The grumpy thread

[myglaren]

13 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Glad I read the leaflet in the new asthma medication I was prescribed a couple of weeks ago and finally actually got today.

Specifically states, in capital letters, do not take with two other meds I'm on. 

Guess who's going to spend the next several afternoons bashing his head against the nearest wall trying to get any sense out of his GP (they of course have cancelled the repeat of the one I've been on before - for the last 26 years when prescribing the new one).

Thankfully I've got enough left to see me through a week or so - but it takes at least a week for them to actually issue a script once I've managed to get them to actually acknowledge my existence.

It takes eight to ten weeks to get an appointment with them (in theory), but they insist on chasing me every six months for an asthma review...in which nothing has changed in the slightest since I was 12.  Could that poor nurse not be allowed to spend their time doing something more useful?

Taking bets on how long I wind up being sans an inhaler I can use?  I'm betting 3 weeks.

You may be able to buy the one you need and reclaim the cost.

I had to go to a local chemist when mine ran out at work, bought one and they told me about recovering the cost.  Never bothered as it was only six quid.

I did try and buy a different one for my daughter when it wasn't included on her prescription but wasn't able to with that one, prescription only.

[auntiemaryscanary]

21 hours ago, richardmorris said:

My grandparents house had a back boiler- I suspect it’s still there.

We've still got one! Fully serviced, in daily use. It was installed in 2001 so modern (!), think installation of new gas back boilers was outlawed in 2003. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

I have watched the exhumation and moving of dead ww2 German soldiers on youtube and the injuries people get in war are absolutely horrible, on some there are only pieces left.

This was from the Eastern Front and became extra special to me as one of these could have been my great grandfather who died on the Eastern Front and has never been found.

War is shit.

[Metal Guru]

Can’t compete with the above but last night broke my record for the highest price I’ve paid for a pint in the U.K. £6.75, though I’m sure anyone in London could beat that by a mile.

( I know I’m old but the first pint I bought myself (illegally at 16), was 25p.)

[Wibble]

7 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Can’t compete with the above but last night broke my record for the highest price I’ve paid for a pint in the U.K. £6.75, though I’m sure anyone in London could beat that by a mile.

( I know I’m old but the first pint I bought myself (illegally at 16), was 25p.)

£6.60 Holiday Inn Express, Glasgow airport. Never again.

[Pieman]

1 hour ago, Metal Guru said:

Can’t compete with the above but last night broke my record for the highest price I’ve paid for a pint in the U.K. £6.75, though I’m sure anyone in London could beat that by a mile.

Would have to check the receipt to be certain but I think I paid slightly more than that for a pint of Guinness at the Chesford Grange hotel in Kenilworth a couple of weekends ago.  The room also cost a bomb and I have to admit really wasn't worth what I paid (was there as I'd been given a ticket to an awards party).

[beko1987]

15 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

Can’t compete with the above but last night broke my record for the highest price I’ve paid for a pint in the U.K. £6.75, though I’m sure anyone in London could beat that by a mile.

( I know I’m old but the first pint I bought myself (illegally at 16), was 25p.)

I was paying £6.60 (sure thats what the till said) for a Guinness last night. Nearly moaned but I had 5 and paid for 2 so il call it good. The heiniken 0%'s my mate was having were as much as I used to find reasonable to a whole pint with duty and alcohol 😂

[Metal Guru]

1 minute ago, beko1987 said:

I was paying £6.60 (sure thats what the till said) for a Guinness last night. Nearly moaned but I had 5 and paid for 2 so il call it good. The heiniken 0%'s my mate was having were as much as I used to find reasonable to a whole pint with duty and alcohol 😂

Soft or non alcoholic drinks are even worse because they charge similar prices to alcoholic ones but have much less tax to pay. In fact at the same venue I was charged £3.30 for a tiny (250ml?) bottle of Coke and £5.80 for two (200ml) Fever Tree  sodas and  a splash of line cordial.   

[Saabnut]

Poor potatocam picture of the draught beers in the pub the other night. Current exchange rate about 13.5 to the pound

[High Jetter]

£10.50 for a pint of Guinness? No wonder OL is fat!

[Metal Guru]

6 minutes ago, Saabnut said:

Poor potatocam picture of the draught beers in the pub the other night. Current exchange rate about 13.5 to the pound

More than £10 for a pint of Guinness ! My PB is about £9 for a pint of generic lager at a hotel nr  Oslo airport in 2019.

[barefoot]

I've bought a four pack of this;

At £1.45 or 35p a pint what could possibly go wrong? I appreciate that it's just 2%, but it might be like a cold shandy from the fridge, or it  could taste like piss! I'll let you know when I've drunk enough real beer to give it a go.

[Bren]

Shoppers. If you knock something off a shelf please pick it up. Pick it up even if you didn't rather than the item being trodden on.

[sierraman]

On 08/12/2023 at 19:13, Saabnut said:

Poor potatocam picture of the draught beers in the pub the other night. Current exchange rate about 13.5 to the pound

Carlsberg is like piss, as is Budweiser, can’t be doing with all that ‘American Craft Beer’ shit either, America and Beer shouldn’t be in the same book let alone the same sentence. Guinness bloats me and it annoys me when they start adding fruit to beer. Give me a pint of Stella or a Sam Smiths Sovereign any day.

[chaseracer]

It's all the fault of @MrsJuular but I have acquired a taste for the products of SCTSH brewers Innis & Gunn.  But can I find them in the depths of the West Midlands?

Other than a brief (and since passed) window of availability in certain Tesco branches, apparently not.

[Metal Guru]

12 minutes ago, chaseracer said:

It's all the fault of @MrsJuular but I have acquired a taste for the products of SCTSH brewers Innis & Gunn.  But can I find them in the depths of the West Midlands?

Other than a brief (and since passed) window of availability in certain Tesco branches, apparently not.

Aldi sells their lager. 4 cans about £5.

[beko1987]

Prick

[Back_For_More]

No good deed goes unpunished apparently...... 

Feeling smug from this mornings to n fro and XM levitations - not a slow puncture but totally fu**ing fu**ed mate. 

So that's the 255/35 rear I'm still waiting for, the other front already swapped and now off side too - all in a week. Bloody expensive 😭 and not one of them with the wear bands gone yet. A few hundred on 'em at best. 

Our roads are absolutely horrendous. 

I'm off to find the culprit holes and photo the bastards - see if I cam get anywhere with Bromley clusterfucks. 

[Talbot]

4 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Prick

If the car does many more miles, it'll just self-deflate anyway.

I'd have no issue putting a screwdriver through that.

[Matty]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

If the car does many more miles, it'll just self-deflate anyway.

I'd have no issue putting a screwdriver through that.

What was it someone said earlier about the four rings of over confidence. What an arsehole riding it round in that state.

[New POD]

10 hours ago, Bren said:

Shoppers. If you knock something off a shelf please pick it up. Pick it up even if you didn't rather than the item being trodden on.

Saw an old lady slip on something (possibly a plum) that had fallen on the floor in Tesco once. Broke her hip. 

[RoverFolkUs]

7 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Prick

Had a lady with a Qashqai that brought her car in for one tyre around May this year. It was worn to a similar extent as that one. She had that tyre replaced but I noticed the one on the opposite corner was very close to the limit and worn smooth on the inner edge. Not illegal, but very close to showing cords so I recommended doing both. She just wanted the one illegal one doing. 

6 months or so pass and she phones up a couple of weeks ago saying "I need a new tyre because it's started showing the cords, it must be worn out" 

She knows what the cord structure is! But thinks that's the time to replace a tyre - when the cords are showing.. seriously! 🤣

[Remspoor]

Had to recently phone to a UK pension office. I had written to them twice. First time in Sept. The second letter as a chase up a month letter because there was no reply. Phoning the UK costs a far bit these days as it it is outside of the EU.

I had two questions. One of them was why I cannot have a means of secure contact with them electronically.

Upon answering the call centre man asked what was my query (I was chasing up a response to my letters) and after I told him he asked for my SS number.  He would not go any further to discus  matters until I answered a security question. He was a bit hard to hear because, as usual the line, was braking up in a typical Call Centre way. I did not hear him correctly when he asked for an old address.  As he was on speaker phone the wife understood the question and said "No he means the one in (X) town". She never gave the whole address  but even so my answer of the full address was not acceptable. That was a fail. I then answered two other "security" questions.

So we cleared that  hurdle. However, he then told me he could not see an answer to my letters in the system. In response I said  that means you failed to answer. He replied that is not what I said. He repeated that he could not see it in the system. Somehow that meant there could have been replied to my letter, just that there is no record. Both the wife and i are confused by that statement. Why not just admit that there was no reply?

I have a digital pass for interactions with Spanish government offices land registry, taxes, health car matters etc etc. My wife has one for here needs when contacting the Dutch government. Why cannot the UK get into the 21st century? I know they pass around my details via the Internet. Because I write to Wolverhampton. Every call centre person I have dealt with has a Northern Ireland accent and letters to me are sent from the Netherlands. I am informed that a secure electronic means of communicating with the UK government  offices, from outside of the Uk is not possible.

Oh if I have  a complaint I have to write to my MP. I cannot vote in the UK .

Cluck flusters.

[RoverFolkUs]

Fecking Facebook marketplace scammers. 

I'm on the lookout for a single alloy for my Focus as one of them is heavily distorted. Possibly repairable, but I could get a second hand straight alloy for less. 

Spotted a very poorly written listing on marketplace for the exact wheel I'm after, it's only £15 and a 20 minute or so drive away. Perfect! It was listed about 7 weeks ago, I sent a message saying I'd like to buy it if he's still got it and within seconds I get an automated message along the lines of "please contact (email address) for further details. Please mention vehicle model and year"

This seems slightly odd, because the advert definitely looks genuine, just poorly written, and so do his other listings for other various small ticket household objects. 

An hour or so later I look at his selling profile and it's now been taken over with those blatantly fake adverts, like a 2017 VW transporter for £3000 or something. All with the same description - like this; 

Reported the listings but I expect FB will do fuck all about it. Meanwhile I really just want to get in touch with the bloke and buy his wheel! 

I can only assume because the advert was so poorly written it wasn't coming up in my previous searches as it was listed 7 weeks ago, but the algorithm has boosted his listings after the surge of activity from the fraudsters...

[beko1987]

14 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Had a lady with a Qashqai that brought her car in for one tyre around May this year. It was worn to a similar extent as that one. She had that tyre replaced but I noticed the one on the opposite corner was very close to the limit and worn smooth on the inner edge. Not illegal, but very close to showing cords so I recommended doing both. She just wanted the one illegal one doing. 

6 months or so pass and she phones up a couple of weeks ago saying "I need a new tyre because it's started showing the cords, it must be worn out" 

She knows what the cord structure is! But thinks that's the time to replace a tyre - when the cords are showing.. seriously! 🤣

I can make it a bit worse as I was at the local indoor kids play building for a party my boy was at, was outside having a smoke. 

Kids happily bounded into it and off they went, been tipping it down for days here... 😡

And I shit myself and got my tyres changed when they were 24% better than these 

[New POD]

9 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

I can make it a bit worse as I was at the local indoor kids play building for a party my boy was at, was outside having a smoke. 

Kids happily bounded into it and off they went, been tipping it down for days here... 😡

And I shit myself and got my tyres changed when they were 24% better than these 

The tyres might not kill you, but what about the smoking? Give that up and you could afford the best tyres..

[Talbot]

1 minute ago, New POD said:

The tyres might not kill you, but what about the smoking? Give that up and you could afford the best tyres..

[EyesWeldedShut]

3 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

I can make it a bit worse as I was at the local indoor kids play building for a party my boy was at, was outside having a smoke. 

Kids happily bounded into it and off they went, been tipping it down for days here... 😡

And I shit myself and got my tyres changed when they were 24% better than these 

Certain family relative was here recently in their car with a newly minted MoT - "only needed two tyres to pass"
Being a nosy fecker, I squinted at the thing: two new fronts, two (mixed) shite on the rears.
Stuck the plate through the MoT checker:
It failed 2023 on both fronts (cords exposed) and it has advisory on both rears (one is ancient and cracking, the other is just legal on tread. ).
Every.single.fucking.year since 2015 that car has had at least one advisory/fail on tyres.
So this year's cracked rear advisory is the original (2009) spare that they flung on last year as there was a nail in the one fitted.
It is on 185/60 R15 H - £50 fitted for ditchfinders - all four for the same price as the annual car tax.

It really makes me spit

[Talbot]

It would make SO MUCH MORE SENSE for safety partnerships to be set up as a roadblock somewhere on road, and just did a cursory check on every single vehicle's tyres as they go past rather than SCamera partnerships running speed cameras.

It would take about 5 seconds to have a look at the state of the tyres.  Every vehicle that is OK is sent on their way.  Even slightly questionable ones get moved on.  Anything with fuck-all-tread or cords showing gets pulled to the side of the road and points/fine issued.  And you're not allowed to go any further in a defective vehicle so have to call up for mobile tyre fitting there and then.

Gets dangerous cars off the road, prosecutes twats for driving on dangerous tyres and makes the local tyre place a mint.  Win-Win.

I'd much rather have someone driving at 35 in a 30 on decent tyres than someone doing 25 in a 30 on cords-showing-fuck-all-tread in the rain.

[MrsJuular]

10 hours ago, chaseracer said:

It's all the fault of @MrsJuular but I have acquired a taste for the products of SCTSH brewers Innis & Gunn.  But can I find them in the depths of the West Midlands?

Other than a brief (and since passed) window of availability in certain Tesco branches, apparently not.

Do not fear! I will bring you some down @chaseracer along with some sweet treats..