The grumpy thread

[Pillock]

On the plus side you can make it work for you.... find a train ticket site that gives you decent rewards for example. I took out a credit card when I started the job that I just use for expenses and shopping, and my expenses get paid into that account. It's a Sainsburys card, I use Sainsburys diesel, and I book train tickets through Virgin Trains who dish out nectar points. You get double nectar points on Sainsburys fuel and it's paying me a few quid per month. Same with a £120 train ticket, put it on the credit card and you get enough credit for the company to pay it off and you've just earned a few loyalty points / air miles or whatever.

 

I found it hard to adjust and sometimes get caught out if I go from a travel light month to a heavy one or vice versa as the payments are out of step with the credit card bill, you need a bit of a buffer but it works itself out.

 

(I was once warned by a previous employer that claiming nectar points on fuel that I then claim back is a taxable benefit! I indicated if they rolled up the receipt really tightly, they could stick it up their arse)

[anonymous user]

My old employer used to ask for the fuel receipts as I believe they had some VAT issue/dodge, the mileage rate was a generous* one, but barely covered my excessive fuel consumption in a petrol Land Rover, if I'd used the Bentley I think I would have been well out of pocket,

[DodgeRover]

The company were correct, in HMRCs eyes it is a benefit and should be taxed, I would guess they were concerned about some claim against them if they didn't inform you of that.

[Noel Tidybeard]

I see the "powerfully built company director" meme from Pistonheads that seems to have to be shoehorned into EVERY SINGLE THREAD on there has now migrated its way onto here.

 

Stop it, please.

 

???

[beko1987]

I've been let out of the office to play for the first time in 10 years and needed to book train tickets today oddly! We have to use a company...

 

So rather than just buying a ticket on the train at Marlow for a return from x, which usually rolls a zone whatever London travel card and a return to marlow in one, I've got to book a full all zone card and a return from Paddington to London.

 

And their supposed to be 'saving money'

 

Still, after hearing the expenses fun above I'm not as annoyed cos fuck it, not my money!

[dollywobbler]

Bollocks. Had to take the day off work today. This morning the right side of my kidney felt quite painful this morning, I tried to drive into work but a few miles away from home the pain was getting worse so I turned around and went back home and went to the doctors. Been diagnosed with kidney stones. Oh well, it's better than most other painful stuff.

 

Gonna chill today and go back in tomorrow. Saved me almost a days worth of fuel.

 

Oh man up. No, wait. The other one.  

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/oct/30/simone-biles-world-gymnastics-championship-team-gold-usa-kidney-stone

 

More seriously, all the best for getting it sorted. Do they FIRE UP THE LASER for these things now?

[dollywobbler]

Police LED light bars, I know they have to be bright. But, fuck me. An X5 went past and it took 12 hours for the doctors to reattatch my retinas.

 

I very nearly ran over a Policeman last year because of that. I'd been reduced to a crawl by the BLINDING DISCO INFERNO ahead of me anyway, and still almost shat myself when I suddenly noticed the dick standing in the middle of the road. Bring back gentle rotating beacons.

[BorniteIdentity]

Seriously, how difficult is it to comprehend the fact that when I say "Sorry, that's not for sale." That I'm not interested in selling it.

 

No, I am not selling the van. Especially for for the £1500 this random of the street who stinks of drink (this was about 1130 this morning) is offering.

 

*Makes mental note to double up on the usual immobilisation arrangements tonight just in case*

My next door neighbour is a lovely fella. Hasn’t got a piss to pot in, so we look after him like he’s family. His pride and joy is an Isuzu Trooper 3.0D.

 

It is unimaginably popular with any Celtic blood that should happen to pass. Politely declining any offers didn’t work, firmly declining them also seems to be falling on deaf ears. I’m going to offer to install him a couple of bollards over the winter.

[wuvvum]

I found a step-by-step illustrated guide to replacing an Audi 80 steering rack boot on one of the Audi forums.  Yay!

 

Clicked on the link, and all the photos are hosted on Photobucket.  FFS!!

[Guest Hooli]

I found a step-by-step illustrated guide to replacing an Audi 80 steering rack boot on one of the Audi forums. Yay!

 

Clicked on the link, and all the photos are hosted on Photobucket. FFS!!

There is a Firefox extension to fix the links, if the pics are still hosted on photofuckup. I can't remember it's name though

[wuvvum]

I've found that and installed it and no difference.  The pic placeholders say "photo not found" with an image of a LOLling kitteh - don't know if that's the embedding issue or whether the thread poster has given Photobucket the heave-ho (as many did) and the images therefore genuinely no longer exist.

[Guest Hooli]

Sounds like they've gone then. Bad luck.

[Fumbler]

Feck. Arse. The lot. Firstly GDPR is preventing me from reading a lot of overseas articles but that needn't matter. I bought alarm panel for £16.00 found out the hard way that the transformer was dead. Fitted a new and working one, heard sizzling from the lower corner. 2 out of 4 diodes on the full bridge rectifier have forward biased and died. No wonder why the log is full of watchdog faults. So... This evening I will be mostly kicking myself for buying a 5 kilogram paperweight. The delights of untested one off goods.

[Pillock]

I think I found the Audi thread you're on about, and yeah the user no longer exists on Photobucket.

[Lord Sterling]

Oh man up. No, wait. The other one.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/oct/30/simone-biles-world-gymnastics-championship-team-gold-usa-kidney-stone

 

More seriously, all the best for getting it sorted. Do they FIRE UP THE LASER for these things now?

Thanks DW, I think it's mostly passed now. They only FIRE UP DA LAZER if it's a particularly big one otherwise for me it was 2 massive packets of drowsiness-enducing pain killers. I took a couple of tablets on my day off and felt very drowsy. Still felt light-headed a few hours later.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Bring back gentle rotating beacons.

 

[purplebargeken]

Yep, modernz police light boards are retina smashingly bright. The after image does indeed last for some time.

[Cheggers]

And still you see people getting in their way, completely oblivious.

 

No wonder they keep making them brighter & louder.

[Guest Hooli]

And still you see people getting in their way, completely oblivious.

 

No wonder they keep making them brighter & louder.

 

They all have dashcams, the fuckwitted who don't move should all get charged with careless driving. The video evidence to prove the charge is already there.

[Cheggers]

They all have dashcams, the fuckwitted who don't move should all get charged with careless driving. The video evidence to prove the charge is already there.

True, but the heart attack victim the ambulance was held up heading to is just as dead, dashcam or no dashcam.

[Guest Hooli]

True, but the heart attack victim the ambulance was held up heading to is just as dead, dashcam or no dashcam.

 

True, but after a few months of such cases being common & hitting the news then people would slowly start to wake up & start paying attention.

[Guest Hooli]

My grump for the day is wanky payment systems in carparks.

 

I'm in Leeds all week training & as I can't stand trains, they are always late/cancelled/full of annoying morons I'm driving in. The car park I've been using needs payment via an automated phoneline, great until their payment system breaks & it takes 30mins to pay for the day! I even phoned my bank to confirm it wasn't then declining my cards.

 

Yes I could pay cash on the machine, but that only does by the hour so it'd cost £18. On the phone is £12.25 for the day. I don't know Leeds so I don't know where else to park & neither google maps nor my sat nav can actually manage to tell the truth for a route in to & out of the centre I'm not looking for somewhere else at this time of the week.

[M'coli]

What's the postcode of the venue in Leeds?

[Zelandeth]

Look on the plus side...give it a few weeks and it will be completely impossible to find anywhere to park in any urban area until the new year.

 

I used to live a couple of hundred yards from one of the main City Centre car parks in Aberdeen. The queues used to pretty much continually extend back beyond the entrance to the car park for our flats pretty much as soon as you hit the second week in November. It got really, really, really annoying after a couple of weeks.

 

Phone payment systems are such a bloody pain that I refuse to use them. I'll gladly spend a few quid more to avoid having to deal with them. We've got them here too, but they totally fail to grasp the concept that people might have more than one car, and swapping vehicles takes about half an hour of shouting at the machine down the phone.

[SierraMikeHotel]

 

 

Feck. Arse. The lot. Firstly GDPR is preventing me from reading a lot of overseas articles but that needn't matter.

That doesn't compute... What are the circs?

 

And yes, all phone parking payment services are appalling.

 

My particular favourite was the one that wouldn't let me log into my account without me providing a reg number, which I couldn't provide because when I set it up I had a rental van and of course I couldn't remember the reg six months later. And I couldn't set up a new account because it's linked to the number you're calling from. So I tried using the app, which wouldn't work because it declined all the cards I had on me.

[Guest Hooli]

What's the postcode of the venue in Leeds?

 

LS2 7EH

 

I'm using the Crown Street car park, last day here tomorrow thankfully.

[clayts450]

I used to use Parkonomy before they shut the wasteland opposite the office which masqueraded as a car park of sorts - bloody useful venue if truth be told.

 

Anyhoo, looks like your carpark is on their list - get yourself an account set up - you can pay by Paypal or debit/credit card before you even leave home. Untick the SMS reminder boxes to reduce the price by 20p, comes in at £12.05 per day

 

Great for shiters this service, as you can add many many cars to your account and you can even change them around on the day (or over the course of week/month/year) if one FTP

 

https://parkonomy.com/en/book/337/leeds/crown-street-corn-exchange

[andy18s]

My grump for the day is wanky payment systems in carparks.

 

I'm in Leeds all week training & as I can't stand trains, they are always late/cancelled/full of annoying morons I'm driving in. The car park I've been using needs payment via an automated phoneline, great until their payment system breaks & it takes 30mins to pay for the day! I even phoned my bank to confirm it wasn't then declining my cards.

 

Yes I could pay cash on the machine, but that only does by the hour so it'd cost £18. On the phone is £12.25 for the day. I don't know Leeds so I don't know where else to park & neither google maps nor my sat nav can actually manage to tell the truth for a route in to & out of the centre I'm not looking for somewhere else at this time of the week.

Bulgaria uses scratchcards to pay for parking

You park up,go find the parking "assistant " who controls a few streets and buy your tickets from them

Different time periods are coloured various pastel shades and the time of purchase is scratched off the panels

Works well and fairly idiot proof

So they've started to change it to a mobile phone based system,obviously in Bulgarian and very rarely up and running

A friend was telling us how simple he found it though,right up to the point of returning to his vehicle which had been clamped as he'd put the wrong reg number into the text....

[Guest Hooli]

I used to use Parkonomy before they shut the wasteland opposite the office which masqueraded as a car park of sorts - bloody useful venue if truth be told.

 

Anyhoo, looks like your carpark is on their list - get yourself an account set up - you can pay by Paypal or debit/credit card before you even leave home. Untick the SMS reminder boxes to reduce the price by 20p, comes in at £12.05 per day

 

Great for shiters this service, as you can add many many cars to your account and you can even change them around on the day (or over the course of week/month/year) if one FTP

 

https://parkonomy.com/en/book/337/leeds/crown-street-corn-exchange

 

Ta.

 

I didn't know you can do it in advance as their website is utter shite, you can't get to any of it from the homepage unless you already know the URL!

[Broadsword]

Where I live (on a steepish hill) there was a car slid down a steep driveway into the middle of the road the other night. No-one home. Me and two others tried to do something about it because people race up the road this Clio was blocking. Weirdly the car wouldn't push. I reported it to the police just in case the owner was on holiday or something. I said I would set up a warning triangle and told the others to bring it back to me if they see any movement. A couple of hours later the car was moved. Owner home. I knocked on the door and explained what happened. He was grateful for me trying to prevent a car crash.

 

Anyway for doing the decent thing, some petty bugger stole my warning triangle. Pathetic!