Next morning, after an uneventful train journey to Waterloo, I was back in the cattle mart at the Jubilee line. As usual, I underestimated the perseverance of boarding passengers and thought it possible to actually hold a pole to keep myself stable. Cue Spanish lady and an attempt at sardine tin simulation. I move an inch and somehow she squeezes herself into the vacancy between me and said pole. Now, I didn’t really mind, but some other guy took liberty against this and got quite angry with her for taking his space. Have to say, the whole event somewhat amused me… because, eh, it was actually me who was originally standing there! I spent the next 10 minutes of the tube journey listening to these pair of muppets arguing about the space invasion that just occurred.

In fairness, that was a fairly mild incident compared to some things I have witnessed on public transport. I think the worst was the time I was in the quiet carriage on a train and a woman, with what I can only describe as having tree trunks for legs, boarded and proceeded to speak as loudly as possible on her mobile. Seems she hadn’t paid her rent and every excuse in the book was been made public in that carriage. After about 10 minutes the bloke she sat opposite had enough and, in so many words, told her to zip it. Ms Tree Trunk Legs wasn’t having any of this, and asked him who the f*** he thought he was, what effing business it was of his etc. They rowed about it for quite a while, her using vocal extremities to make her point, him using a more rational method. He eventually gave up and returned to his window staring. She continued. I was quite amused up until the point she decided to start insulting him, and out of nowhere she says: “You’re sick man, you probably is a pedophile, innit. Like dem priests innit”. So not only has she decided that he sexually abuses children, she has basically branded every priest in the world a child abuser too. I think it was at exactly that point that everyone else in the train decided enough is enough. Another guy managed to intervene first. She initially protested, stating she was in the right, until she suddenly realised she was 1 very alone woman, with large tree trunks for legs, in a carriage now full of pretty irate people. And she was the cause.

So if you ask me is there such thing as tube etiquette, my answer is yes. Don’t call a stranger a pedophile.

I started a thread a while back on Talk Photography about choosing whether I’d go with a macbook or a dell. Well, after a little more research, and a little more time, I decided to get a dell for the g/f as a wee birthday present. Said I’d go for a wee 13″. Nice and dinky, and pretty cheap too. Before ordering I took a quick look at the outlet store and spotted one made to my spec and was returned unopened or something similar… cheaper again, that’ll do the jobbie! Ordered it on the 28th of May, to be delivered on the 7th of June. Perfect timing for the present.

Hits the 5th and I get the first email. “Your order has been changed”… ok, no worries, popped it open, new estimated delivery date of 15th June. I can live with that! Hey, a few days late, she won’t mind, I had also taken her to brighton as well so that would take the pressure off.

13th of June…. “Your order has been changed”… ok, this time I do worry… estimated delivery date changed to 22nd of June… ok, now that’s pushing it… but hey, I’ll live with it!

Ok, so no more notifications. Wicked! Hits 22nd of June… day passes by… 4 o’clock hits… where’s my bleedin laptop?!? Popped open the website… estimated delivery has changed to 28th of June.

Ok, that was a bit cheeky… and now I’m beginning to sweat a little… so I pops them an email telling them I’m a little peeved off that my delivery date keeps changing and the last time it changes without notification yadda yadda.

June 24th. No reply yet. Open up the orders page…. estimated delivery date has changed AGAIN! To 2nd of July! Ok, now I’m seriously miffed. But I decide to send an email rather than biting some poor individuals head off.

Later that day I DO get a reply. An apology saying they are working with their suppliers to get parts and will do their best to bring the date closer… ok, I decide to ignore the bit about the suppliers and parts seeing as it was an outlet order I made… and let it slide…

Ok, so early last week I was keeping a regular eye on this delivery date. Seems to be holding fine up until about the 28th/29th… and I spot it change to the 8th of July… I can’t believe my eyes! So just to make sure, I refresh the page… and get this… it changes to “CANCELLED”….

Wha?!?

DELL?!?!?!? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!

So, I had enough at this stage. Registered a complaint and decided to buy off ebuyer (I HIGHLY recommend them, laptop arrived 2 days later!!). So, there I was today and realised you know what, I haven’t checked my account properly recently. Been to enganged in all this world cup melarchy!

Opened up my online banking… and before my eyes I see a big stinking dirty payment to Dell for the non-existant laptop…

Seriously, don’t make me take you guys to the small claims court, I really can’t be putting up with this crap.

Watch this space…

Anyway, wait until you hear this… I actually have a friend who works with British Airways. He shall remain nameless for now… but let’s call him Bob. Bobs salary is, wait for it, 9k per year. 9k per year?!? How on earth do you live on 9k per year?!? So where is this bizarre 29k a year average coming from? For goodness sake, he surely can’t be the only one on this salary and therefore not really affecting the average?

Before I do some crazy maths let’s pretend there’s 2 camps of thought:

1. Generally there’s a nice even spread of salaries from 9k upwards to create this average. And probably most people in and around the 29k mark.
2. There can’t be that many people on a salary of 9k!

If you’re in camp 1, the calculation would probably go something like this…

If 25% of the people are, like Bob, on as low as 9k… 50% are in and around 29k… then the rest, i.e. 25% of the cabin crew, must be on as much as £49,000 a year… possibly more… Holy smokes! So what are they striking about?!?

Let’s do some more wild stats here, to create a balance. This time I’ll favour with camp 2. Let’s say 10% of the staff are on 9k, 60% are in and around 29k, and 30% would be long term and are above 29k. So what could they be potentially earning? … Let’s pretend we took a snapshot of 10 people to get to this average.

1 is on 9k
6 are on 29k
To get an average of 29k the total salaries must add up to 290k…
Out of the 7 people so far we have 183k
Therefore the remainder is 107k…
That’s 3 people making that are together earning 107k.
So, potentially you could have 1 person on 33k, another on 36k, and another on 39k…

Holy smokes folks! That’s still one hell of a salary and it could even be more because my figures are most likely wildly wrong! To go a step further, let’s just average out my 2 theories and say that in BA the better paid cabin crew must be on over 40k per year. Now let’s add even more fuel to the fire, that’s a base salary! So they get paid per flight on top of all that. That begs the question, what on earth is the deal with the spread?

I’m going to speculate. I think the problem with BA is in fact down to terribly written contracts at the beginning. Years ago they foolishly wrote something into the contracts similar to a promise that the staff would earn X amount of money/payrise each year etc etc. This probably happened before it was privatised. Now they are screwed because those people would have started on something like 9k a year, and are probably the people now are on about 40 – 50k+ a year. This has most likely been recognised by the key people, probably Willy Walsh, being the shrude business man he is. And therefore are trying to reduce costs and make it more profitable again… But, because of the older crews contracts the new people are also getting screwed with the same shit. Then getting tarred with the same brush by the media, and in turn, by the public.

So, there’s obviously a delimma, and I can already see the way it’s going to go. He’s going to mess up everyone in the place to start with, and get a proper wage structure in. Probably cause loads of staff to resign, including some of the new ones. Then he’ll revisit it all so that everyones wages are a little fairer. And save himself billions in the process.

I honestly have to say, it kinda makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why the BA staff are striking. BUT, and they won’t admit this, they’ve had it very good for quite a while. But the big “I’m gonna f*** you up” hammer has been due for a very long time.

To quote my friend Dan: “sounds fair, sometimes you just have to force redundancy on people, take a financial hit short term but it’ll be far better long term”.

Exactly. I won’t admit to my friend Bob, but have to say I do agree with the business logic here. And this happens more often in business than you think. When you don’t have the legal right to sack people, you just have to give them a little nudge to get out the door. It’s mean, but hey, it’s business. And if they don’t make money, you don’t have a job.

This is the union behind the postal strikes recently.
You’ve heard of this and most likely have been affected by this. They are the trade union behind the employees of Royal Mail

This is the strike that is causing absolute havoc to Royal Mail.
I’m not even going to quote how much business they have already lost Royal Mail. Because of it they will potentially cost some of their own members jobs.

This is the union driving the people looking for a payrise in a recession.
Seriously, are you kidding me CWU? We are in a recession, I don’t care about your whimpers. You expect us to support your little cries while the rest of us take a wage cut? Not in my life time.

This is the union that are not supported by any member of the public that I have spoken too.
Take my advice CWU. Zip it. You’re not doing yourselves any favours.

First product that comes to mind is Actimel by Danone. Their claim is that Actimel contains probiotics and more importantly L. casei Imunitass, their own “exclusive” probiotic. Now there’s a word I would never ever have been able to pronounce, never mind remember, only for very clever advertising…  It almost smothers me to admit it! So what exactly does this chemical rubbish do for you? Well, supposedly, this helps support the bodies defenses. And the claim by Danone is that this has been proven by clinic trials so by hook or by crook we can’t deny it! But here’s what I like, their latest plug has been directed to children. You’ve seen the ads with the glowing nuclear kid and the skipping Actimel? Well if you follow the news you’ll see that the skipping Actimel has now been banned. Why? Read this extract from an online news site:

“The company said eight studies were carried out on children up to the age of 16, two of which were carried out on hospitalised children in India who suffered acute diarrhoea or were taking gastritis-related medication.”

Ok, so 2 were sick kids. I thought we were talking about a defense mechanism? Not a cure for tuberstickulitus. Let’s rubbish those 2 so.

We’re down to 6 kids that prove that this works. Right? Actually, no. The trials on the remaining six kids were apparently inconsistent. So what does that leave us with? Let’s take a stab at 65-70% of the kids reporting a positive effect after a trial of the product.  That’s 4 kids. Hardly concrete evidence then eh? No wonder the ad was banned.

Ok, so what about those ads that don’t get banned? Let’s take an example from L’Oréal, and you can search youtube for this. A good example is the ad from Jennifer Anniston (or just watch it if your into her, she’s pretty hot). Here’s the claim:

“L’Oréal LV revitalising shampoo has twice the vitamins. Pro vitamin b5 penetrates the hair helping to strengthen it from root to tip”

Ok, so nothing wrong there? Actually, let’s take a closer look at this. What have we presumed from that simple statement? 2 things:

1. L’Oréal LV revitalising shampoo actually contains “Pro vitamin b5″…

All they said above is that it has “twice the vitamins”. They never actually state that the product contains “Pro vitamin b5″… well, maybe it does. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

2. L’Oréal helps to strengthen hair…

It does state that “Pro vitamin b5″ helps to strengthen hair. What it doesn’t say is L’Oréal LV revitalising shampoo strengthens hair. What’s the difference? I hear you ask! Well, I could make a statement like this:

“My super doooper branded chocolate contains cocoa high in Flavanoids. Flavanoids in cocoa protect the heart.”

See what I did there? I never said chocolate protects the heart. I said Flavanoids in the cocoa do. Lump that in with a bucket of sugar, a wheelbarrow of full fat milk, and those Flavanoids in the cocoa is like attaching a glass of water to a petrol bomb so that you don’t get burnt.

“only Smarties have the answer”

They don’t, I checked.

The particular article I read was from a glossy magazine that I won’t mention in the fear that I might rouse publicity for them. The article was about Natalie Cassidy, a former Eastenders star. She apparently ‘piled on weight’ as she soared to an unearthly size 16.

News flash! Some peoples weight fluctuates!

Also in the news, the water is wet and my eyes see stuff.

Really people, who cares? Here’s the bombshell… looking at the amount of comments on their website, obviously some people do… and obviously a LOT of people believe the billshut they actually write. Can someone help me out here, why do people read, and more importantly, fall for this carp? I’m not talking about weight here, I’m on about story content. Yes folks, sorry to break the news, up to 90% of these type of stories are downright nonsense. Let’s take a sentence like this, which I will quote from a random article on-line:

‘It’s so sad – Natalie’s at her lowest ebb,’ our source reveals.

So it was confirmed by a source. It’s gotta be true… oh no wait, who is ‘our source’? Oh noes, you fooled me again! My friends, here’s the ice breaker – most of the time ‘our source’ is a little hamster running round in the writers head. This hamster invents little speeches wrapped in legal compliant jargon so that the ‘press police’ don’t sue their asses. Yes, you have it, it’s more carp. You’ll also notice I’ve stopped using the word journalist when referring to the writer, because it is honestly a stretch them using that job title. In fact, I’m pretty close to declining them of the title ‘writer’ too.

People… buying these magazines because of these articles is one thing. Actually believing all the bullcarp they write is a whole new ball game. Glossy magazines should be shelved in the Fiction section, because they really do tread that fine line between truth and fiction.

So what about that ‘10%’ that actually is true? I’m baffled, does size actually matter?

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