Welcome to AJ's...

Actually... I think I'll write it tomorrow...

...THIS is...

So, you may recall me posting about how the Royal Mail staff, prompted by a Union (insert your own tone of disgust there) are slowly but surely eroding public confidence in them.

Well, seems their plans to get us all to move to a different carrier have slowed a bit so they're boosting them a little with a new plan.

Legal action.

So, they've thoughtfully decided they're not going to do anything with our post, and now are trying to block plans for the Royal Mail to hire temps to help get through the backlog and, hopefully sometime this new millennium, get us our own post.

I don't know who the man is in charge of the Communications Workers Union is... but I'm finding it hard not to picture him with a bald head, grey suit, no earlobes and stroking a white cat...

I posted this on my new work blog, but thought I'd cut and paste it here as well...

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Let's be honest, anyone who's been owned by a cat (and trust me, that's how the relationship works) is sure of one thing.

A cat never does anything it doesn't want to do.

Dogs are different, mainly because people own dogs, not the other way around. Cats are simply keeping their slaves amused until they next need the litter tray cleaning, food or something to scratch, like furniture, a cushion... or your arm.

Don't get me wrong, I love cats and I love taking photographs of them but one thing you can be sure of is that if a cat doesn't want its photo taken you won't get one... but if it does? It'll do more than sit there looking pretty, it'll happily pose for you.

I have over the years realised that cats are basically the supermodels of the animal kingdom.

Think about the stereotype of a supermodel, they're very self assured and want to be treated like royalty. They want to be fed the best possible food, pampered and petted and generally treated like a rare jewel.

They're beautiful and graceful and they know darn well they are, so they know that anything they do to grace your life and your viewfinder is for you to work for and be grateful!

Sound familiar to anyone with a cat?

"I don't get out of bed for less than 5 cans of food and a catnip toy..."

Get a cat to actually allow a photograph to be taken and you know you're in the presence of a model.

It's more than just pulling a pose, it's the general attitude, added to the ability to sit absolutely still while the photos are being taken... I think these days my sister's cats are feline versions of Pavlov's dog, primed to understand the sound of a camera shutter.

Of course, once a cat has decided you've had enough of it's precious time and it needs to be off for more important things like sleep or birdicide it'll just go, leaving its apologetic owner entourage to suggest another time when your people can meet the cat's people for lunch and organise another shoot...

You know what though? However hard the work is to get a good photo of a cat... it's normally more than worth it.

Andy

Every year, every fricking year.

Yes, we've put the clocks back, which means logically everythings an hour later than the clocks say compared to what we have been dealing with.

But do we REALLY need the same panic each and every late October?

"Woe, woe on pedestrians and cyclists, it's darker in the evenings, they're all going to die!!! They're doomed, DOOMED I tells ya!"

I think the phrase I'm looking for is... For. Fucks. Sake.

Every year various nanny groups complain about the fact the clock change means we have darker evenings but, in complete discordance with logic, science and reality, car drivers etc wont actually KNOW it's darker.

I mean after all, if you were born in one of the countries that changes the clocks then obviously you've only had at least 17 years of experiencing it under your belt.

Obviously you'll go out, take one look at the impenetrable gloom surrounding you and go "I didn't need my lights on at 7.30pm 3 months ago so I won't need them now!"

People realise it gets darker, it also gets darker even if we don't change the clocks, it's called the seasons, summer = long days, winter = short days... it's how the planet works and not changing the clocks won't magically mean all our days are suddenly 14 hours of daylight.

You just KNOW at the end of last week and the beginning of this one there'll be a collection of unutterably dull phone calls to the poor bastards at local radio stations saying we should all ban the clock change as it will be solely to blame for every goddamn accident in the next 6 months.

"Well, someone drove into the back of me on Sunday... he was drunk, on cocaine, 16 years old and the car he was driving had no brakes or steering... but he would have missed me if it was a tiny bit lighter out!"

God, it's like we're going to be thrown into 6 months of darkness because of 60 measly minutes.

For once it would be nice to do something as simple as a minuscule change in the time and not have hundreds of whiners, naysayers and doom-merchants appear all over the media suggesting it's only the wearing of an illuminated vest that stands between us and the apocalypse.

Sometimes I think we should just remove all warnings from the world and let natural selection back into our lives...

Nabbed at Emails From Crazy People...

To: Paranormal Researchers of Ohio GhostInvestigators@****.net
From: XXXxx @ gmail.com
Subject: possessed?
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:45:12 -0400

“Please help! The activity has been going on since I first married my wife six years ago, but the occurrences have been increasing to the point of happening every night. Ever since I got married and started living with my wife, I have heard loud, strange noises coming from her when she sleeps. I used to think it was snoring because it would happen only when she had a cold or something. But now it’s like every night, and it’s getting LOUDER (I could best describe the sounds as a cross between a fog horn, a feline mating shriek and microphone feedback).

“I’ve had other people who have heard it tell me that it is indeed just her snoring, but I am convinced that she is possessed by some sort of spirit. Can you please send a team to my home in Willoughby, Ohio to investigate while she sleeps? Maybe do an EMF sweep or some thermal imaging of her? I’m at my wits end. I can’t get any sleep, and I have nightmares that she’s possessed by the voice of Froggy from the “Little Rascals.” It’s just really screwing with my mind.

Please help!
XXXxx”

Take James Earl Jones from Coming To America and paste him in as James Earl Jones in the opening scene of Star Wars.

Loving this!

Just got a leaflet through the door from a local jewellers doing the old cash for gold thing.

To be fair they didn't use an unblinking horror from the Dungeon Dimensions that's half man, half gecko... but still when I read it I was a tad melancholy.

They give examples of the sort of thing they want, single earrings, broken chains etc, pointing out that scrap gold and silver is valuable right now.

That's a word I want you to keep in your mind for the next bit, "scrap".

In this leaflet they also point out that they take wedding rings ("We pay at least £20 each!") and war medals. OK, perhaps the rings are a possibility if the break up was especially bad but war medals?

Losing an old relative who was a war veteran?

Be happy! You can make a profit by letting us melt down those irreplaceable memories of their courage and make chunky chavlaces to sell to 12-year-old car thieves in Argos...

Or the even worse thought... how fucked up has this country got when there's a chance somewhere in it there's a pensioner sat with the horrible dilemma of choosing between keeping his medal for gallantry... or his house being heated over winter.

As it stands my blog is moderated, obviously not for people on my friends list but the wider world.

So perhaps Mr "replica handbags" can answer me a little question about the intelligence of spammers.

Why do you bother wasting your time leaving your pointless spam-apples on a moderated blog? Once I could understand but then when that one fails to appear you try again?

Were you hoping that I might think my blog was missing a little something?

That I'd be sitting here thinking... "well, I spent ages on the design, I like to be quite thoughtful with posts, got a good set of comments from intelligent people... but... I really need some utter shite copied and pasted like a parrot that advertises a probably dodgy site supposedly selling replica handbangs, that'll be the coup de grace."

I like that touch, not real handbags, that would be a touch too classy.

No, what I want advertising in my blog is cheap knock-offs put together by 7 year old children in Africa somewhere in their breaks from sewing Man Utd shirts.

What's your tagline? "Handbags that'll last a THOUSAND seconds..."

Seriously, if a blog is moderated it means one thing, they don't want fucking spam. So piss off to a more lax blog and comment-poop on their garden instead... or better yet, crawl away altogether.

Royal Mail that is...

I must have received at least a half dozen emails in the last week or two from online shops and sites proclaiming that they're safe to deal with because "we don't use the Royal Mail".

I'm not going to get into a long thing about the strikes, even though I could rant on for ages about the sheer idiocy and troublemaking ability of most unions...

But, purely with any sense of self preservation these people should realise the potentially fatal blows they're dealing the Royal Mail.

Now, the company is a constant favourite target for local radio listeners and when I was working the phones we would cry with despair when someone on-air said anything about the Royal Mail because we would instantly be inundated with FAR too many phone calls from listeners that all went nigh on precisely to the same script.

"I sent my child/grandchild/aunt/sister/uncle of dubious origin a birthday card and it took TWO DAYS to get there..."

If I had a quid for every time I've heard something pretty much exactly on those lines I'd be a fecking millionaire.

Just between you and me whenever anyone mentioned the mail I'd try and find an excuse to go get a cup of tea, you just knew there would be no usable callers for at least half an hour, and God forbid you put ONE on because then you'd get 10 times as many and they'd all want to know why they haven't been "let on air" despite the fact they were going to say exactly the same as the last caller, the BBC have enough repeats as it is...

But, moving on from local radio listeners and their overbearing belief in their own importance let's just take a little look at that statement.

I would say that the fact they were enraged that a small card, posted often as not after midday in Devon, HADN'T made it's way to the wilds of Newcastle or Aberdeen by the very next day is something of a compliment.

That tells me that whatever they may be saying there has been a modicum of respect in the delivery abilities of the Royal Mail to take this sort of thing or granted. After all, the whole mail service is, in fact, a stunningly complex area of logistics.

Now? Now we move on from jokes and the ramblings of people with nothing better to do at lunchtime than ring up a radio station and bitch.

Now we have big companies writing to customers using the fact they DON'T use the Royal Mail as a selling point. Advertising bluntly that the best thing they can think of right now to get you, the lucky schmuk currently holding onto what they class as their money, to part with that money is to tell you who it doesn't use to deliver your purchases.

It's also worrying that they're doing this with a fervour normal people would put towards pointing out they're not a member of the BNP...

Well, obviously other than the aforementioned local radio listeners, mainly because they are.

I have no real knowledge of what other methods can be used to try and get things in line between the Royal Mail and the Union (probably involving large amounts of money and a directorship given to the head of the union, normally works...) but more strikes are simply driving a bigger and bigger wedge between the company and the public.

Remember, people don't care that much about the general health and happiness of people doing jobs for them, their bigger care is that the job is done WELL.

Don't look at me like that, like I'm some cynical extremist...

Do you care whether your waiter on a night out is happy? Does it bother you whether he's getting good money, good benefits and an athletic girlfriend who does fun things with a pilates ball?

Of course not, you care that the right food is brought in good time and with good service.

Will most people on the street panic about whether Bob in the sorting office has enough money to buy a new laptop?

Are they going to want to know whether their postman is getting his correct holiday allowance?

Or are they going to care that their post is delivered promptly and safely (ironically perhaps involving a laptop or holiday tickets)?

If a second service starts up then people will move over, there may be some kind of loyalty in a way through sentimentality towards the Royal Mail, but that'll soon fall from people's minds.

Surely even they can see the self-defeating nature of these strikes? Sooner or later some clever bugger is going to come up with a second mail service with the far reach of the Mail... and if they carry on how they are the Union involved in these strikes might find it's them that are hammering the nails into the RM coffin.