The grumpy thread

[Metal Guru]

1 hour ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Get even! I no longer shop in our local Tescos (as it is expensive compared to the alternatives - even with a card) so keep the clubcard for the when we're out and about and need to make a pitstop. Tescos (usually) have a car park big enough to get the Pony Pantechnionette into and decent loos.

This past fortnight I'll be screwing up their algorithms by shopping in Daventry, Cardigan and Perth. Not used it prior to that for months. Did see yesterday that even the 'Meal Deal' has a clubcard 'offer' on it?

I think they'll just ignore my data.....

I’m in Scotland , my son is in London but we’ve accidentally got each others Tesco club cards. That’s gonna cause a blip in their data. 

[High Jetter]

44 minutes ago, Talbot said:

It's a rudamentry form of tracking.  They now know when and where you shop, and how much you spend.  They can identify journeys you've made and know more about you than they need to.

I bloody hate it.

They won't get much journey info from me as 99% of the time each store card or app only gets used in the same branch each time. I don't like it either but I find I get more offers for things I would buy regardless, which I see as a benefit. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

1 hour ago, Metal Guru said:

If you get it delivered with short use by dates, complain about it. I’ve always got a refund (Asda) , eat it quick or freeze it, free food!

Nearest Asda here is 70 miles away but they will send a man in a van if I order groceries online? [edit] 66.4 miles according to satnav
Tescos/Morrisons/Lidl are 17 miles away. Aldi is 30+ 
Asda wins so most our groceries come from them.
If I refuse something cos it's dodgy the refund is instant. If I get it indoors and spot its over ripe or got a close sell by date - quick ping on their website and refund (+free food :-)) - I'm happy with that but this is the grumpy thread? Oops

 

[Metal Guru]

2 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Nearest Asda here is 70 miles away but they will send a man in a van if I order groceries online? [edit] 66.4 miles according to satnav
Tescos/Morrisons/Lidl are 17 miles away. Aldi is 30+ 
Asda wins so most our groceries come from them.
If I refuse something cos it's dodgy the refund is instant. If I get it indoors and spot its over ripe or got a close sell by date - quick ping on their website and refund (+free food :-)) - I'm happy with that but this is the grumpy thread? Oops

 

We have Asda deliveries. They must lose a fortune because of moronic packers. I’ve had countless free but squashed loaves of bread because some idiot has packed 2 litre bottles of lemonade on top of it. 
Or eggs at the bottle of a gasket with cans of beans etc on top. That’s on top of short dated stuff I’ve already mentioned.

The drivers get annoyed by this too because some people get angry with them.

 

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

bottle of a gasket

Practising ventriloquism again?🤣

[Metal Guru]

28 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Practising ventriloquism again?🤣

Big clumsy fingers more like.

[sheffcortinacentre]

But mention the introduction of I'd cards & the sheepeople go crazy about invasion of privacy! 

[Split_Pin]

I'm not normally one for moaning about other people's driving because glass houses but this one made me chuckle a bit this evening.

Approaching a mini roundabout, a Fiat Panda enters from the left, doesn't slow down and the driver doesn't look at all.

I was behind it for a short while after.

✅️ THINK BIKE sticker

✅️ Help for Heroes sticker

✅️ Heavy tooled up with the dashcams

❌️ Observational skills

[DavieW]

20 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

 

✅️ Heavy tooled up with the dashcams

 

I find a lot of cars with dashcams are driven by idiots. 

[Angrydicky]

They are.

A while ago I was behind a newish Golf on the A16, being driven very poorly, the driver couldn't keep it in a straight line or a steady speed.

Two dashcams. One in the rear window, one in the windscreen next to the rear view mirror.

And a massive phone on a sucker in the middle of the screen.

[Talbot]

14 hours ago, DavieW said:

I find a lot of cars with dashcams are driven by idiots. 

Who will quite happily plough into a dangerous situation and then start shouting "DASHCAAAAAAAM" at everyone else.

Like a complete wanker.

[Rust Collector]

3 minutes ago, Talbot said:

Who will quite happily plough into a dangerous situation and then start shouting "DASHCAAAAAAAM" at everyone else.

Like a complete wanker.

Round my way it's almost always a smashed up car with a giffer behind the wheel and the camera is front and rear facing with cables draped all over the cabin... Presumably had a lot of crashes which definitely* weren't their fault and so now they have the camera to prove it next time. It's going to be such a disappointment for them when they watch the footage and realise it was their fault all along 🤣

[louiepj]

Supermarket special prices for club cards etc. WTF? 
Got to carry round a load of extra cards or pay a couple of quid extra for everything. I’m making a point of boycotting them. So far it’s Tesco, Sainsburys and Co-op.
 

It's not just the cards!!
You need the phone apps as well for full immersion into their shopping experience.
Remember to leave the notifications on as well.

[meggersdog]

We have a small grey bin for food waste that gets emptied with the rubbish collection. There is a smaller one for inside the house and green bin bags which,when full, get put in the outside bin. To order new bin bags you tie one to the handle of the bin that gets emptied. Last week I tied one to the top handle. Bin was emptied , bag still on handle but no new ones. There is a carry handle at the top and another on the side so I thought " jobsworth won't give me more bags because I tied it to the wrong handle". This morning I tied it to the other handle. Came home from work, bin emptied, bag still on handle but no new bags. Well looks like I shall be ignoring the No food waste sticker on the big bin from now on.

[meggersdog]

On the subject of club cards. I have a Tesco club card that isn't mine. It was on the keyring of a car I bought a few years ago. Still works.

[High Jetter]

Previous owner is presumably grateful for the points you add when you use it.

[EyesWeldedShut]

12 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Previous owner is presumably grateful for the points you add when you use it.

So that's where my Berlingo is these days?

 

[barefoot]

2 hours ago, meggersdog said:

We have a small grey bin for food waste that gets emptied with the rubbish collection. There is a smaller one for inside the house and green bin bags which,when full, get put in the outside bin. To order new bin bags you tie one to the handle of the bin that gets emptied. Last week I tied one to the top handle. Bin was emptied , bag still on handle but no new ones. There is a carry handle at the top and another on the side so I thought " jobsworth won't give me more bags because I tied it to the wrong handle". This morning I tied it to the other handle. Came home from work, bin emptied, bag still on handle but no new bags. Well looks like I shall be ignoring the No food waste sticker on the big bin from now on.

It's all a fucking con anyway, don't ever get me started on recycling or I might tell you about the factories in China which produce plastic bottles exclusively to send next door ready to 'recycle' to make into lace and bras etc.

[EyesWeldedShut]

https://www.mini.co.uk/en_GB/home/mini-news/aceman-concept.html - what a load of cobblers

[Metal Guru]

5 hours ago, barefoot said:

It's all a fucking con anyway, don't ever get me started on recycling or I might tell you about the factories in China which produce plastic bottles exclusively to send next door ready to 'recycle' to make into lace and bras etc.

I have never used our waste food bin. Anything uncooked gets frozen before it goes off or past its use by date, anything cooked gets made into soup and anything inedible ( non meat) gets composted. Fat goes to the bird table.  That leaves just things like chicken bones that go in the normal bin. 
 

[DavieW]

9 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

https://www.mini.co.uk/en_GB/home/mini-news/aceman-concept.html - what a load of cobblers

The sad thing is, it'll sell by the boatload. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

3 minutes ago, DavieW said:

The sad thing is, it'll sell by the boatload. 

And that's one of the rules of business of the world these days, the car's not really to my taste tho'

[vulgalour]

Here's a little warning about barn find cars and how they got me.

The two Lanchesters we've got are both ex-barn find and have been sat around with wildlife in and on them for decades.  While we did take care with things like gloves, masks, hand washing, etc. they still got me.  A couple of weeks ago I started getting a nasty looking rash on my neck where the collar of my overalls rubbed and it wasn't clearing up.  Suspected nickel allergy on that, which I know I have and looked just the same the last time a chain necklace kicked it off and made me aware of the issue.  We suspect it was some fertiliser with nickel content because it kicked off just after discovering some unknown granules behind some trim when dealing with woodworm.  Given the car spent some years on a farm and being used as storage for at least some of it, this doesn't seem too far fetched.  Not a big problem, a dose of antihistamines (first time I've ever had to do that) and a couple of weeks later it was cleared up just in time for the next problem.

Lanchester 2 gave me ringworm, which despite the name is a fungal infection.  Again, this is something I've never had before even though I've lived with and worked with animals, including horses so came as something of a surprise.  This car did contain a dessicated rat, signs of fresh rat activity, and more recently has been the local foxes choice of wendy house so I suspect I've picked it up off a surface in the car from one or more of those sources.  I did wear gloves and mask on the initial clean up and once everything had been swept and hosed I just assumed I'd be fine not to bother which apparently isn't the case.

Don't be like me, all itchy and gross, wear gloves when you're working on barn find stuff until you're sure it's cleaned thoroughly.  Even regular hand washing and showers and the like apparently isn't enough to stop infection.  At least it's nothing life threatening or painful, and I can hide the unsightly blemishes easily thanks to having long hair.  I'm also reminded by all this that I'm going to be cautious about my lithium allergy, something I learned about when I got white lithium grease on my hands a few years ago, especially given how much grease is all over the next stage of work on Lanchester 2.

It's almost like old cars are bad for your health or something.

[Zelandeth]

Just had a message through from my mother in law, that my father in law's health has deteriorated rapidly over the last couple of weeks (they've been in a care home for the last 8 months or so due to advancing issues with Parkinson's).  

They're predicting he's probably got days to weeks left given the current trajectory.  

In some ways it will be a mercy being this relatively quick, a lot of us were kind of dreading a years long drawn out decline, long after the person is basically gone, especially with the price of hospice care eating rapidly into their retirement funds.  We were pretty much resigned to the fact we'd probably seen them for the last time when we visited in October when they were still at least mostly lucid.  Still not news you want to get though.

[w00dy]

Just had some absolute tossers do the old oil in coolant scam on me. I should have stopped them, but I didn't. Selling an old,.cheap BMW is a miserable time. You'd think there wasn't much profit in a slightly broken 5 series that's up at £1650, but you live and learn.

[RoverFolkUs]

On 4/21/2023 at 10:56 AM, Rust Collector said:

Round my way it's almost always a smashed up car with a giffer behind the wheel and the camera is front and rear facing with cables draped all over the cabin... Presumably had a lot of crashes which definitely* weren't their fault and so now they have the camera to prove it next time. It's going to be such a disappointment for them when they watch the footage and realise it was their fault all along 🤣

Even more so when said footage captures them blaring out "caught it all on dashcam m8" but the insurance company reviews it and notices an action in the clip that deems it their fault where it may have been 50/50 without any footage 🤣

[RoverFolkUs]

22 hours ago, barefoot said:

It's all a fucking con anyway, don't ever get me started on recycling or I might tell you about the factories in China which produce plastic bottles exclusively to send next door ready to 'recycle' to make into lace and bras etc.

My local council have started collecting the recycling on black bin day as well. So 50% of our recycling automatically ends up in landfill before it even hits the "recycling" plant. I guess it cheaper to incinerate it than reach the quotas of recycling their green counterparts set? 

[Dead_E23]

I read somewhere that it's actually more effective to recover the energy from recyclables by incinerating them than it is to recycle them in the conventional sense.   

There's a lot of bullshit around recycling anyway.    The preferred solution is 'source reduction', which is newspeak for going without.  People have become so accustomed to having abundant cheap shit that 'source reduction' isn't a particularly palatable option.  I was just thinking earlier about how affordable power tools have become compared to when I grew up and any kind of tools were fucking expensive.  I wouldn't fancy going back to that!

[Billy - Medhurst]

6 hours ago, w00dy said:

Just had some absolute tossers do the old oil in coolant scam on me. I should have stopped them, but I didn't. Selling an old,.cheap BMW is a miserable time. You'd think there wasn't much profit in a slightly broken 5 series that's up at £1650, but you live and learn.

Step Daughters just had this tried with the Chrevrolet they are selling. Caught them doing it and told them to F.R.O. Did not know it was a thing.

[chadders]

8 hours ago, Dead_E23 said:

I read somewhere that it's actually more effective to recover the energy from recyclables by incinerating them than it is to recycle them in the conventional sense.   

There's a lot of bullshit around recycling anyway.    The preferred solution is 'source reduction', which is newspeak for going without.  People have become so accustomed to having abundant cheap shit that 'source reduction' isn't a particularly palatable option.  I was just thinking earlier about how affordable power tools have become compared to when I grew up and any kind of tools were fucking expensive.  I wouldn't fancy going back to that!

I find your first paragraph entirely believable but I guess that there's the perennial spectre of pollution.

I've got a B&D drill that's well over 50 years old and is still working OK. Mind you I couldn't afford any more tools for quite a while once I'd bought that.