A Brighton Boy Blogs

Sometimes, just occasionally, inspiration comes along and in a flash you have the answer to a whole raft of problems, all at once. It was a bit like that for me one morning as I fought my way up the A23/A27 slip road trying desperately to move from the right hand lane across three lanes of traffic to the left hand filter lane for the A27 Westbound whilst the other drivers coming up the inside aggressively accelerated to prevent me from doing so.

We all know that our roads are too crowded. We all know that there are many, many bad drivers on the road. Most of us know that we’re killing the planet by driving too many cars, and that we should stop. Many of us aspire to improving our health and that of the planet by cycling everywhere, but it’s made harder by belligerent car drivers and dangerous cyclists, as well as the Great British Weather. We also know in our heart of hearts that it would be better for the environment, and probably for our souls, if we all took public transport but we’re also aware that it’s a less than perfect transport solution for a number of reasons. First, there’s the underinvestment, partly caused by a lack of bums on seats; second the fact that it has to share space with all the other more dominant forms of transport including all those idiot bad drivers in their cars… who, incidentally also make our roads more dangerous, cause more accidents, cost the NHS, emergency services and British businesses lots of money, and generally cause misery and stress.

So where’s the inspiration in all this? It’s quite simple actually. Just get the UK Government’s so-called Driving Standards Agency to do its job: raise driving standards. In short, make the driving test a lot more difficult, and the required standard of driving far higher. Then less people will pass, and there’ll be less drivers on the roads. Anyone who has had a road traffic accident in which fault was either theirs or inconclusive should be forced to retake the driving test, as should the elderly, annually. Anyone who took their driving test before, for example, 1985, should also retake their test, and the general population should take a fresh test every 10 years.

The result: less cars on the road, more use of public transport, more income to public transport, more investment in public transport; safer roads, less cost to NHS, less disruption to surgical schedules by emergencies; and the nation would be far more likely to hit its carbon emission targets with fewer cars sitting in traffic jams caused by selfish twats who drive like morons on our overcrowded roads.

So, over to you… what do you think?

Righteous Indignation, Social/Political Comment Brighton, cars, driving, environment, transport

I took the advice of my builder & in November bought a selection of ScrewFix Direct ready-assembled kitchen units for my house renovation; then I waited, and waited, and despite three delivery dates being quoted, none was satisfied. When I was told it would be December 20th, I cancelled the order. The staff member who took the call was anything but apologetic and practically blamed me for the lack of a kitchen.
In a recession, give your money to companies that deserve to survive and thrive, not ones that can barely be bothered to offer any kind of service at all. I’m off to Howdens – let’s hope they’re rather better.

Consumer Issues

Since we decided to leave Esporta Brighton, we’ve had no end of threatening behaviour from the company and its debt collector ARC Europe. This isn’t anything unusual, they’ve done it to lots of people – just try a Google search.

Esporta’s membership contract says that they can terminate a membership with one month’s notice, but that a member cancelling their membership must give three months notice – paid, of course. So when someone like me wants to leave because the facilities are poorly maintained and the club just isn’t up to scratch, they try to enforce this contact term. However, there is a piece of legislation called the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 which companies like Esporta should be rather wary of when they ask their lawyers to draft their contacts. Used in conjunction with the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, one can essentially ask a court of law to review a contract term, and if found to be unfair, the entire clause is struck from the contract. With nothing to replace it, standard UK trading laws take over and there’s nothing the company can do; with no fair cancellation clause in place, they’re not entitled to a penny.

Esporta’s contact terms relating to notice periods have already been ruled unfair by the Office of Fair Trading (see http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/consumer-regulations/traders/790/1/), along with quite a lot besides. This ruling would be taken into account by the courts in any case involving Esporta’s membership contracts. This means that nobody should be paying Esporta three months’ fees upon notice of cancellation. Unfortunately a lot of people give way to bullying from the company and its debt collectors. Why is this allowed to happen? Unfortunately a contract is only of any use when tested in a court of law. Since most people shudder at the thought of being taken to court by a big powerful company, most people just give in and pay up. It’s important not to give in, and to fight your corner, because that’s the only way companies like Esporta will be stopped.

Unfortunately this wasn’t all in our case. ARC Europe obtained copies of the contracts my girlfriend and I allegedly signed, and sent them through to us by way of a “now get out of that one” threat. To be honest, I didn’t remember signing a contract, so I was surprised they had a signed one to send me. Upon examination however, it wasn’t my signature. My girlfriend had signed, but I hadn’t. In place of my signature was a very poor forgery in the same handwriting style as that of the Esporta employee who had signed on behalf of the company.

Just to be clear about this, forging a signature on a contract is criminal fraud under UK law. Are Esporta really that desperate? Apparently the answer is yes.

Advice: avoid Esporta, and go elsewhere. You’ll get better facilities anyway, and hopefully more respectful and professional treatment.

Consumer Issues contracts, Esporta

The Royal Mail is the arbiter of all addresses. If it’s not on their database, it doesn’t exist. Thankfully my studio is on the database. So are quite a few other businesses in the local area. However it doesn’t stop the Royal Mail’s employees from deciding that they’re all based here, despite a very clear notice on the door saying exactly which businesses are based here, and even despite other notices that have been posted up at various times explicitly refuting the existence of other business names at this address.

So there I am, regularly left with large piles of other company’s post.

Should I just bin it? I think there’s a law against that, and besides I’d hate to think that another company might be getting loads of my mail & treating it as trash.

Should I play postman? I did for a while, but the novelty of my new unpaid position soon wore thin.

Should I complain? Yes, I’ve done that too. It took weeks for someone to contact me, and then weeks more for someone from Royal Mail to finally come and pick up the pile of by now unforgiveably late mail. And worst of all, the very next day there was yet another piece of misdelivered post.

Now I even have a red “sorry you were out” card on which the postman has written the name of a company never before heard of at (nor depicted on the door of) these premises. I tried calling the 0845 number on the card but their automated telephone system not only failed to acknowledge that these circumstances could ever possibly exist, it also failed to connect me to another human being so that I might report the error. So now whatever it was will sit at the sorting office for a few weeks until it’s returned to sender. It’s such a waste of everyone’s time, energies and resources, and ultimately all down to one man’s utter inability to read and compare simple names and phrases.

Still, perhaps it’s partly the council’s fault. They name and sign everything so confusingly. I’ve had my studio premises for five years now. Almost every day, someone comes in asking “Is this the trading estate?”. “No”, I reply, “this is the business centre, the trading estate is on the next road up”. In fact it’s probably true to say that if I had a tenner for every time it had happened, I wouldn’t need to actually do much work at all; £100 a time and I’d be in clover.

Clover? Hell, I’d even turn vigilante privateer postman.

Uncategorized frustration, Royal Mail

Years ago – in 1981 – when I was a mere fourteen years of age, I started doing the London to Brighton Bike Ride. Living in Brighton, we’d get up very early, catch one of the special trains to Clapham Junction, and proudly start the ride. Depending on the mood of our little group of friends, we’d either complete the thing in a few hours, or take our time, make loads of stops for Women’s Institute doughnuts and so on, and get into Brighton sometime in the afternoon. We’d be able to ride home to freshen up, then go out for a quick meal in the evening. It’s an annual event that holds a fond place in my memory over many consecutive years.

At some point in the late 80’s I stopped doing the ride. I had seen it get more over-crowded and dangerous, with so many people doing the ride unofficially that fast downhill sections like Slugwash Lane had become scenes of many inevitable accidents – one year I remember seeing the road awash with blood – and narrow uphill sections were turning the event into the London to Brighton Bike Shuffle.

I did the ride with my wife & friends a couple of years during the late 90s & early 2000s, but things weren’t much better. So it was goodbye L2B from me.

Yesterday I experienced once again the utter farce of what the London to Brighton Bike Ride does to Brighton. Road closures would be OK. Diversions fine. But when tens of thousands of extra cars (many of them 4×4 domestic trucks) are coming into Brighton for the sole reason that they’re picking up one or more cyclists, something is badly wrong. Traffic down a 15-mile stretch of the A23 came to a virtual standstill. Doesn’t the British Heart Foundation care about it? Surely the pollution alone should tell them that something has to change – it certainly can’t be good for the heart, and I wonder what the British Lung Foundation would say on the matter. And making it the day of countless other summer events, village fetes, and indeed Father’s Day – that’s just asking for trouble.

I daresay nothing will change next year. It’s a stupid, overhyped event which has become unmanageable. Sure it had noble roots and a great cause behind it, but nowadays it’s just a menace. At the very least it needs a new route, a major rethink, better public transport coordination, and a ban on pickups by car. The London to Brighton Bike Ride has gone bad.

Righteous Indignation Brighton, cycling, events

Just a quick public information notice: Belkin makes the most unreliable, poorly designed, unmitigated rubbish in the world. It’s true. I have owned several items by Belkin, none of which has ever worked properly, and have always given them the benefit of the doubt. But the Belkin Vision N1 router is the last Belkin device I shall ever own. It crashes all the time and I can’t keep a wireless connection for more than 20 minutes or so before it overheats and freezes. They can have it back through their office windows for all I care. I should sue for the amount of lost time and stress Belkin has caused me. None of their products work properly, or at least work for long. The USB hubs regularly need to be unplugged from the mains and reconnected just so they recognise the devices plugged into them. If it says Belkin, just don’t go there. Please. Perhaps then Belkin will actually take notice and produce something decent for once. Companies like this just don’t deserve to exist.

Consumer Issues Add new tag, Consumer Issues, technology

The BBC has long been known for its excellent science & nature programmes. I grew up on them; some thirty years ago David Attenborough himself introduced me to Darwinian evolution through the process of Natural Selection in his seminal series “Life on Earth”. Yes, that was back in 1979 when I was just 12 years old. They have always been the ordinary person’s way into even the most complex science.

Now the BBC’s “South Pacific”, being shown back-to-back with Dr Alice Roberts’ “The Incredible Human Journey”, continue the tradition. Unfortunately in the last decade the rise of right-wing Christian fundamentalism and its insidious invention of “Intelligent Design” has begun to erode all the good work which has sought to enlighten and educate ordinary people. Read more…

Righteous Indignation, Social/Political Comment BBC, intelligent design, religion, science, television

Having witnessed the Police presence in Brighton today for the “Smash EDO” protest, which led me to have to drive a 10-mile diversion to deliver my girlfriend to work, I read with interest the statement issued by the Brighton & Hove City Commander, Chief Supt Graham Bartlett, as follows: Read more…

Righteous Indignation, Social/Political Comment Brighton, EDO, fear, Police, Smash EDO

Yes, a new title for the blog… Same old rubbish to read though. Enjoy.

Uncategorized

Well well. Barely a day goes past when I don’t get a call from some cocky arse (generally from Manchester) who tells me that they’re calling me on behalf of Google and that they can get me to the top the search results. Read more…

Consumer Issues advertising, adwords, Google, scammers, scams, web sites