "a honour" is actually pronounced "an 'onour". But that's easy enough to get your head round- if the H is silent, precede it with "an"; an hour, an honest person, an honourable act, an heir to the throne. If the H is pronounced, precede it with "a"; a hotel, a hot potato, a hierarchy, a history lesson. Easy.

It's pretty straightforward really. Yet somehow people- particularly news readers- just can't get their heads round it. Particular favourites are "an hospital" and "an historical event". Now if the newsreader was from Yorkshire, and dropped the H on everything, thus pronouncing "hospital" as " 'ospital" or "historical" as " 'istorical", then preceding with "an" would make sense. But they aren't and they don't and they just sound stupid. You can't have it both ways- pick one or the other but not both. 

Maybe I'm unfairly directing the blame at the wrong person, and it should be the auto-cue programmer who deserves a few whacks with the cane before being made to stand in the corner. Either way someone can't speak, and given that much of the native English-speaking population struggle with the language as-is, the last thing they need is someone in a position of authority teaching them more bad habits. 

Stupidity Rating

Amazon reviews- it's a simple concept: you buy a product, then if you so wish, leave a review on it for the benefit of potential future buyers.  

What you'll often find though, especially when trawling the one-star reviews, is that even this most basic of concepts is lost on some people, whereupon the review ceases to be a product review and becomes a review of buyer competency. 

You'll often see the one-star review citing "never arrived". This doesn't constitute a product review and it's not helpful- but it's not that entertaining either. You've got to dig deeper to find the real idiots.

Recent finds include the person who commented that a pneumatic nail gun was too expensive, and that he found a cordless screwdriver to be just as effective and cheaper. Now I'm quite handy, so forgive my knowledge on such matters. But this is the first time I have ever heard of someone trying to use a cordless screwdriver to knock in nails.
Call me crazy, but if you want a cheaper alternative to a pneumatic nail gun to put nails in something, wouldn't you automatically think "hammer"? But no, not this genius. He's bypassed that £3 product- one of the oldest tools known to man- in favour of using the fat end of his £20 cordless screwdriver to bray them in with. 

Speaking of pneumatic nail guns, another customer decided to buy one before purchasing the compressor required to power it, then couldn't find a compressor within her budget, so instead of returning it she threw it in a drawer, unused, and took straight to Amazon to give it the obligatory one-star. Upon what basis I still can't fathom.

Another fellow bought a drill guide (a little jig to help you drill a straight hole), then complained that the holes in it were slightly larger than his drill bits, forgetting of course that if they had been the same size the drill bit would have got stuck in the hole rendering both parts useless- though in his defence if he needed a drill guide in the first place he probably should be getting someone else in to do the job, so perhaps we'll let him off. 

It's fair to say then that in the main you can discount the one-star reviews. Sadly Amazon don't, so these moronic comments sit there dragging the overall product rating down, thereby you have to read through them to ascertain whether the product really is sh*t, or whether the cast of the muppet show have been allowed near a keyboard again. 

I've saved my favourite until last; One lady gave the DVD of the classic fantasy film The Labyrinth one-star because she thought she was buying a book by an author called Kate Mosse, and that she didn't even like David Bowie....though apparantly her kids loved the film. Idiotic on so many levels.

Just tell the truth!

We seem to live in a society where lying is so prevalent that it's just become accepted- considered the norm almost. Politicians and the media, as two good examples, have gone way beyond the manipulation of facts to outright falsifying of information. We know this happens, but we accept it- why?

Not a day goes by when I don't read or watch some "news" story that contains blatantly false information designed purely to influence the audience and sway them in a direction they otherwise may not have gone. And I'm not talking about the so-called "fake news", I'm talking the mainstream supposedly non-partisan media. 

Lately a fellow on my shooting forum held a vote on how the competition he ran was to be scored. The first option was to keep the status quo, the second to switch to a system that made the competition more accessible by omitting the lowest-scoring rounds. Without boring you to death, the latter basically meant those who had missed the start of the competition, or those that missed a round for whatever reason, wouldn't be penalised. It's a system with pro's but no con's. Anyway, for whatever reason, this guy had decided before the start that he didn't want the new scoring system to win the vote (possibly because of some misguided belief that it would create more work for him when it came to collating the scores). 
So he made up this whole story about how the new system was exploitable by cheats; that in fact once upon a time it had been scored this way and that certain individuals had used it to manipulate their scores. 
It was all pure fabrication, the system CANNOT be cheated. When challenged on this, he didn't respond. He kept his head down until the vote was over, by which time he had hood-winked enough people to swing the vote the way he wanted it to go, and when the truth of the matter eventually sunk in it was too late.

The whole affair drew parallels with the Brexit campaign, where again facts weren't just distorted, they were fabricated in entirety. Now I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd have preferred the result to have gone the other way, though it has little affect on me really- I've left the UK and I'm not coming back. But a vote is a vote, and you have to respect the result- as long as the vote is fair. Garnering votes based on lies is nothing more than rigging. If any other competition was found to be rigged (as has been the case in recent years) there would be outcry- people may recall not too long ago when the BBC had to stop running competitions when they were exposed for rigging them. Yet even in something as crucial as the Brexit referendum, because it was run by politicians who we know and accept cheat and lie, we likewise accept the result.

The only people arguing against a second referendum are the ones that won the first. They dismiss any suggestion for one as sour grapes on the remainers part. I say have one. Not because I want to see the outcome change particularly, but because now much of the truth of the matter has emerged, the vote will at least be a fair one. If the Leave camp were confident that the result would go the same way, it would only serve to bolster their own argument- but of course they aren't, and this is the crux of the whole matter;

If you have a good idea, with sound argument and reasoning backing it, you don't have to lie to people to convince them it's a good idea. It's only when you know your idea is flawed, or won't appeal to the masses, that you have to start fabricating "facts" to make it more appealing, or to make the alternative option seem worse than it is.

Surely then, at the point you realise you can't win the vote without lying and cheating, that would be the point to stop and question whether your good idea really is such a good idea after all?