David Cameron (Leader of the British Conservative Party) has been recently pictured with Arnie and is reported in today’s Guardian as saying “Look at me and think of Schwarzenegger.”
Well how could I resist? Cliche response or not, here it is:
(Sadly, Putin seems to have set a fashion for British politicians physically less well-suited to the he-man role.)
Surprisingly-wealthy parent and school governor sues UK government about whether Al Gore’s video can be shown in schools. Partly wins. (Abstract of previous post. Continued here)
This story might sound familiar to you in Kentucky but it must be a first in a British court. The suing “parent” is “school governor Stewart Dimmock, from Dover, a father of two, who is a member of the New Party” (quoting the BBC) I couldn’t cast aside all thought of the cost. Over £200,000, (ca. $400,000 at the current rate of exchange) according to the BBC.
Odd that a man who apparently sends his offspring to a state school can afford to blow the cost of a bloody expensive education on a court case about a video. Hmm.
(Rich English people don’t send their kids to state schools. If they are in a job where it would be politically inadvisable for their kids to attend private school, they send them to a top “faith school.”)
Hmm. “The New Party?” A New one on me, anyway. Sounds Orwellian. (No, stupid. That’s everything, now. ) Who are in this amazingly rich party?
They have a website. With a manifesto and everything. It appears to be a “real” party in Scotland. At least one of its members is a member of the Scottish parliament.
I look at the pictures and biogs of the National and the Scottish committee. They offer two “celeb” supporters: an ex-businessman tv “expert” and a woman who was a golf coach. (There’s a bit of a golf theme in the resumes) Its committee seems to be made up of small businessmen. Their pictures and mini-cvs cover a range of backgrounds. Most have worked and then taken up self-employment. Others own small/medium-firms. There is an Indian businessman. A young mother. A sportswoman. There is a representative from every broad industrial grouping.
How surprisingly unrandom a distribution of backgrounds. It begins to seem so much like a tokenised marketing exercise that I am getting confused.
There are people with interests in haulage, oil and so on. These don’t look like businesses that are going to be overkeen on any action to impede the rate of climate change. But we aren’t talking Exxon here. These are not multinationals. I doubt that many people have heard of them, even in Scotland, let alone in the UK as a whole.
If I was a cartoon character, several light bulbs would be popping into life above my head by now. But then, if I was a sci-fi computer, I’d be the one that was saying “Does not compute” when faced with two confusing instructions.
Because, the bit of my brain that’s saying “Hang on, these are visibly not billionaires. They must have access to the untold wealth of an anti-Al Gore slush fund.” is crashing up against the bit of my brain that’s saying “No. I suspect they have no more money than a few small businessmen could drum up for a risky gamble. They can’t afford to spend loads on adverts and publicity. They could gamble their £200K on a high profile court case. It won’t even count against election expenses. And, in any case, the state had to pay a good part of their costs, following the court ruling.“.)
Well, they’ve got their money’s worth. Some obscure party is now in the political public domain. Their manifesto and policies are such a disturbing mixture of crowd-pleasing, repellent and vacuous that, even with my overly-free linking capacity, I can’t bring myself to put a link.
Is this going to set a precedent for what will happen when any interest group has a problem with something in the media? In which case, I think I’ll become a “school governor” and sue the government for not banning the Daily Mail, say, from being discussed in schools.
Now, in the past I have been very quick to rant here about the slightest customer service infraction – mainly this is because Ebuyer and Pipex are terminally bad companies – so it is only fair that I try to re-dress the balance at least occasionally.
So, with this in mind, I need to say a big well done to Amazon.co.uk. They have an actual understanding about customer service and appear able to maintain their promises.
A few months ago I was sent £20 in Amazon vouchers, so eventually I decided to spend them. Not really having anything in mind, I spent quite a while searching Amazon looking for the right combination of things to hit the £20 mark exactly and not incur any P&P charges (yes, I am that cheapskate). Eventually I found some filters for my camera so I ordered them. Everything went smoothly and the order was processed then confirmed.
A few hours later I glanced over the confirmation email and, to my horror, I realised I’d ordered the wrong size filter (52mm instead of 67mm if anyone cares) and panicked trying to cancel the order. In previous dealings with e-commerce sites, this is normally where everything goes wrong, however with Amazon it was painless, quick and effective. They were even able to refund the gift voucher without any problems at all.
Being unable to find any suitable filters of the correct size, I cracked and bought a few books (history, Pratchett and the like), going over the £20 but not by much. As I live a few miles more remote than the middle of nowhere, I was expecting the delivery charges for this (heavier) bundle to be painful. When I have bought from other suppliers (who also use Royal Mail to deliver) postage charges have been astronomical but no, Amazon offered the normal range of options, including the free “standard delivery.”
Despite the site being littered with warnings about the Royal Mail strikes causing problems to post etc., I decided I was in no hurry and standard delivery (estimated 5-7 days) would be fine. This was during the evening of 10 Oct 07. I placed the order, got all the confirmations (and this time there was no panic over the thread sizes…) and all was well.
Today (13 Oct 07), I get home from work only to discover the parcel has arrived. So, in effect, the standard delivery took less than 3 days to complete. To be honest, this is pretty good going. If some one posts me a single page of A4 it normally takes that much time to get here, if not longer. When I have ordered from other companies, I have had to pay a fortune (often as much as 20% of the cost of the total order) for items which have taken a week or two to get here from the centre of England.
I realise it is strange to say well done to a company for doing what they should do (i.e. serve their customers), but sadly it has become a rare thing in my experience. Companies no longer care about negative opinions, because largely they are all rubbish. In this instance though, Amazon have exceeded my expectations and, in doing so, have greatly increased the chances I will shop there again. Will they care? I doubt it. But I will.
(Note 1: Interestingly, in this instance, Amazon exceeded my expectations by ensuring they were low to begin with. Amazon emphasised how the parcel could take up to a week, longer with the postal strikes. This meant anything less was a bonus to me. Too many e-commerce organisations try to boast about getting things to you before you even realised you wanted them that disappointment is sure to follow.)
(Note 2: One negative point. Despite the books being supposedly “brand new” all four show distinct signs of wear. One is pretty dog eared and all smell of stale tobacco. If I was planning to sell these on eBay, I would never get away with calling them new… The parcel used to wrap the four up was open at both ends, so I am amazed nothing fell out and was lost. I think this includes a well done to the local postie. )
[tags]Amazon, e-commerce, society, culture, raves, Good Shop, Postal Strikes, Royal Mail, Books, Shopping, eBay, eBuyer, Pipex, Customer Service[/tags]