The grumpy thread

[Station]

Ready to get a nice, boring load lugger Omega 2.2 today with towbar and LPG, everything's ready, was going to pick up today.

Oops, should've got an insurance quote. The cheapest I could get was:

 

£1600 p/a

 

I'm 35 this year, is there anything motor-related in this country which doesn't scare anyone who isn't on 80,000 per year salary? It's fucking RIDICULOUS. Now I have to look like a typical ebay knobhead and go against normal politeness and protocol and say 'I can't do it because I didn't check the insurance as I was expected 500 quid p/a'. Insurers = ARSEHOLES.

[Cheggers]

^^But what else can a regular Joe Six-Pack pontiff do, CIH?

 

There may be a lot of pontification (like there is here and every other forum). But I've not seen anywhere on the net that freely allows for cars and politics to be mixed in "lethal" quantities.

 

C'mon pull the cam out and express yourself, baby....

 

 

Enough already...you've told us about your sodding forum!!!

[dollywobbler]

Ready to get a nice, boring load lugger Omega 2.2 today with towbar and LPG, everything's ready, was going to pick up today.

Oops, should've got an insurance quote. The cheapest I could get was:

 

£1600 p/a

 

I'm 35 this year, is there anything motor-related in this country which doesn't scare anyone who isn't on 80,000 per year salary? It's fucking RIDICULOUS. Now I have to look like a typical ebay knobhead and go against normal politeness and protocol and say 'I can't do it because I didn't check the insurance as I was expected 500 quid p/a'. Insurers = ARSEHOLES.

 

How many places did you try? Had a similar scare with the Landy - wasn't expecting four-figure quotes! Took a while to get it down but I did get to £500 in the end (before I then had the brainwave of putting it on a classic policy for £140...)

[Station]

I'm with Swinton (who are shite), and don't want to change/cancel my policy half way through as they tend to load you with their own personal fines and charges, which I can't be arsed with. They never used to do that 'in the olden days' (four years ago). Even changing my car on the policy incurs a 45 pound charge.

[Angrydicky]

I've just been reminded why I don't go on Ford forums. Some tosser on one thinks Capris are great and Montegos are piles of shit, despite never actually owning one and having nothing to base this opinion on. It isn't a Ford, so it's shit

[eddyramrod]

^^Now we know where Eccentric Richard disappeared to!

[retrogeezer]

I'm a bit pissed off at the scrapping of the Nimrods TBH.... I honestly can't get my head around how they can justify scrapping something that has cost the taxpayer billions...it's just total madness that this waste of other peoples money goes on and there is fook all we can do about it.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

This is the only thing i've seen anywhere on the upside of scrapping the MRA4.

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/27 ... scrappage/

 

I dont know much about it, but my gut feeling is it should be scrapped, its so horribly late and over budget that it seems to be a black hole for politicians to shovel money into. and all the people who have authorised the cost increases and delays over the years should get a robust shoeing.

[retrogeezer]

and all the people who have authorised the cost increases and delays over the years should get a robust shoeing

 

Agreed, as I said - it's easy to waste other peoples money! In what other industry would you get away with this kind of overspend/delay?

 

We've had the same thing with the Eurofighter Typhoon, it's cost billions, we haven't sold anywhere near as many as was required and we could have just bought Saab Gripens for a fraction of the cost!

 

Portillo was behind the Nimrod I believe, and now he has managed to get even more of our money by being paid to travel around the country on trains!

 

But I still don't like the fact they are just breaking up the Nimrods after all that work.

[55bloke]

I'm so torn about the Nimrods. As an aviation-shitist, I absolutely love them, and it breaks my heart to see them destroyed. The insane waste of money makes me seethe, and spending so much and then not even letting them fly is incomprehensible - and the fact that no one is going to take any sort of blame is equally crazy. But, I understand that there comes a point when you have to say, "Ok, enough, it's not working, STOP!" That point should probably have been about 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen in any other country. I guess we mere mortals will never be able to get hold of enough facts to draw an informed conclusion.

[ChinaTom]

I hope that at least one gets pushed into a museum for us to have a good crawl over. I would be interested to know where the 4.1bn is spent, and to see what type of engineering is purchased for that figure. How much of that 4.1bn would have been actually spent (physical cash rather than accountancy games that make or break business cases and can fundamentally explode a product cost to suit a change in strategic direction), and where the cash would end up. How much of a Nimrod would be bought and supplied from UK? And compare that to a 737P8.

 

It's kind of meaningless to draw the line under this by blaming Cameron, Major and Portillo - they would not have overseen the budget creation and engineering development. Someone "sold the project the board" and then royally screwed things up by the sound of it. I'd love to see how those life-cycle costs were calculated.

 

So, what makes me grumpy is that I like Nimrods in the same way a naive schoolboy likes a TVR Speed 12, and I categorically don't believe any of the figures that were hung around it's nose and made it an "example of disastrous British Engineering"

[Negative Creep]

I'm with Swinton (who are shite), and don't want to change/cancel my policy half way through as they tend to load you with their own personal fines and charges, which I can't be arsed with. They never used to do that 'in the olden days' (four years ago). Even changing my car on the policy incurs a 45 pound charge.

 

 

Possibly cheaper to leave the current policy running then take out a new one for the Omega?

[mattblack]

I'm so torn about the Nimrods. As an aviation-shitist, I absolutely love them, and it breaks my heart to see them destroyed. The insane waste of money makes me seethe, and spending so much and then not even letting them fly is incomprehensible - and the fact that no one is going to take any sort of blame is equally crazy. But, I understand that there comes a point when you have to say, "Ok, enough, it's not working, STOP!" That point should probably have been about 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen in any other country. I guess we mere mortals will never be able to get hold of enough facts to draw an informed conclusion.

 

Wasn't the first time, doubt it will be the last. Google 'TRS2'

[retrogeezer]

They have the TRS2 at Cosford.....it's awesome.

[dollywobbler]

In what other industry would you get away with this kind of overspend/delay?

 

IT for a start. The NHS had a project that I almost worked on to centralise all patient records. That was overbudget by a few billion back then. I've never worked on an IT project that hasn't seen ridiculous overspend - £10m quickly becomes £25m and that was just one small utility company.

[retrogeezer]

ah yeh, but again that is tax payer funded.......what I mean is would this happen if it was not someone elses money being spent.

[Lankytim]

The MR4A has been offered to museums but nobody wants them. None are airworthy and it would cost a fortune to transport by road. It was seen as the "last all British aircraft" What a disaster!

[The Moog]

Missus has given me a car budget but I am not allowed to spend it until we have moved house Means all the cars I havent been looking at have to be put on hold. Also not allowed to travel too far to get it at the moment.

 

Also cant find a place to rent. Driving me bonkers. Dont want anything too fancy but they seem to get snapped up within 2 seconds of going on the market. Arghhhhhhhhhhh

[chaseracer]

ah yeh, but again that is tax payer funded.......what I mean is would this happen if it was not someone elses money being spent.

How else do you think "defence" can be funded, if not through general taxation? The alternatives do not even bear thinking about...

[retrogeezer]

it's not the funding thats the issue...it's the blatant mis-spending of the money!

[Lord Sterling]

Bloody online banking websites - Its supposed to make it easier to manage money online. Myself and Mutha_Sterling are customers of this particular bank and both have access to online banking. Now I would have thought, transferring money from one account to another through online banking should be easy. It isnt.

 

Mutha_Sterling wanted to transfer a couple of hundred to me through online banking, but thier website is so absurdly difficult to navigate its almost impossible use. Nothing is clear, the site is a huge mess. Just tranferring money from one account to another or setting up debits/orders is a farce. Even when you follow all the steps there is usually some problem rendering the order 'not processed'. The money I was due was to be used to put the Sterling back on the road. Alas the money was not transferred after several aborted attempts because the website couldnt be bothered to function correctly.

 

I think a stinky phone-call/letter/email to these twats is in order.

[eddyramrod]

Banks? Don't start me! Oh, too late, you did...

 

I went into my bank in Paphos the other day to set up a standing order for rent on the new house. Certainly sir, there will be a transaction fee of 5 euros-odd per payment... Why? Because my landlady banks with a different bank. I can either pay up and look happy, or troll into her bank every month for at least the next two years and pay cash over the counter.

 

Banks? Fucking waste of money, fucking gangsters the lot of them.

 

Can you tell they make me grumpy?

[Angrydicky]

Bastards the lot of them. Insurance companies too. My insurance company charges a £15 admin fee for any change in details - robbing gits. Sadly due to my age I can't go anywhere else - yet.

[autofive]

trojan horse agent r.XJ

x 10

 

b'stard thing has stuffed my PC after i downloaded a keygen prog. for photoshop

 

looks like ive lost all my photos and music files

 

and all because 'er indoors was bending my ear about her photoshop not working properly

 

im now reduced to using the spare pc with vista (which is crap) and waiting five minutes for a web page to load

[Richard]

Why have you lost all your files? Because they're corrupted or because the machine won't boot? Either way I'm sure somebody on here could recover the situation.

 

Have you tried running SuperAntiSpyware on it?

[ProgRocker]

Bastards the lot of them. Insurance companies too. My insurance company charges a £15 admin fee for any change in details - robbing gits. Sadly due to my age I can't go anywhere else - yet.

 

Yeah. HSBC insurance offered a decent quote last year which I accepted when I acquired my Escrote diesel. Moved address in August - that'll be £20, please - and a month later another £20 to change from Escrote to Nissan.

[Guest Leonard Hatred]

Bloody online banking websites - Its supposed to make it easier to manage money online. Myself and Mutha_Sterling are customers of this particular bank and both have access to online banking. Now I would have thought, transferring money from one account to another through online banking should be easy. It isnt.

 

I think it depends who you bank with. Taxpayer-funded Halifax/Bank of Scotland is great for online money transfers, you just tap the name, amount, account number and sort code in, it's often instant.

It's the way I receive my earnings much of the time, which was a relief after my last job where I was paid by cheque.

[CreepingJesus]

A5 - have you tried downloading Microsoft's Malware Removal Tool? I had a bad attack of conficker a while back, and between that and a rootkit analysis program called 'Hijack This!' (which is not for mucking around with btw, it's a serious piece of kit in itself, and I had serious help from a serious IT pro, who's way better than I am...), my other half slogged it out and cleaned up the PC. It took a few days, and a few re-runs, but it was the fault of the non-existent security at her college anyway! Good luck with that, all hope is not lost.

Anyway...grump. Altho' I'm not really sure I should be grumping. I'm getting paid for doing f-all. Sitting here, jacking the company's net, having a kip, watching tv. All thanks to the words I dread to hear - 'oh, you're on as spare driver for the day, Neil'. Bollocks! I've got half read copies of PC and Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance in my bag, and I just cannot be arsed.

What this often means, is that I'll be sent across to Shotts, sometime after lunch to get the pies. I hope my phone decides to play today, as there's three Porsche 924's sitting on top of containers, outside a garage next to Bell's Bakers. I missed taking that pic last time I was there, and I'll have a proper grump if the memory card plays up again!

[CIH]

my bloody phone does that too. sometimes it "forgets" there's a memory card and has to be turnd on/off. pisses me right off

[myglaren]

Bloody online banking websites - Its supposed to make it easier to manage money online. Myself and Mutha_Sterling are customers of this particular bank and both have access to online banking. Now I would have thought, transferring money from one account to another through online banking should be easy. It isnt.

 

I think it depends who you bank with. Taxpayer-funded Halifax/Bank of Scotland is great for online money transfers, you just tap the name, amount, account number and sort code in, it's often instant.

It's the way I receive my earnings much of the time, which was a relief after my last job where I was paid by cheque.

 

I use what is now Santander but began life as the National Girobank.

Has always been excellent and online payments/standing orders/direct debits are a doddle.

There are often payments between my account and my#3 daughter's (Barclays) and the reverse, same with my youngest son (Lloyds)