Idle hands make idle posts

I have had so little I could muster myself into talking about recently. There was the woman in Ireland dying over being denied an abortion... and I decided that, no, I don't want to talk about that, because that's really depressing. There's still the Saville story doing it's rounds – they've arrested his old driver, which sounds understandable because I read an article where he talked about being told to knock off for a couple of hours every time Jimmy got a young girl into the back of his van. Way to appear innocent, numbnuts. Also that story is depressing. Let's check the news and oh no. In fact, many stories are depressing. Please can someone start a news channel just dedicated to reporting nice things all day?

So as I was thinking recently, I realised something. As, you know, hardly anyone reads this blog, I can talk about whatever I like with barely any repercussions. So today, I will start by discussing... the police commissioner elections!

Okay, so the potential repercussions of this topic avoided... was less about the controversy and it's fallout and more about having avoided people leaving on mass in boredom because there is no mass of people in the first place.

Sort of how Norton Antivirus prevents you from getting virus's from the internet by preventing you from getting on the internet.

So the police commissioner elections were today, and if that's new to you, well, that's kinda not your fault. On the face of it I think it's a pretty bloody stupid idea. Call me weird, but I kinda like the idea that cops are, ya know, cops. I don't want political cops. Nope. It's bad enough that we have the blurring of lines when it comes to cops and actual politicians, where they tread lightly and with a lot of deference, and the 'Well, we are investigating you, and you'll be doing us a big favour sir if you come to the station now – oh, yes, we can wait. We'll come tomorrow. Please don't destroy any evidence in the interim sir,' we get whenever have to sheepishly get up to arrest an MP. Now that 'plebgate' row may have shaken things up a bit, (and certainly the ill-feeling over harsh budget cuts hasn't helped) but if I call back to my praise-heaped review of Snuff – I really like a cop modelled on Sam Vimes. He'll arrest the bloody Patrician, his tyrannical leader. He'll arrest the gods for doing it wrong. True equality; everyone may get a truncheon to the head in the course of conducting inquires.

So a person controlling cops playing party politics fills me with dread. But hey, it's happening, it's happened, deal with it. But as I went to vote today, I noticed something. No one was there.

There were two people manning my station, the public hall, and a quick inquiry told me that out of fifteen hundred on the electoral register only eighty three had turned up. They said they were hopeful more would arrive as work ended (I voted at half five, so a good five and a half hours left to go) but they didn't deliver that news with much conviction. One of the major problems was firstly: no one cares. Regardless who is voted in, it is generally believed that there'll be little change. The second problem is that no one knows anything about this damn election, or the people involved, or that it's happening. Some of the most politically minded people I know were scrabbling for any information on this election, when I'm used to them being a fountain of politically informed bullcrap.

This is kinda a problem. Firstly, it does matter. On my slate, let's pick on two candidates; one believes that being a mother solely qualifiers her in some away, the other is a member of the English Democrat thing, which can basically be summed up as 'ignorant racist bellends.' (Ahem. I should of prefixed that with something safe, like, 'in my opinion are...')

So there. Slow claps all round there. Secondly, this thing has barely been promoted. The only information I got was a link provided on my polling card. That was it. No radio announcements, no adverts, no leaflets, or at least none that really penetrated. This is certainly a problem because we still have a generation or so of people with little to no access or understanding of computers and this really puts them in a lurch. At the polling station they mentioned many people aged fifty and above – one of the most active voting groups, mind – expressing their frustrations over how little they knew and how little this election had been promoted. Clearly they weren't turning up much in response. Hell, the only things I saw in the tabloids, our news for the people! ...was a begging plea of The Daily Mirror to vote Labour candidates to try and protect coppers form another round of budget cuts. Which was done today. On the election day. So if you weren't registered you're too late now.

Well done Daily Mirror. Way to push a campaign there. Slow claps all round.

For my votes, I chose a retired cop and then the public-cop liaison person, who were incidentally the most qualified candidates by a considerable long shot, and the independent candidates to boot. Yay! Let coppers be coppers! Also loving the way this was not done by First Past The Post. So it's not good enough for party leader elections and now our police commissioner elections, but it's still good enough for our general elections? Heh. Thank you Clegg, Traitor King. I'm still cranky over that, but don't mind me; if you disagree, take comfort we won't be discussing electoral reform seriously for another thirty/forty years. Deep joy.

It seems like our government pushed ahead with this thing... before remembering they don't really like change. But they were committed now, so they made a token effort. Should have done a Clegg and just ignored what they said before (Boom! Fuck you, Clegg! I've decided you're my personal running joke now.) Hell, my experience with low turnout doesn't appear to be an alien one. With such low turnout, will these commissioners have any justifiable power? Yeah, getting twenty percent of a ten percent turnout; they'll have coppers falling over themselves desperate to listen to every word they have to say.

So, in summary, pointless dead election for pointless position is pointless. On the plus side, Three Mobile got back to me about my open letter! Email. Whatever. Okay, so it wasn't their CEO writing back to me. Okay, so they misspelled my name. And they asked me to give their customer service a call... so they either clearly didn't get the point I was trying to make or they believe I have a masochist fetish.

But! Progress! I have wasted someone's time!

Just like I did yours.

Sorry about that.

Open Letter to David Dyson, CEO of Three Mobile

Oh god. My week has been beset by a first world problem.

Mobile phone contract renegotiation.

Brrr. Needless to say that my week has been full of useless calls to bloody useless customer services over and over again, in a cornucopia of failure and misery. Three Mobile. You. Yoooooou. I call you to account. Your useless, thieving, lying... actually, no. I can do better. You see, when venting on Twitter, a lovely account CEOemail gave me, of all things, the email to Three Mobile's CEO.

He may have nothing to do with my experience's with his shoddy company. But his customer service wasted a hell of a lot of my time. So. I'm going to waste his.

(Incidentally, if you're on Three Mobile and are having problems, then I highly recommend giving ol' Dave an email. Maybe if he gets enough of them he'll find the incentive to get a customer service that doesn't actively fuck you over.)

Open Letter to David Dyson, CEO of Three Mobile

Hello David,

I'm writing to you today to explain why I have left your company and sought new providers for my mobile service. I figured you might like to know why because your customer services certainly did, seeing that I've been a customer of yours since 2007, but I got the feeling that, weeeell, they just weren't listening. No. They really weren't when it felt like the only way to progress the conversation off the loop they were sticking to was to mention that I had a lawyer and was willing to call him if it let me cancel my contract... but we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Your prices are rubbish. I've been paying prices for two years that would have got me an iPhone – not the new one, I admit, but the 3G iPhone would have drastically outperformed my chunk of rubbish (Note: I don't actually want an iPhone, I just picked it because they're so damn expensive.) It doesn't help that on the eleventh hour one of your customer service representatives revealed that I barely use any of my allowance – why the hell did I go on paying for an allowance I wasn't using? Especially since I came to expect an extra fiver of costs every month to land on my bill. How does that happen?

Your unit measurement is a joke; minutes and texts are a singular unit. Look. We all know that texts cost you nothing. We all know that phones are constantly sending SMS messages to stay in contact with phone towers and texts just piggy-back off of that. So text equal a minute of air time? Good grief. No. Oh, and don't get me started on your companies constant goal post moving. Charging for delivery rates, charge increases: Look, the contract I agreed to, was the contract I agreed to. In a hypothetical and quite frankly outlandish scenario where I employed you and I decided on Tuesday to take away five percent of your pay for funsies and on Friday to take away your dental care – both which were in an agreed contract since the Monday; you would be pissed. My ass would be in court. But it's all legal with my phone contract. You reserve the right to change it at any time, don't you? Well guess what? It pisses your customers off. It makes your company look like slimy, scummy bastards. Sure, you'll probably get away with it, and you certainly did for many months in my case – but we remember. You aren't trustworthy to me any more. And believe me, I tell every person I come across nowadays to avoid your company. I see you as the too expensive, money-grubbing, liars option. You are reasonably going to protest that, that it may be unfair to tar you with that brush.

But that is what you look like to me.

Also your coverage is crap. Just putting it out there.

But on equal standing to your business dealings has to be your customer service. Please note I resisted the urge to put the word service in sarcastic quotation marks; is was very difficult not to. Your customer service. Just... just where did you get these people? What god-awful script are you feeding them? They once called me five times in a single hour trying to push deals on me. On the forth call I wearily said in one breath, 'No, I don't want a new phone, none of my friends want a new phone, I don't want to buy any internet or whatever service deals you're offering, leave me alone.' The brilliant bit came next – he got angry at me for not caring! Why should I be angry, who endured a complete waste of my life putting up with this crap, when I should fall over in gratitude for Three Mobile caring about me so much? Look. Let's be adults. You're a company. You exist to sell services. You ain't doing it out of the kindness out of your heart; you're doing it to make money. Don't pretend to me when you're calling me with an offer it's because you're so charmed by my great wit you want to make my life easier. The next call... did not go as well, and that was my fault. I will admit I may have ever-so-slightly lost my patience at the caller, but we all seemed to agree it was all for the best if we never spoke again and that was fine.

So a year or so later and I'm eagerly counting down the days of my contract so I can jump ship and I find myself in Chelmsford, about to buy a shiny new phone. But I want to keep my number. I've been using it for five bleedin' years now. I will never remember another one. So I give your customer service a call to ask for my PAC number and... ohhhhh. This is where we start having fun. What happens next is, well, in a word, uttershitcraptacular.

I get it at this point you don't want to lose a long time loyal customer, or what I call myself in relation to you; a loyal doormat. I get it that if a customer wants to jump ship because of mere price you're willing to work out a deal. I don't get hanging up on me. No. That annoyed me somewhat. It annoyed me further when they called me back... to hang up again. That. That was vexing, I'll admit. So another call happened and I must share this important detail with you; obstructing me from getting to my PAC number by refusing to tell me it until you've told me your 'great deals' is a dick move and god damn it I was meant to avoid using sarcastic quotation marks. Over and over again I said the line 'I wish to cancel my contract and keep my number, please give me my PAC number.' And. They. Wouldn't. Tell. Me. Half an hour of my life flashing away by a person's stubbornness. Hell, I told them a short version of paragraph three, that I wasn't trying to play hard ball, that I'd happily pay more just to get away from you and yet they wouldn't cough it up. What was it he said when I insisted on the PAC number? Ah, yes, 'I never said I wouldn't give it to you, just that if you'd listen to my offers...' NO I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN YOUR OFFERS. MY AUDIABLE RISING HOSTILITY HERE IS MAKING IT QUITE CLEAR A SALE IS NOT GOING TO TAKE PLACE. If I was a shop owner, and proceeded to act contrary to my customer's stated desires at every turn I would not be surprised if no one brought anything, resulting in me ending my days at the bottom of a bottle as I die alone and unloved on the streets, covered in lice. So I threatened to call my aforementioned lawyer – also, not a good sign if I feel it necessary to have to start looking up Citizen's Advice when your customer service is actively preventing me from cancelling my contract – and he relented by putting me on hold for twenty minutes. Which I feel only happened because I didn't let him wow me with bollocks. Twenty minutes later I get assurances they'll call me back later that day. That was Sunday.

On Wednesday, with now four days of calling behind my belt and the same promises each time I tried again. I'm actually really polite – they're beaten the anger out of me temporarily. However, as I repeated for the billioneth time, 'No, I must insist you give me my PAC number right now and I have no interest in any deals,' something happens. Not that I make up a riduclous deal on the spot, I was tempted, but your customer service had treated me so badly I couldn't muster the effort (A Samsung Galaxy S3 with 500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB data cap at £20 a month with a free case I was musing on spitting out, but I stalled at the possibility of ever having to deal with your customer service again. That and your broken promises.) In the middle of another wearied pointless exchanges, my lovely girlfriend, driven to despair over hearing the same thing over and over for fifteen minutes or simply dreading yet another bitching-fest about your company later and – I love this – she snatched the phone off me, and refused to give it back until they gave her my PAC number. She held me hostage from you. It was beautiful. At this point they revealed that the PAC number was automated and would come by text later tonight in the hope she would return the phone, which she did, and I immediately hung up.

The PAC number. Was automated. Your insufferable customer 'service' (damn it, sorry) kept this from me as a means to keep me on the line to keep me with you. A lie by omission? Well, either way, NO, I DON'T CARE, THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Hours of my time wasted dealing with their crap.

Which brings me labouringly to my point. I'm not here just to vent at you. I'm writing this today because at the end of the day, my time was wasted. In reading this inane dribble, I hope your time is wasted.

Yours in eternal spite,

John L

P.S. Also my phone was crap. Maybe not totally your fault, you didn't make the thing, but I'm into irrational hate here and every time I saw the phrase 'Unexpected Failure' I was tempted to learn how to code phone OS's so that I could replace that phrase with 'Expected Failure,' before setting light to an effigy of Three Mobile's logo.

Book review: George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman

Last week I buggered off to Tenerife. An enjoyable time was had, but this isn't an article detailing my holiday pics – I don't want to drive away the, hmm, three people that come here. But as we know, for a beach holiday you need books. Many books. I did not quite have many books, so perusing the duty free I noticed this book, and picked it up. I remembered that the Commissar Cain series was often referred to as Flashman in space, so hey, gotta be good right? So let's review George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman.

I could of done a better picture, but this book didn't deserve it.

Now us Brits like us some unpleasant characters. Look back at The Young Ones, Blackadder, and today The Misfits and the returning Red Dwarf are all great examples – and for that matter, series. I really enjoy the Commissar Cain series by Sandy Mitchel – a cowardly commissar in the grim dark future of the 41^st millennium where the norm is terrible, terrible war. So I'm quite comfortable about spending time with flawed characters – a certain charm and wit will make them enjoyable.

Flashman is none of these these.

I regret giving this author my money. I regret that I can't stop reading a book when partially read. I regret spending time with such an odious, despicable character. I regret the fact I will have the memory of what I read echoing around my head for quite a while. I regret so much.

The titular character is Harry Flashman and fuck this shit of a human being. Okay, it's written turn of the century, so I was expecting a moral compass more tuned to the times regarding many aspects. But... no. Whatever the age, he is an unfunny, cowardly, bullying rapist.

Comparing him to Commissar Ciaphas Cain? Bullshit. Cain is smarter, more charming, more brutal on himself, has a sense of duty, and oh yeah: Not a rapist. But let's backtrack. Let's list Flashman's crimes.

• He is a bully. Joy.
• He cheats out a duel via bribery, and laughs and taunts at his accomplice when he comes looking for his money.
• Beats his father's mistress because she wouldn't sleep with him a second time, chortling to himself that she'll never forget him now.
• Names his horse after said mistress. Classy.
• Coward of an unfunny degree. Anything happens around him and he instantly bolts. In danger he constantly weeps, begs and bribes for mercy.
• Beats his servants because.
• Man slut. He should be full of syphilis by now. Once he sent a soldier on a highly dangerous mission just to separate him from his wife long enough for him to fuck her.
• Back to the man slut; gets intensely jealous at the notion his wife is having an affair when he spent the last six months putting his dick into anything willing – and also unwilling.

There is more, but I refuse to re-read this book to continue this list. Not very professional, but sorry, I'm not suffering any more. The sad fact is that he tries to justify things. Like the rape. He says he doesn't like doing it. That makes it okay, right? Well, no. Not ever. Double no if he kidnaps the woman who he had raped previously, and to get revenge for her husband whipping the shit outta him and her intention of cutting off his dick... he tries to rape her again.

You. Utter. Scum.

Let's compare him to Cain for a minute. Cain's not a rapist. Or a sexist. Or a racist (speciesist, in fairness.) Cain would laugh at his cowardice. When the shooting starts, Cain dives for cover, assesses the situation, and if it's too hot, slinks away. Flashman's first instinct is to bolt. Hell, Cain would laugh; that's a good way to get shot in the back if you're not careful. Flashman hides in a tent. Cain would do his duty and be seen by the men. Flashman is passively part of a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan to India. Cain would trample on his own reputation to get into the leadership's circle and make it work. Cain is funny, witty, charming, and brutal in his own assessment of his own behaviour, as he flees danger into a bigger danger. Flashman waves away his behaviour by saying 'well, I said I'm a coward, so it's fine now I've said it.' In the face of imminent death, Cain puts on his false hero face and banters and snarls in defiance. Flashman weeps, shits himself, begs, offers money, weeps some more. Oh – no wait, he never shits or wets himself. Bully for him.

I wanted this shit of a character to die. I wanted him to die at the aforementioned whipping; oh, he realises the powerlessness he feels is the same as what he put his victims through. Well great for you. You don't do anything about it. I wanted him to get his dick chopped off and stuffed in his mouth. I wanted...

Oh, shit. I am reviewing a book. Allegedly. No more hate-tangents. Er. Side characters! He gets married, and as the whole book is written first person (see? Reviewing!) we get to learn that one of the most attractive things about her is her stupidity oh fuck this book. Fuck this author. Fuck this series.

Plot: A prick get kicked out of school, joins the army, fucks a girl, gets sent to India, then Afghanistan, then goes home, being a prick the whole way. The end.

Don't buy this book. Buy Sandy Mitchell's Commissar Cain series. Or if you want funny British empire IN SPACE try Space Captain Smith by Toby Frost.

Purchasing information:

Flashman is out in many book stores and probably on ebook but I'm not providing any links here because you shouldn't buy this terrible book. Don't give the author any money. Instead look at Sandy Mitchell's Commissar Cain series, available in book stores and sometimes at Games Workshop starting here and available on ebook here. If you're not a Warhammer 40K fan, than please look at Space Captain Smith also available in book stores, found here and as ebook here.