The first post was about the celebrity culture surrounding Size 0 and the second post was about starvation diets. The posts were about the pure idiotic mentality surrounding this culture and how to diet properly. He has been tracking the search terms used to enter the blog post and discovered people searching for “how to starve my self” and “starve myself to death”. I found this shocking that people are actually so worried about their weight they are prepared to starve themselves to a point where they are risking their lives.

JT’s Verdict – “What in gods name is wrong with the world that people listen to the idiotic lives of celebrities who think Size 0 and starvation diets are acceptable? Most celebrities on the latest diet have a brain the size of a pea but it seems attractive to young girls copying this lifestyle.”

I’m really interested in hearing from people about their views and what we can do to support those people who think this is sensible!

In my view the web cannot be controlled in this way and I can’t believe she is setting out on this personal mission!

JT’s verdict “In my option, someone who fought so hard for £25million of Sir Paul McCartney money will never be able to keep out of the media’s eye. This seems like another sad tactic by Heather Mills to keep her face in the media. Surely by keeping a low profile would be the best tactic to protect her daughter.”

See story below:

A Great North Runner’s hit out at Gateshead Council after getting what he says was a completely unreasonable parking ticket on the day of the event.

John Lewins from Peterlee ran the 13 miles dressed as a gorilla for charity.

He parked his car in Heworth but when he got back he’d been given a ticket for being outside the parking bay’s lines.

He says he was on the line and the ticket shouldn’t stand.

Gateshead Council sent a statement saying they can’t comment on individual cases. Gateshead Council are spineless morons who are frightened of letting someone raising money for chairty off one stupid parking ticket. They are rich and greedy civil servants who’s idea of hitting a target is not reducing crime but issuing enough parking tickets.

The bulk of this article has been taken from http://www.metroradio.co.uk/Article.asp?id=933194&spid=25620

JT’s Judgement:- “From the posts and feedback I recieve about parking tickets it seems every council is as spineless as the other. They sneak upto your car when your not around and slap on a parking ticket. They then fail to comment, seriously get a grip! Gateshead Council seem to be making money from people raising money for charity this time, something is very wrong with the world!”

If anyone else experienced parking problems on race day of the Great North Run I would be very interested to hear from you.

So what happened?
After the family member’s funeral service I received a phone call from the Co-op Legal department. I hate getting sales calls as you can see from my other posts on the blog; this crossed a line. Selling me legal services after a death in the family; what a cheek! I asked the person on the phone how they got my details and was told the Co-op Funeral Service had passed my details on. If this wasn’t bad enough the information I was being told on the phone was incorrect and close to what is allowed by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. After checking with my solicitor I was quite shocked at the price I was quoted and the incorrect information I was being told as part of the sales process. I think the person doing the selling had been reading a few too many fairy tales or had little / no understanding of the law. How can someone with no legal experience advise correctly on legal matters?

I have since been told by other people and become extremely concerned about approaches made by the Co-op legal department, at a time when people are extremely vulnerable.  Other people have been charged a large sums for unnecessary work.

How can you avoid this happening to you?

• Most high street law firms will charge as little as £400 + vat & disbursements to administer an estate under £75,000. The maximum you should have to pay is £1,400 + vat & disbursements.
• If an estate is more than £75,000.00  a law firm at the beginning will determine exactly where you will stand on costs.
• You should not have to sign a power of attorney as you could lose control over the estate administration.
• If you use a local law firm you will be able to continue to act in your own capacity and control what is happening. A faceless call centre that the Co-op use would be a nightmare.
• Your firm should advise you if you need a grant.
• Your firm should not be incurring an extra costs but occasionally this is required when something usual has to be deal with. In this case they should be fair and explain all costs up front before any work is carried out.
• A firm who deals with this work on a regular basis will have experts on hand to deal with every aspect of the estate.
• You will be able to meet your solicitor in their own office and quite often the initial meeting will be free.

 I have tried to write a very simple article to explain the dodgy Co-op legal service and a guide to help you get through a tough time when dealing with the estate of a family member. It is my experience that Lawyers / solicitors don’t always deserve a bad reputation but by using a local firm you will get excellent service and value for money.

 JT’s Judgement – “The co-op are nothing but modern day grave robbers who need to sit back and decide if this really is the way to deal with people suffering family bereavements!“

I have only experienced of the sales practices of the Co-op but I would love to hear from anyone who has fallen into the trap of taking them up on their legal services.

We have the usual Health and Safety requirements and take it very seriously but I just thought the world is going mad.

JT’s Judgement: ” Is Health and Safety getting beyond a joke? There has to be a line where some risks just can’t be avoided. Where is the line going to be drawn or will it eventually hold businesses back?”

As you may have noticed my last blog post was about the rather unethical way the Lib Dems carry out their marketing. Not only do the Liberal Democrats seem to miss understand the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) they also seem to have completely misunderstood the MPS (Mail Preference Service). I have signed myself up to both the TPS and MPS which all commercial companies are following as the number of sales calls and junk mail has greatly reduced.

So what was the letter all about? Basically at the bottom of the letter it explained the percentage split between the three main parties. It showed that in this area the Conservatives only control about 14% of the vote. The comment next to this statistic is “The Conservatives cannot win here. A vote for them only helps Labour.” What this say to me is an insult to every potential voter in the local area. People surely should be voting on the strength of a candidate, the policies of the local party and how proactive the person is being to help the local residents. Could the Ron Beadle of the Liberal Democrats make a weaker argument? Surely there is more to your campaign strategy? You must be proud of something you have done or are you just as weak minded as the rest of the Lib Dems?

Although it doesn’t mention on the MPS web page that it will stop mail from Political parties. I don’t want your rubbish in the post!

JT’s Judgement: “The MPS should apply to political parties if it doesn’t already as it is making me sick the amount of rubbish being spouted by politicians. As for the Lib Dems this is the second time in one week they have contacted me and I’m getting very upset!”

This really annoyed me as I’m a member of something called the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) except the Liberal Democrats don’t understand this very simple organisation. No wonder he has know chance with his political career.

The TPS say this on their website: “The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls to your home or mobile telephone numbers. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.”

As you can probably already tell, I’m not a big fan of the Liberal Democrats and they fail to understand a simple fact that I am a member of the TPS. It clearly states that even political parties have to follow the rules. You may think this is a little over critical but in the world of politics the leader has to stand accountable for every decision and every mistake.

JT’s Judgement: “Not only is Nick Clegg a wet weekend but he seems to think he is a law unto himself violating the quite serious rules of the TPS that commercial companies have to follow. ”

If anyone would like to share their experiences of annoying marketing strategies from political party please let me know.

I have also had similar problems with City Link and think it’s time they sort there act out! I’ve had numerous deliveries going missing but two in particular come to mind which I’ll quickly share with you.

City Link Delivery No. 1:One of my clients ordered some promotional literature which we were printing. Unfortunately, the client was unable to pick the literature up in time before the conference they were attending. Therefore, as a business with good customer service I arranged the literature to be delivered to the conference via City Link for a pre 9am delivery. To my horror City Link didn’t deliver the parcel until 5pm after the conference had finished although I paid for this special pre 9am service. Therefore my client went through out the entire conference without leaflets and business cards. So what did City Link do to compensate my client you might ask? Absolutely nothing!!

City Link Delivery No. 2: We were dispatching a set of flyers to one of our client’s which hadn’t arrived on the day expected. After checking their online tracking system I discovered the parcel apparently had been delivered. To cut a long story short, we discovered the flyers had been delivered to the wrong address and to the wrong company. City Link’s reaction was the most interesting I’ve ever experienced, they said because the flyers had been signed for they were considered delivered and out of their control. After much arguing and slagging off a dozen City Link employees they reluctantly recollected the flyers. As a result my client refused to pay for the flyers as the whole job was delivered a week late. To make matters worse, again City Link refused to accept the mistake and nothing was offered to myself or my client; not even an apology.

After some investigation and conversations we have discovered numerous businesses in the region have been experiencing similar problems. As a result our business has been moved to FedEx and TNT which seems to be working very well.

JT’s Judgement: “City Link are incompetence idiots who fail to deliver every time which is bad considering they are a courier company!”

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone having similar problems. Lets see if we can get the message through!

Based on Gordon Brown’s track record so far the outcome will no doubt be less than satisfactory. How does this bumbling idiot expect to make a difference to money hungry oil leaders. Unfortunately what “Bumbling Bad Boy Brown” fails to remember is that a market is led by profit not by ethics. The oil industry doesn’t care what it is doing to the market or the environment; only how much profit they will make.

Why is Gordon Brown the lap dog to the oil leaders? He seems to come begging at their every beck and call.

After all Gordon Brown has had some hits this year with his 10p tax band, the handling of Northern Rock and the mortgage crisis. Mr Brown is use to being the lap dog after his begging and grovelling with the banking industry earlier this year. That session on his knees resulted in nothing serious being done apart from £50bn being drained out of the Uk’s already stretched economy into the pockets of banks.

JT’s Judgement on this: “Gordon Brown is a bumbling idiot who seems to be the lap dog for every industry. Get him out!”

Why aren’t we being provided alternatives to fossil fuel or why isn’t this even being discussed by the government?

Good blog, it’s about time there was a site to let people have a rant at the increasingly crazy way our country is being run. My beef tends to be about the outrageous waste of money of local councils and national government. These people don’t earn a penny doing anything useful but exist by leeching off the rest of us through taxes. England must surely now rank as one of the highest taxed countries in the world.

I could do a whole series on politicians – European, UK and local; but for today I want to get just one aspect off my chest – National Government Advertising. Can anybody tell me what the current annual spend of GB UK is on TV, radio, poster and print advertising? The last accurate figures I could find left me speechless:

Government spending on advertising, marketing and public relations has also almost tripled from £111m in 1997 to £322m last year.

It gets worse I’m afraid…

A total of more than 3,200 press officers are now paid from the public purse – a three-fold rise since Labour first came to power in 1997. There are 1,815 press officers and public relations staff in Whitehall alone.  A further 1,444 are employed by 200 quangos and agencies funded by taxpayers. The Ministry of Defence employed 229 press officers and PR staff while the Home Office – recently blighted by a series of PR blunders – has 145 public relations staff. The figures do not include the 77 politically appointed special advisers working directly for cabinet ministers.

It’s no wonder millions of Britons are leaving the country every year; the lunatics really have taken over the asylum. What do we need 3,200 press officers for? Can you imagine what we could do with £322m!

I don’t know about you but I’m getting sick and tired of being threatened by my own government. I pay both my personal and corporate taxes in full and as I run my own companies, I’m forced to act as an unpaid tax collector for VAT, which takes up my time and costs me money. And woe betide if I submit a return a day late, as I’m surcharged for it and threatened with tax inspections. I pay business rates and local housing rates, I renew my car tax on time, I pay my TV/Radio licence every year and I find it highly offensive to be continually warned “we’ve got a huge computer, that knows where you live, it knows if you haven’t paid and we’re coming to get you.” Well if they know all that already, why waste money on advertising! Why don’t they just get off their PR backsides and do something useful instead, like changing jobs and collecting the obviously vast (and it HAS to be vast to justify this kind of spending) unpaid amounts from the people who don’t pay, instead of sitting in ivory Westminster towers, threatening those of us who do. Then we’d have a double result, more tax in and less money wasted on collecting it – it’s not brain surgery is it!

I know there are going to be people bleating on about how much good Government advertising does in warning us of dangers – things like (and here are four off the top of my head):

1. Speed kills
2. Hospitals are full of bugs, so wash your hands!
3. Get Flu jabs if you’re frail or elderly
4. Don’t drink too much

Well here’s my answer to all of the above and it cost me ten minutes to write it down (not £millions).

Speed doesn’t kill, bad driving does. If you’re stupid enough to be driving too fast and not paying attention (especially in built up areas) you don’t deserve to be driving. Site less cameras and sleeping policeman and employ more REAL police (not men and women in pretend uniforms). A camera will be able to tell you how fast a vehicle is travelling at a set point, it can’t tell you how badly that same vehicle is being driven. If you have a bad accident and it’s your fault, you should lose your licence. End of story.

Hospitals are full of bugs for two reasons. We did away with proper nurse training and replaced it with a University course. Don’t get me wrong I think our doctors and nurses are FANTASTIC but we have to get back to basics, not university courses. Put nurses back on the wards where they can be trained on the job by Sisters who know how to do it. Bring back Matrons who have overall control of the wards and this includes: nursing and ward cleanliness. Visiting hours are now bonkers, visitors seem to be able to wander in and out as they please at any time day or night. I’ve gone to visit people where there has been dozens clambering all around and sitting ON the bed. So here’s a straightforward approach – get rid of the private contractors, give the cleaning back to full time hospital staff.  Restrict visiting hours to two a day (Maximum) and restrict visitor numbers. With restricted access you could have a hospital staff member to monitor visitors, who would INSIST all visitors were scrubbed up before they enter and before they leave – end of problem.

We know flu is a deadly killer of the old and frail, and sometimes far more people than that. If we have a standard flu virus year (as opposed to a new strain), get the doctors surgeries to book the frail and elderly in for an appointment – that’s what letters were designed for! Spend your money on targeting those in need, not everyone else.

We have a problem with drinking in the UK, as a nation we seem genetically programmed to drink to excess, not moderation (maybe it’s our Anglo Saxon/Viking heritage). So putting out adverts of comatose women or young men climbing scaffolding to retrieve a balloon (and when did you last read of a death like that?) is a total waste of money. We know we are seeing more and more cases of liver disease in this country and sadly it’s affecting a younger and younger age group. So what brilliant schemes do our elected representatives come up with… posters and TV adverts, oh and here’s the killer (literally!); they actually EXTEND the time people are allowed to drink, in the bone numbingly thick hope that given more time, people will moderate their drinking because they no longer have to rush. Do these people ever go into our city centres? WE HAVE A DRINKING CULTURE, give people more time and they’ll drink more, how dumb can they be!

Of course I could just be cynical here and suggest that by giving people more time to drink, they’re spending more on alcohol, which of course generates more revenue from the tax on drink and so the government obtains more tax money. Surely they couldn’t simply be trying to kill our young, just to earn more taxes… could they? If they really want to do something about this, the answer is staring them in the face; restrict the available drinking time down to a sensible level and police licensed premises more strictly. The police used to do this, it was called Pub Patrol and if they see people drunk in a licensed premises they spoke to the landlord – because here’s the rub, it’s already an offence to sell intoxicants to someone who is already drunk. So start to prosecute the landlords and the pub chain owners and they’ll sharp get the message.

For the remainder who want to get blotted in their own time from supermarkets and the like, well you’re not going to stop that by putting adverts on the telly, are you! That needs a change of culture, better education and ultimately better health care.

My next ‘rant’ post for JT could be any one of a thousand against the type of government foisted upon us but I think for the next one, I may just have a rant about local politics and the money they throw around.

Malcolm