Category Archives: Rant

Night Driving

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“When was the last time you just went for a drive?”

This was the question (from VW’s evocative ‘Night Driving‘ advert) that set me thinking.

I can’t think of when I last just went for a drive for the pure enjoyment of it. I love driving and I love cars, so when was this particular pleasure taken from me?

I believe the eco-evangelists are responsible. It is no longer considered acceptable to burn fuel for the sake of it. Think of your carbon footprint! The government has done everything it can to price me out of recreational driving – tax on fuel, road tax, congestion tax.

Driving is just no longer fun and certainly not a responsible activity to be indulging in. We are made to feel selfish for having a heavy right foot or purchasing a car for aesthetics or performance rather than its eco-credentials.

It is time to de-program ourselves from the guilt ridden eco-brainwashing and start enjoying life again. Go for a drive! 🙂

If I haven’t inspired you, perhaps this will?

Somewhere between 3 and 4am.
Night time. The best time to drive.
The air flows fresh and cool through your open window.
All lights seem green, the road is yours.

Nightdriving.
It’s calm, it’s effortless.
It’s for the joy of driving.
No rush.
No need to be somewhere at a certain time.

Just feeling the road, the car, the environment.

Give yourself time.
Indulge.
Let every moment linger.

The music floats along,
Mirroring the rhythm of the engine,
Never thumping, never overpowering
Just softly underlining every passing tree, house and hedge
and transforming your simple journey
info a beautiful film.

Slowly tiredness sets in,
You turn,
Arriving before the sun,
Leaving your Golf
Until another night,
A night perfect for night driving.

The gift of life

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When I die my property, investments and chattels will be passed to my nearest and dearest or a pre-determined list that I have nominated. But what about the greatest gift of all – “the gift of life”?

The NHS invite you to submit your details to their Organ Donor Register and England’s Chief Medical Office wants to introduce a system of “presumed consent” to tackle organ shortages, but why don’t we have a say in who will benefit from the ultimate donation?

Only 20% of the UK population have registered and I can’t help but think that this figure would be considerably higher if we were permitted to be choosy about the socio-economic group that our organs are destined to help.

I would readily register my details if I knew that my organs would be bestowed to a morally upstanding, hard working and deserving member of society. But the thought that I could possibly be helping to prolong the life of degenerate pond-life chavs, the sort of people I spend my life trying to avoid, is abhorrent enough to deter me from registering with the organ donor scheme.

In the same way in which a trustee executes the wishes of a will, we should be able to nominate a trusted third party who has the power of veto over those destined to benefit from our organ donations.

This idea will no doubt enrage the PC brigade, but why not permit a dead man his final wish and save a life in the process?

114 Days Later

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In a previous blog entry I mentioned my trial subscription to the Tesco/LOVEFiLM DVD rental service, which I cancelled in November 2005. In September 2006 I received a letter from Tesco inviting me to rejoin their service, but I was not interested and responded with the following email:

To: privacy@tescodvdrental.com, online@tesco.co.uk
Subject: Use of personal data
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 10:18:22 +0100

I have received a letter from Tesco inviting me to rejoin your Tesco DVD Rental service, despite cancelling my subscription a year ago.

I have not given permission to be contacted in this way and I request that you remove all my personal details from your databases and cease any further marketing communications.

Months passed and I forgot all about it, then today I received the following response from Tesco (spelling mistake included):

From: care@tescodvdrental.com
Subject: Re: Use of personal data
Date: 22 Jan 2007 14:22:25

Thank you for your email.

We apologise for the inconvinience caused.

We would like to confirm that we have deleted your details from our database, henceforth you will not receive any emails from us.

If you have any other questions then please do let us know.

Kind regards,

Paula
—
Customer Services
Tesco DVD rental

I don’t expect instant responses, but 114 days has got to be a record?

Stamp recycling?

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What do blind people and donkeys have in common? Used stamps apparently.

I recently witnessed a usually sane friend carefully cut out and save a used stamp from an envelope, he said that he was saving them for “some woman at work who gives them to donkeys”.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an active recycler and would gladly support any scheme to reduce our waste, but how do donkeys benefit from stamps? I mentioned this riddle to a few people and was told that blind people collect them too. Time to investigate further! My early ‘research’ unearthed some other people asking the same question on Internet forums. They had been collecting away out of some halcyon notion that they were doing something worthwhile and were now desperately searching for someone to actually send them to.

First stop was the RNIB, who say:

“Stamps are sorted by volunteers and then sold to dealers and collectors. They are mostly sold by weight, if we can identify any valuable stamps they can be sold for a higher price. As a general guideline RNIB can expect to receive 90p or £1 for a pound weight of stamps.”

So it is true! In fact there are a number of charities vying for your stamp collection:

The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association say:

“… stamps can also be recycled to make money for Guide Dogs as these can be sold to collectors.”

Help the Aged are in on the act, quoting the same worth as RNIB:

“On average Help the Aged receives 90p or £1 for a pound weight of stamps.”

So my friend was not so mad after all… or was he?

All these charities conveniently supply an address to post your stamps to, but have they calculated how much it costs to send 1 pound (454 grams) of stamps? Well I will tell you. Due to it’s size your consignment will be classified as a ‘packet’ by Royal Mail and costs £1.39 to send by Second Class post.

So it actually costs more to send your stamps to the charity than they will earn back! All your diligent and painstaking collecting would amount to a nett loss of nearly 50p per pound weight of stamps.

Ignoring the postage costs and estimating that a stamp weighs 100mg, you would need to collect over 4,500 stamps to earn that £1. This values your collected stamps at just 0.02p each (i.e. collect fifty to make a penny). Perhaps this is all just a clever ruse to export our waste abroad? 😉

Please stop this ridiculous nonsense, do us all a favour and just send them the quid!

Oh, and nothing from The Donkey Santuary. Perhaps donkeys just like the taste? 😛

Donkey

Next year delivery

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No this isn’t a misprint or Photoshop edit, it really did take M&M Sports an incredible 386 days to deliver a pair of “In Stock” running shoes. They just arrived one day with no explanation or apology, long after I had forgotten all about them.

This is why I don’t order from Internet stores any more!