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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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Royal Mail.

 

Get a package slip at 1pm, having lunch.

 

read it, £13 to pay on what's presumably a Rock Auto package.

 

Delivery office open til 2 it says - one town over, better go. Finish eating, chuck a fiver of petrol in the Civic, get there at about 1:40.

 

Council has changed all the free parking in the town to paid.

 

Pay by app or text only. FRO, I'm parked at the door to the delivery office and the queue is fifteen people out of it, sod paying, I'll just fuck off if das Parkenstasi come. Either that or claim my phone's dead (just install meters you cheapskate cashgrabbers).

15 minutes in the queue, hand over the slip, card in hand.

'It's cash only, we don't have a card machine. Is that a problem?' 

 

Yes it fucking is, I've queued up for 15 minutes and nowhere at all did it say you don't take card. How fucking daft is that? You have barcode scanners and little electronic signature things, but a card machine? Oh no, we don't have that... 'You could go and get cash and come back?' Aye but you close in five minutes and I don't know where there's a cash machine within two, and there's another ten plus people queuing up behind me. Besides, no money on the debit card, and can't withdraw on the credit card as it incurs fees.

 

'You can pay online?'

 

'Ah, I'll do that then'

 

'...and we'll deliver it to you in 2-3 days.'

 

BUT I'M HERE NOW!

 

Dumb fuckers. Complaint on the way for that. Is it not reasonable to expect being able to pay my not insignificant customs fees by card at a delivery office that regularly handles such queries?

 

they DO take card payments as i payed customs charges this morning

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A few weeks ago I was singing my old Macbooks praises as it's been working fine since February 2013.

 

Fast forward to now and it's all but dead. Hard drive started clicking and it's finding it difficult to wipe and reboot.

 

Fudge.

 

 

Well I am a bit of a fool but went out and bought a new laptop today. but switched to windows and managed to get a returned HP Pavilion Gaming 15 for £100 less than RRP, and have found a laptop buyer website willing to pay £125 for the dead Macbook. So, it could have been worse,

 

Slightly annoying that reviews online suggest the new one is prone to breaking, lets hope it does this whilst in warranty! It's powerful for the price paid though....1TB of storage, 8GB RAM and it has a Nvidia GTX too, which means I can finally use Steam. My old Macbook hated being put under load.

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The French sure know how to protest. My local town is empty, everybody has stayed at home to avoid the blockades.

Elsewhere in France it's not gone so well with several injuries and sadly one death :(

I just read this morning of petrol prices in Stockholm at approx £2.30/Litre.

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You know the central lines in the road if broken can be used to show your speed if you have the incident on camera?

 

Yes.

 

I also know they are experts in lying in court so will have allowed for all that. The vast majority of my experiences with plod have shown them to be dishonest at worst or just lazy and completely uninterested in the truth at best. Therefore they get as much respect as any other dishonest scum from me.

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Yes.

 

I also know they are experts in lying in court so will have allowed for all that. The vast majority of my experiences with plod have shown them to be dishonest at worst or just lazy and completely uninterested in the truth at best. Therefore they get as much respect as any other dishonest scum from me.

Sadly my experiences locally haven’t been much better. There was one copper locally who was a known arsehole. She then got pissed up and half knocked down an old ladies house with her car. And then guess what? Somehow a mistake was made and her samples lost so she couldn’t be prosecuted. It was a complete fucking joke an obvious case of corruption but absolutely nothing was done about it. Some of my family are coppers in Derbyshire and they don’t have a lot of respect for our local lot to say the least.
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You're not kidding , try sending a parcel

VOT IST IN ZE PARCEL

it's not got liquids or batteries in it

I NEED TO KNOW VOT IST IN ZE PARCEL

a dildo

WITHOUT FUCKING BATTERIES

You want to try sending some of the things we have at work!

TNT will do hazardous stuff, but charge like a rhino. I’ve a feeling it’s more than we charge to analyse the samples.

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Sadly my experiences locally haven’t been much better. There was one copper locally who was a known arsehole. She then got pissed up and half knocked down an old ladies house with her car. And then guess what? Somehow a mistake was made and her samples lost so she couldn’t be prosecuted. It was a complete fucking joke an obvious case of corruption but absolutely nothing was done about it. Some of my family are coppers in Derbyshire and they don’t have a lot of respect for our local lot to say the least.

When I lived down your way a few years back, there was one who was mates with a local family of lowish level scallys. Funnily enough, the number of times Mr Scally happened to stay in on an evening when there was an undercover police op going on in the area was remarkable to say the least.

Can’t remember her name for the life in me but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if it was the same one.

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I've just paid over £100 to the ministry of injustice after a lying bastard copper in september pretended my speed was a lot higher than it was. No point arguing it though as he'd just lie in court, get believed & it'd cost me even more. I found that out years ago last time one fined me for a fabricated offence.

 

I hate living in a 3rd world country at times, who remembers days when plod could be trusted to try & do the right thing?

Shirley time for a smart phone and a suitable tracker app, or a GPS enabled dashcam? Nothing spoils their fun* more than date-stamped footage of you pootling along at ≥1.1x mph in an x limit at the time of the alleged offence.

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You literally would not believe the hassle I had trying to get things resolved last year when my plate got cloned. 2 speeding tickets and an accident clocked up before I got my plate changed . Plod were spectacularly useless. It took over 12 months to get everything cleared off my record. Infact the only organisation that did a half decent job were the DVLA, surprisingly. They issued me a new number with minimal fuss.

 

I’ll have to chronicle the full story sometime because the breathtaking incompetence is actually quite hilarious (at least it is now, it wasn’t at the time, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown)

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Well I am a bit of a fool but went out and bought a new laptop today. but switched to windows and managed to get a returned HP Pavilion Gaming 15 for £100 less than RRP, and have found a laptop buyer website willing to pay £125 for the dead Macbook. So, it could have been worse,

 

Slightly annoying that reviews online suggest the new one is prone to breaking, lets hope it does this whilst in warranty! It's powerful for the price paid though....1TB of storage, 8GB RAM and it has a Nvidia GTX too, which means I can finally use Steam. My old Macbook hated being put under load.

You didn't do well there at all.

 

Only a £125 for a MacBook with a dead HDD?! Also your replaced it with a HP of all things. And this is coming from an Apple hater.

 

I assume the 1TB is spinning rust, not SSD? Also you really need 16GB in this age of browsers consuming craptonnes of RAM.

 

To put it in car terms, you've just sold an MOT'd MX5 that has a duff coilpack for £50. Then you've replaced it with the equivalent to a base spec Laguna II 1.6.

 

Soz.

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I don't really care to be honest. 

 

I could get all worked up about it, but I have just run three hours of BeamNG without concern, and it's got a better default photo editor (in my opinion) than the Macbook.

 

The Mac was like a heat conductor so would get red hot when under serious load, and the piddly little fan it had was awful. This one has the Optane 16GB RAM as well so it should be adequate.

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That Optane thing still makes me roll my eyes. It's a flipping RAM disc... They've been around forever.

 

Back in my Windows 3.1 days (running with 64mb of ram in the latter days) I had pretty much every application I used loaded into the ram disc - meant anything and everything basically started instantly, even though it did add a bit to the boot time obviously.

 

That's a machine I really wish I still had actually, as I'd got Windows 3.11 doing all manner of things it wasn't meant to be able to. "Requires Windows 95 or later..." On a system requirements box was very much seen as a challenge to me back then.

 

My grump just now?

 

It's ten past midnight, I'm in bed...and have just had a moment of "Did I close the garage door?"

 

Know I'll never get to sleep without checking now...bugger.

 

Edit: yes, I had locked the garage. I had however forgotten to lock the driver's door on the van. So not a totally wasted trip, even if the dog is now annoyed because I woke him up.

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Can we not slag off what I chose to buy please? For the money I was prepared to spend, it looked like it had the best spec. It was either that or a MacBook clone Asus.

 

The entry level MacBook air costs £799 and had terrible spec compared. Yeah yeah I could have torn out the hard drive of my old one, but I didn't want to. Not everyone is as adept at some of you lot. No need to condescend.

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Work have given me an Iphone 7S I think. It is as useful in todays world as a Nokia 6210. Compared to my HTC M8 that is now nearly 4.5 years old it is unequivocally a complete and utter piece of shite that doesn't do anything. As i have only been in the job for a couple of months I can't yet rock the apple cart but once the probationary period is over, if I don't get it replaced by asking nicely , it will get jail broken and an attempted install of Windows 95 will follow.

 

Rant over

 

In the interim I need to replace the M8 as the battery is dyeing so will probably be looking for a dual sim phone to replace it with and the work sim will go in that. In the event of inaction from work the Iphone will go in a drawer never to be used again.

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Can we not slag off what I chose to buy please? For the money I was prepared to spend, it looked like it had the best spec. It was either that or a MacBook clone Asus.

 

The entry level MacBook air costs £799 and had terrible spec compared. Yeah yeah I could have torn out the hard drive of my old one, but I didn't want to. Not everyone is as adept at some of you lot. No need to condescend.

 

 

This is an attempt to not be condescending.  Please understand...

 

Getting the HDD out is just about the easiest job you can do on one of these.  It takes about 10 minutes from turning the first screw.  If you needed 1TB of storage, a NAS or even just a USB HDD would have done the trick and you wouldn't have had to spend much.  £40 for the SSD in the Mac, £70 for a 1TB HDD and maybe a couple of quid on a screwdriver if it had the annoying pentalobe screws.  You didn't need a new laptop.

 

Most laptops that age are easy to switch things around on.  Things are much, much harder now...

 

Anyhow.  If you're happy with what you have, that's good.  No issue.

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You literally would not believe the hassle I had trying to get things resolved last year when my plate got cloned. 2 speeding tickets and an accident clocked up before I got my plate changed . Plod were spectacularly useless. It took over 12 months to get everything cleared off my record. Infact the only organisation that did a half decent job were the DVLA, surprisingly. They issued me a new number with minimal fuss.

 

I’ll have to chronicle the full story sometime because the breathtaking incompetence is actually quite hilarious (at least it is now, it wasn’t at the time, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown)

Yet you still get ‘car folk’ wondering why sellers pixelate plates on adverts.

 

It’s a monumental ball ache. Sorry to hear you were a victim.

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Ok, let me tell you a story, and consider this the reason why if I ever post pics of any of my cars they have the number plates blanked out. I'll have to do it in a couple of instalments because I could literally write pages about this.

 

Back in around Feb 2017 I received a speeding ticket through the post, I’m no angel but I didn’t recall any incidents where I thought I might have been caught. So I check the date and location and it was from the previous Sunday (this was a Friday) in Norfolk. Norfolk is at least an hour and a half from here and I haven’t stepped foot in that part of the country for at least 10 years. So my immediate thought is it’s either a mistake or someone has cloned my plate.

 

This wouldn’t be the first time it has happened, I had a Mk6 Escort cloned in Coventry a few years back, luckily in that case the first I heard of it was a letter from the police saying if I wanted to release my car from the impound yard I would need to present valid insurance blah blah blah. Since I was still in possession of the actual car, it was a fairly open and shut case, I went to the police station and they marked it no further action and that was that. No other crimes were committed, at least not that I ever heard about.

 

So back to this speeding ticket, it’s Friday afternoon so obviously the camera partnership is closed (11-3, nice work if you can get it) But I thought I would notify the police anyway, if there is a cloned car out there then I want them to put a PNC marker on it and have it recorded for when the next crime is committed. Rang Norfolk Police and explained the situation, they could not have been less interested, wouldn’t give me the time of day. “You'll have to deal with the camera partnership.” So I rang my local police, who somehow managed to be even less helpful than Norfolk, neither would even take my details to get it on record, much less do anything about it.

 

So I blanked it for the weekend, I thought maybe this will all get cleared up after a phone call to the camera partnership, find out they were a digit out, it was a different make of car, something like that. Monday morning I phoned them up, the most annoying phone system ever that doesn’t let you queue, just unceremoniously hangs up on you if it’s busy...but eventually on about the 27th try I get through. Explain the situation, he says I’ll need to email in photos of my car from all 4 angles, they'll compare to their evidence and get back to me in 10 working days. Great, I’m a bit of a stress head anyway and hate having things like this hanging over me, but what can you do. I e-mailed the photos and waited.

 

About 2 weeks later I get a phone call at work from the police, straight off the bat he’s giving me attitude because rather than use the contact number I’d supplied in the e-mail, he’s decided to detective my details from my company e-mail address and then battle through our reception and contact centre...anyway he has reviewed the evidence and it is 'definitely my car' same number plate, same make, model, wheels, even the dealer logo on the number plate. I’m sceptical, this offence occurred at 8:30pm in the middle of winter at 81mph and he’s got that level of detail? (At no point throughout any of these offences was I allowed to see any evidence). Was he just telling me this expecting me to cave? So I politely said well that is as may be, but I am telling you neither me nor my car have been anywhere near Norfolk on that Sunday or at any time before or since. So I sent him a blow by blow account of my movements that day, every receipt, every person who could vouch for my whereabouts everything I’d done which left any kind of electronic footprint, Facebook posts, forum posts. (I’d had dinner at my mums and then gone to the pub where I’d used my debit card) and he said he would look into it and get back to me.

 

He then went on to say that he was going to put a PNC marker on the car so I’d need to carry my documents because I would be stopped if the police spotted me. (Gee, why didn’t I think of that, oh wait) incidentally despite seeing several police cars over the course of the next few months, I never was stopped. At this point I think I need to get some legal advice, so I rang up one of those no win no fee type vultures, he explained that the most important thing was to comply with the paperwork requirements, regardless of guilt or innocence you absolutely MUST return the S172 notice in time.

 

Now let me give you a brief rundown on S172 of the road traffic act in case you don’t already know, it is a real sledgehammer piece of legislation that says if you were not the driver then you are legally obliged to name who was. Failure to supply driver details will result in 6 points, a huge fine and an endorsement code that is 2nd only to drink driving as far as insurance companies are concerned. There is obviously no option on the form for “I don’t know who was driving because it was not my car”. Furthermore, if you do go for the 'my car has been cloned' defence and they decide they don’t believe you, you’re potentially opening up a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and that’s jail time.

 

So I had to send the form back with a covering letter explaining the situation again, detailing my whereabouts, alibi witnesses, evidence that I wasn't in the area etc and then sit back and wait, and wait, and wait. So I’m playing a pretty high stakes game here, hold my hands up to an offence I didn’t commit, or try and prove my innocence and risk 6 points, a huge fine and astronomical insurance premiums for the next 5 years, plus a possible bonus spell at her majesty’s pleasure, plus I have a copper investigating who already clearly doesn’t believe me.

 

Think you’re innocent until proven guilty, you’re not! But I had done everything by the book, now I just had to wait and see whether the next contact was a NFA letter or a court summons. The one critical error I made was at this point I should have changed my number plate, a mistake that would come back to bite me in the arse, hard, in part 2...

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Now, I know, they probably get this shit all the time, I mean prisons are full of innocent people who totally didn't do it right? But I’d supplied a fairly comprehensive list of evidence and people who could get up and swear on a stack of bibles that I wasn’t there. In the meantime I’m wondering whether another speeding ticket will turn up, maybe it will be a more serious offence and I’ll be getting my door kicked in at 3am? I’m having to carry my documents everywhere, keep every receipt, I was using my debit card for absolutely everything so there would be a trail, stressful times.

 

This happened, as you may recall, in Feb. We're now up to April and it’s been radio silence from the police and CP. then one morning I get an e-mail from the cop that I’d spoken to on the phone, “we have reviewed the case and no further action will be taken” fucking get in! What a relief. I can go back to living my normal law abiding life. But there was no mention of whether they’d caught the cloned vehicle, maybe I should still get my plate changed? Maybe there never was a cloned vehicle, maybe they made a balls up and didn’t want to admit it? This car hadn’t committed a single other offence in the intervening 3 months, not even a parking ticket. These are the thoughts that we’re going through my head. I was still uneasy about the situation, but again I failed to act upon it.

 

I was able to enjoy life as a free man for an entire 9 days before speeding ticket number two dropped through the door in early May. Fucking great! This time in Peterborough, again on a Sunday. Getting closer but not somewhere I ever frequent. Still, at least having been through all this once, it would be a relatively simple case of explaining the situation, putting them in contact with the investigating officer at Norfolk Constabulary and it would all be straightened out quickly and painlessly - WRONG.

 

It was as if the first incident had never occurred, the 2nd ticket followed exactly the same course of events as the first, the only difference being that this time I had far less evidence to prove that I wasn’t there. On the subject of proof, you might think proving you weren’t there would be sufficient, but it’s not. If you prove you weren’t there the assumption is you lent your car to someone and are withholding their details, so you have to prove your car wasn’t there either.

 

I mean for fuck sake right, having just been through 3 months of torturous wrangling to clear my name of the last one, do they really think I rushed straight out to do the exact same thing again. And to what ends, I have a clean licence, 3 points and £100 is no biggy, if I had done it I would just take the damn points. I did actually contemplate just taking the points because it was easier than going through that again, but my mother was having none of it!

 

So I’m right back where I started, I go through the same process with the police and CP, only this time I reported it again and they sure as fuck were going to listen and give me a crime ref number this time, because I’d be at their front desk kicking up merry shit if they didn’t. I got onto the DVLA and requested a new plate, it took a couple of weeks but it turned up on my birthday in June (but not before the next event in this clusterfuck unfolded) sent off their S172 and I’m back to the nervous waiting game.

 

About a week later I’m working on a Saturday morning, I get a text from my insurance company. “We have tried to contact you, please call us ASAP regarding claim ref ######”. What? What friggin claim....so I call them, already knowing full well what’s coming. This car has rear ended someone the previous night, yep, in Peterborough, and that person has put in a claim. They’d also taken pictures at the scene (which again I was never allowed to see) but that she says showed a car bearing my registration that was 'significantly damaged'. So I explain the situation to them re the speeding tickets, that I have already reported this to the police, got a crime number etc. Can you send us photographs of your car to show it is undamaged. I said yes, but I’d like you to send out an assessor, you can come any time.

 

So they did, an independent assessor came out and concluded in around 5 seconds that my car had not been in an accident or recently repaired, he filled out a report and said this should be enough to stop the claim. This should also play to my advantage with the police, my insurance have photos of a 2nd damaged vehicle and I still have the undamaged original with an independent report confirming it has not been in an accident...I mean if that doesn’t at least prove the existence of a cloned vehicle then I don’t know what does.

 

Sadly, as part 3 will show, this logic did not fly with either the Insurance or the police...This is where it gets really good..

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I got onto the police with this information, and suggested they might confer with my insurance company, I said the same to my insurance who agreed that they would comply with any requests the police sent them for information or pictorial evidence. I left it at that. A couple of weeks later my insurance ring back to say they are dropping the claim and referring it to the MIB for uninsured drivers because “they have now received proof that I was not involved” phew, that was easier than I expected. So now I just need to deal with the police on the 2nd speeding ticket and I’m back in the clear. We're up to about July now.

 

I'll have to conclude tnis riveting* tale later because I’ve just had a call and need to go into work.

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we had the " your car has been in an accident bit " for a family member in the past .....

 

but it came throu after the car was scrapped ....it was an mot fail .... but  I can safely say it was never driven again or even used for spare parts , due to an error with a welding torch . it never came out of surgery ...

 

the car in question was sat in the drive unmarked at the time  , we had photos before and after the alleged date  , but it still took ages to sort out .....

 

they are just not interested .....

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So the conclusion to this tale...

 

Slightly buoyed by the success in dealing with the Insurance, I’m now back to just the outstanding speeding ticket, so I ring the camera office for an update. They say they'll have the investigating officer call me, which he did about an hour later. Investigations are ongoing, they are aware of the accident and have it under a separate incident number, and if I think of anything else to let him know. Pretty standard spiel.

 

So again I leave it with them, 2 weeks go by, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, I’m slowly going out of my mind with this shit. In the meantime my insurance call me back, they’ve had to re-open the claim. Sorry what? This guy has gone and got himself a personal injury lawyer and put in an injury claim, so they have 'no choice' but to re-open it. Sorry I don’t see how this has any bearing on the previously proven fact that I didn’t hit him - oh well that’s just how it works I’m afraid. Awesome, so what you’re saying is, if you can’t make this go away you’re going probably settle because it’s the easy way out and then hang it on me and it will go against me anyway. “We just need to try and make the MIB take the case”

 

So I’m fucking pissed off, I also think I’m pretty much overdue an update from Cambridgeshire Constabulary so I call them...

 

Hello yes I’m ringing for an update about speeding ticket ref #####

Ah yes, well, the officer who attended the accident got called away to another call out and the details the driver game him were false.

I’m sorry, for a minute there I thought you said you attended this accident?

Yes that’s right, the car was severely damaged and had to be recovered by a local recovery company.

So wait, not only did you attend this accident, have the driver stood right infront of you with a PNC marker against his car and then let him go, but you then let them take the car away too?

Oh no, the car is in our impound yard.

So you’re asking me to provide evidence of a cloned vehicle, which you have IN YOUR FUCKING YARD

Oh, we dropped the speeding ticket, did you not get notified?

Well obviously fucking not!

I will send you a letter confirming no further action

Yes be sure that you do!

 

As for the insurance claim, well that rumbled on until November, when I said look, this is going to afffect my renewal now because it’s an outstanding claim, what are you going to do about it? Almost immediately, probably getting a whiff of an incoming compo claim from me...they dropped it.

 

But that’s not all...the MIB then wrote to me in December to say they’re now investigating and can I provide the driver details on the date of the accident blah blah....unbefrigginbelievable. I wrote back to them and basically said I wouldn’t be entering into any dialogue with them on this matter and they were to contact my insurance company. Eventually in March this year, they finally dropped it too.

 

So yeah, in conclusion, I blank my reg number out and this is why, and number plate cloning would seem to be just about the perfect crime.

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