A nice walk in Ludlow...

Had a lovely walk across the top of Whitcliffe above Ludlow this afternoon with my two youngsters, thought I may share it with you, the castle was absolutely stunning as always. Its no surprise that Ludlow is so popular with tourists far and wide, but I view it with mixed emotions as it is where I went to school (Ludlow Grammar School) and where I spent most of my youth and I see it as a very different town to the one I knew back then, but I guess change is inevitable, Hope You enjoy the pictures of our afternoon out.

Happy Holidays :-)

So here we are, August bank Holiday and the annual exodus of over populated Britain heading North for under populated Britain and queueing in the process. This is all greeted with a certain amount of intrigue with the Northern half of the Country as to why anyone would want to leave long queues, bad tempers,ignorant people and being stuffed together like sardines in the big City to sit in long queues, with people with bad tempers, too ignorant to acknowledge you and stuffed like sardines on the M4 and the same when you get to the caravan park/hotel you are heading for is one of life's great mysteries but as they say it takes all sorts!.

The Fracking debate in the South east has been a joy to watch, well from up here in the North it has anyway.
I am not really sure what Fracking does apart from make you double take if someone shouts it to you on a windy day, but my guess is by the fuss being made it will affect day time TV reception in some way as most of the protesters seem fresh from Jeremy Kyle's show, so its plainly hitting a nerve with all those out of work inter-breeding bed hopping DNA tested minority who are as in touch with reality as wrestling on the World Of Sport was on a Saturday afternoon. Who knows if it's good or bad? certainly not me and there is a fair chance MP's don't know either but that seldom stopped them doing stupid things before.

There was a call this week for shoplifters who stole below £50.00 to be handled in-store with the shops own security staff. Now, excuse me for being a dumb ass here but £50.00 to me is a lot of money and if someone deliberately stole that from me I would want the Police to caution them at the very least, it would also give the Police an insight during the arrest into the local community and serve as a barometer to how the local community is being Policed. Telling a hardened drug addict to "never do it again" and if its only "fifty quid" is a ridiculous move and any form of theft is exactly that, theft. It would be more economic to let officers carry iPads and photograph the thief and send his details to an incident room where they can be checked for outstanding warrants etc and then officially cautioned and sent on their way, at least he is in the system and the Officer can go to his next crime instead of getting buried by booking petty thieves into the cells.

While we are on the subject of prisoners it came to my notice this week that many women prisoners in two specific jails are being allowed to ring the general public and ask them about their energy bills. Honestly you couldn't write it, well not unless you are a member of the Prisons authority. Not for these prisoners a bright yellow onesie and a trip to the local park to pick litter in front of everyone they know, oh no, a nice warm office and a chance to annoy the hell out of the general public by ringing them up (usually at teatime... you know the drill) and grill them about how many times they turn a light on or off during the week, so there you have it, they were a nuisance to society on the outside and now we are making them a nuisance to society on the inside... well done whoever thought that trick up!

After a spat with Vodafone this week I am glad to say common sense prevailed. I was given some discount and my phone returned to its normal status, albeit in Craven Arms no 3G. But it does beg the question why you have to jump through so many hoops to get a response from such big companies, they are well financed and have more than enough capability to have service and call centres in most major parts of the UK but refuse. In the end I spoke to customer care and my upheld complaint was adjudged and dealt with very fairly, though I think Mike the manager may be heading for a future visit to charm school when they hear the tape of his telecon with me and rightly so.

So all it leaves me to do is say enjoy your bank holiday and don't get too upset at the queues, tomorrow is another day so enjoy the drive and look at the scenery if you are bored, unless you are driving and you need to keep your eye on the vehicle doing 3 mph in front of you :-)

Happy Bank Holiday!

Vodamoan....

Sometimes, even though you think you are doing the right thing and following all the guide lines and playing by the book you can still get caught out. Those words are very prophetic for me and I am in fact slightly embarrassed even that I fell into the oldest pitfall in the travel book and that is not ensuring your mobile charges were sorted before you use your mobile abroad.
The facts are that before departing for Australia in May i contacted my service provider of some twenty years (Vodafone) and told them exactly what i was doing and for how long, I told them explicitly that i didn't want to come back to huge bills and what could they do for me?.
As I own an iPhone 5 they did seem awfully preoccupied at the time with WiFi and I duly accepted a package that limited me to 25gb and then text-ed me when I had used it at a cost of £5.00.

So off i went for six weeks to the land of plenty and three weeks in I get a text from Vodafone to tell me my bill was now £850+vat and i needed to contact them to ensure I knew about it. Considering my normal bill is 2-300 pounds one would beg to question why the company let it go £150.00 over let alone five or six hundred pounds over and the bill was not high because of Wifi usage but calls, I was getting charged £1.50 per minute for accepting calls and making them to mobiles inside OZ, but there we go you make your own mind's up over that one.
With this news i headed for a Vodafone.au shop and told them of my plight, they recommended a simple Samsung pay as you go phone for $30.00 and away I went. They also said in the shop that my treatment by Vodafone UK was a little harsh considering I had previously rung them to inform them of my whereabouts but again, you make your own minds up.
On landing in Gatwick and arriving home some four hours later I rang Vodafone to ask if they could look at the bill again which was now standing at some £1,200.00. The reception I got was like hitting a brick wall at 70 mph in a bubble car while strapped to the roof rack, definitely a no-no, but as I was reminding them about the fact I HAD been responsible and rung them beforehand the guy on the phone proceeded to then inform me that i should have had my phone unlocked and used an Au. phone Sim, rather closing the stable door after the horse has bolted I thought. Anyway the accounts side of Vodafone rang me back some minutes later and we worked out a simple plan of paying the bill over 3 months which was not ideal as there was no offer of a discount or softening of the blow it was pay up and shut up, it has never been about the ability to pay but the principal. So I agreed to pay for the outstanding over sized bill over 3 months and off we went. Well, no. It doesn't work like that. This is Vodafone.

You see, this is where you need to read the small print on your phone contract, despite paying £40+vat every month plus phone calls and texts on my contract to this greedy bunch of business people and sticking to the agreement put in place I had my phone restricted today, so it only takes incoming calls. This is because even though I had (only 3 days ago) paid this monster of a company £601.50. which was made up of the £390.00 and £210.50 in monthly call charges and contract fees they now decided that they would take up their option under "terms and conditions" and restrict my phone to incoming calls only.

So, as I have said before, make your own minds up about what you are reading. I rang Vodafone to find out why they had done this and even the guy on the other end of the phone could not believe what had happened, he said he had been with the company six years and never seen a customer be treated in this way, so rather than moan at him I requested to speak to a manger as by now even my patience was wearing thin.
I ended up getting a manger who if you cut him through the middle it said "I Love Vodafone" excellent news for this behemoth of a company but curtains for me the humble customer looking to get some sort of conclusion, I swear that if you placed this guy in a capsule and sent him to Mars he would not be lonely as he would be happy arguing with himself all the way there and back.
Despite my protests that I had stuck to my agreement and I had done what they asked Vodafone still retain the right to stop service whenever they like, despite the agreement in place. So I ended up bidding the man good day as he was quite simply a robot with a script and put the phone down, I looked at my iPhone sitting there as a lifeless lump of plastic and went out and bought another £20.00 Samsung with a pay as you go Sim, oh and its an 02 sim as the reception in Shropshire is far superior to Vodafone in any case.

My protest and my little story will make no difference to @Vodafone as they are far too big a company to miss my 2-300 a month but the moral of my story is this, if I as a businessman who takes the time to sort such things out before I go abroad can get caught out then so can anyone, I am not wet behind the ears I thought I had taken all the steps necessary to ensure I didn't get a huge bill and in the end that is exactly what I got, so my advice is to get your phone unlocked and when you get in your Country of preference buy a local Sim card. That is the advice that Vodafone will not give you here because it's handing business to their competition, (their words not mine) so make of that what you will also, the fact I will never use them again and they have lost a good loyal customer will doubtless not lose their MD a seconds sleep, but if nothing else I hope my sobering tale of corporate greed at its most efficient will stop others being quite so foolish as I.

Yesterday

The black eye is healing well and the broken toe all but forgotten about it seems life is getting back to somewhere near normal if indeed it was ever normal!
Its been a very strange month of late as I have been custodian for my two youngsters as the school holidays are amongst us and as I am writing from home it made sense for me to babysit. It's a little bit of an uneasy truce though as I seldom spent a lot of time with my offspring as I was always working and now I am with them 24/7, its something I am happy about but whether the kids are quite so enamoured is a different thing altogether as no matter how hard we try us Dad's will never be as cool as Mum.

I was at the passport office in Liverpool yesterday getting the kids passports sorted as I think its time they saw a little more of the world, I managed to get everything together and the pictures countersigned along with their forms and brought along the birth certificates as instructed. So after about an hours wait our number was called and we walked over the kiosk number six, sat down and presented our paperwork. There then followed the pulling of faces and sharp intaking of breath that you dread in such situations and sure enough I was handed back the children's birth certificates and told they were the "wrong ones"
After a brief explanation it seems we were in possession of only a certificate of birth not a birth certificate (yes you heard me right) and the full certificate has the parents names on it. So another trip ensues and another wasted day due to a technicality, I would not be so bothered if I was plainly a foreigner but I am more Anglo Saxon than Alfred The Great, surely the passport office can use the certificate to verify who the father is? oh no, I have another trip to make after ordering the full certificates on line, so be warned to check the parents names are on your certificates if you head for the passport office !.

On the way back with the kids i stopped off at McDonalds as it's the done thing surely?. I manged a chicken in breadcrumbs which was called a "Legend" and the kids had to order what they wanted as I couldnt make head nor tail of what they were talking about but we ended up with a "McFlurry" and  McChicken nuggets... please don't ask. I have to admit I don't like the food but the kids shouted out for a "BigMac" so as a good Dad i obliged but perhaps a good Dad would say no if he was thinking only of the kids future cholesterol levels!.  This last thought brought to mind a huge guy stood in front of me in a Cafe in Liverpool centre, he had obviously had a few pies before as he was stood two feet from the counter but his belly was still touching it,
"Could I have 3 bacon, 3 sausage, 3 eggs, beans, tomatoes fried bread, hash browns and black pudding please"
"Ok sir, do you want toast with that" came the eager reply,
"yes please...... could I have wholemeal bread?"

It was at this point my muffled smirk became a full on belly laugh as I couldn't hold out any longer, here was this guy as wide as he was tall having a full heart attack breakfast and pitches the wholemeal bread in at the end as if it will deliver him from evil, you could almost imagine him at the Pearly gates,

"But Peter, I did the wholemeal !"

Bless him.  Anyway we had some toast which had been at two previous cremations before it got to us and gave it the last rites before refusing to eat it, I should have been suspicious when it came to the table in an Urn.
So we skipped the mid morning snack and headed back out into the streets of Liverpool and had a walk around the docks, the kids were overjoyed to see "The Caribbean Princess was in dock so we did a photo shoot, so all in all the day wasn't a disaster but I have to do a repeat journey in a day or so, thanks Shrewsbury Registry office, I owe you one.

All Change for Buses In Shropshire.

There is hot debate this week here in Shropshire about the proposed loss of the Shropshire Link bus service, it seems that in their wisdom Councillors have decided the running costs are too high to let it continue after they were faced with a barrage of cuts from Central office. This somehow doesn't ring true for me as if it is too expensive now why was it deemed efficient when first set up? or are we seeing the same old "there's loads of money in the pot so spend it" mentality that has dogged the public service sector for years?.

Allow me to give you an example of this budget stupidity if I may, for I believe that most of the general public at large would be astonished and annoyed to hear just how these so called managers have operated over the years. I used to sell equipment many years ago to councils and public sector operations, from public owned golf courses to full blown highways departments and every year they were each given a budget for spending on machinery, that in itself was no great surprise and it meant everyone knew where they were. The stupidity of this system however was in the way the money was spent. If the chief buyer shopped around and got good deals off the suppliers and saved the council a whole heap of money and had say for instance ten thousand pounds over at the end of that financial year then instead of getting a pat on the back and a nice positive balance to go into the next year that ten thousand was actually taken off his budget for the following year, so in effect he was penalised for being frugal.
So what happened is that towards the end of the season the buyer would see what budget he had left and try and spend it, on absolutely anything, even if it wasn't needed just to ensure that his budget wasn't cut for the following year. You may wonder what I am getting at here and you have a point, but just suppose these departments actually talked to one another and instead of being penalised for saving money that season the buyer was praised for being so frugal, his budget not affected for next year and the excess money he had saved spent on much needed bus services?  Surely that would be better than seeing public money spent on machinery that was sometimes never ever used worth thousands of pounds sat as a "back up" in case one machine went down?  Because that is what happened, I have seen it time and time again and believe me it still happens.
The above is one of the idiosyncrasies that emerge only in the public sector, it would never be allowed to happen in a privately run company unless it was also too big to control it's own house in an appropriate manner.  The fact that this would solve the current travel crisis will be lost on the powers that be because like many people they are afraid of change and change is most definitely needed, because the money is slowly running out, the same applies in the health service, we no longer have bottomless pits and if the government want to put their public sector businesses in order they need do no more than use the private sector as a role model, it would save millions in the first week.

It's alright for Oz snippet due out end of August !

Heading down to Gatwick Airport one sunny Tuesday afternoon in the middle of May was definitely not on my busy agenda six months before, come to think of it three months before, but my wish to see the “Land of plenty” kept pushing me until I decided the call needed to be answered. In that 3 short months I had planned out and scheduled my foray over to Sydney Australia (Manly to be precise) and set my course for the adventure of a lifetime. But first (and if you are me this is a BIG first) I had to fly over there via Dubai and then on to Kingsford Smith International. That may be a fun filled time for the majority of the population but for me with my intense dislike of heights it was a huge call, add that to my mechanical knowledge about anything from hydraulics to gas cookers and you see why every noise creak or groan from my aircraft was an imminent disaster about to happen.

Despite this minor issue, I sat in Departures drinking my coffee on the second tier of Gatwick’s many restaurants feeling up for the adventure. It was just bravado, but I was intent on going and if that was the case I had to fly. I waited the three long hours to board and duly walked the “gangplank” to the plane, it was far bigger than any plane I had been on before, to those of you who rely on such information to make your life complete it was a Boeing 777 and it had two wings, that was very comforting for me I can assure you. I sat in my seat opposite a young Indian woman who was part of a family of four, I must have looked very threatening because within seconds of them realising she would be sat next to me they dumped their young lad in that seat and moved across one, he must have been all of seven years old, I could almost hear their thought’s and I chuckled to myself, if I was unsafe for her to sit by why would the kid be any better off?  Anyway, we went through the drill of lifebelts and seat belts at which point I closed my eyes as I didn’t want to be reminded of crashing into the sea or falling out of the sky but thankfully we were soon taxiing down the runway and within a matter of seconds all the throttles let loose and we were airborne.

Now if you like flying, at this point you will be looking out of the window, organising your lunch and selecting your favourite movie. If, like me you are not so keen, the air hostess will be slowly peeling your fingers out of the seat cushion and pushing you back from the “brace for impact” position whilst slapping you across the face for shouting “We are all gonna die!” This done she smiled at me and asked me if I needed a drink. There is telepathic for you, it must be a prerequisite at flight attendant school, get the nervous flyer's pissed first and the rest of the flight will be a cinch.

So with the prospect of alcohol all of a sudden this flying thing started to look a little more acceptable, I asked for a Scotch and smiled at her, I didn’t get this treatment last time I flew to Holland or France, a couple of stiff Whiskey’s and I will face a dog fight in a Spitfire let alone a seven hour flight on a Boeing. My excitement as you regular flyer's will know was very short lived as she came trotting down the aisle with a miniature bottle of dyed tap water matured and bottled in Kazakhstan. Whatever it was, it resembled Whiskey but that’s where the similarities ended. My bottom lip firmly in my lap I drank it anyway and another five before she said “No more sir”. The fact I could sink half a bottle of Teacher’s Scotch in a normal night’s drinking and still sing every word to “Sweet Chariot” while auditioning for Dancing On Ice should give you a clue that I was not even close to pissed, but the bar was now closed to Mr. James so I had to divert my attention elsewhere from the grumbling engines and flexing wings that were about to break and cause our imminent deaths. The answer to my prayers came very swiftly in the form of the on board entertainment, no, not the TV on the seat in front of me but my fellow passengers or more succinctly the one’s sitting next to me. It may come as no surprise that the Indian female sat in the next but one seat had not suddenly decided to do a belly dance, far from it in fact she was sat with her head against the TV screen positioned on the seat in front of her looking like she was praying, she may well have been but it was a little unnerving as to why and if there was something she knew I didn’t did I ought to start? I got my answer when she was still there six and a half hours later, you guessed it she didn’t like flying either, these women eh? Where’s their courage? It’s just a little plane ride…

The Sunday Roast.

It is indeed a mortal sin to not blog regularly, something I have to admit I have neglected to do of late. Time is never on our side and as we get older it seems to become that much more precious because the days all seem to melt in to one and become a blur. This all sounds very dismal for a Sunday morning but I guess I am having a period of reflection as the last few months have been very hectic and I still have much to do.
Looking at the news in general this morning I cant help but notice the vast majority of it is centred around bombings, riots, murders and criminal behaviour of all sorts, I know it has to be reported but what about the million and one good things that happen everyday in this world? Why can't we hear of those? because they do happen and they are out there but for some reason we always concentrate on the bad stuff then talk amongst ourselves at parties and gatherings about how big a mess the world is!
In reality the world is a harsh place but if we took the TV news as gospel every day I think few of us would scarcely get out of bed. It would be nice if we could hear about those good things that happen just now and then even if it does shrink the audience a little.

The NHS seems to be in meltdown at the moment, hardly surprising as the old saying "too many cooks spoil the broth" should be listened and adhered to. For far too long meddling politicians and advisors have given their ten pence worth and then disappeared into political oblivion leaving yet another poorly administered idea in the melting pot and twenty two managers to try and work out just what their "non-job" actually entails.
The truth is the NHS doesn't need to be re-invented it just needs to be run more frugally and available funds put into front line care and not middle management. The idea is fabulous but if you burden such an organisation with political ideas it will soon grind to a halt and that's almost what we have now with demoralised staff and longer and longer waiting lists.
I was dismayed to see the government throwing five hundred million at A and E last week, it's a little like giving a alcoholic a bottle of Whiskey to make him feel better as once that money is administered it will make everyone feel better for a few months, the same as the alcoholic who will feel great for a few hours, it doesn't fix anything and in fact it probably makes things a whole lot worse as very little of that money will actually get to where it is going to do any real good, the front line. I am afraid the NHS is in need of a private sector management team that see's money as an asset and not a general consumable like the people currently at the top. The fact there are less beds than ever is hardly a surprise when you visit a ward and see valuable bed space taken up by rows of PVCU offices with computers sat on the desks, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to work out why the service is in decline, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

If I was handed five hundred million I think I would make far better use of it than throwing it at middle management in the hope they come up with a rescue plan, I would make a plan of visiting every major hospital in the Country and listen to what the front line staff say before i spent a dime of the taxpayers hard earned money. I would then assemble a team of private sector specialists and go through the day to day running costs/suppliers costs/transport costs and wages bills before I did a single thing. That would make good business sense as you need to know what is wrong before you even attempt fix it or you are just wasting that money the government says "isn't a lot we know", well to me, someone who has worked hard for over 20 years as a businessman it is an obscene amount of money and every penny should be accounted for and should begin to rebuild the shattered service, but alas that will never happen and what we are all witnessing is the slow agonising demise of one of the last great British institutions, it's doomed as much as the Titanic was that fateful night, it's sailing into the abyss unless someone high up has the stomach to tackle middle management head on and kick the vast majority of their over paid under worked butts back out on to civvy street and put Matron back on the ward.

On a lighter note I have been having a lot of well deserved stick this week as i have been sporting a proper shiner, a black-eye to end all black-eyes (see photo), I went into the tyre company yard this week to help out a little and ended up dropping a huge piece of steel on my head that i was trying to weld, it knocked me clean off my feet and hurt like hell, but i carried on regardless in the old bulldog spirit, however the next morning I looked like I had used my face as a train buffer. Despite the bruised look i turned into work and had to endure every joke imaginable from wife-beating to questions about what the other guy looks like, its amazing how a simple black-eye can be such a talking point but it has also been very funny watching peoples reactions, some of whom are dying to ask but are pretending its not there!. I shall try and stay out of mischief this next week and keep close to the keyboard as in the last few weeks i have dropped a bar on my foot and broken a toe, received a black eye and hit my wrist with a hammer.. I guess now is not the time to search for that post on an oil rig.

Have a beautiful Sunday and a wonderful week, above all else stay safe.