As someone who’s had his car nicked in the past, I can assure you that it’s not in the slightest bit funny. Unless of course your car is being nicked in bits by a load of theiving monkeys.
Check this video out, and watch out for the monkeys!
Is my car cursed or what? The car that was stolen, crashed into and the subject of my ex-wife’s insurance fraud has now been hit with a £50 parking fine by Chester City Council, even though I couldn’t actually pay!
I went to Chester today to shop for shoes, and being a sized 12 it was very difficult (but I’ll rant about that another time). I entered the car park and parked at the bottom, next to the Pay Station. When I put a £2 coin in the machine, it came back out – together with another 2 £1 coins. I was £2 up already, result!
However I didn’t have a ticket, so I tried the £2 coin again. It came back out. Then I tried a £1 coin, and it came back out. I then made my way up to the other Pay Station in the car park (and by this time it was starting to snow heavily) where I tried both the £2 and £1 coins again. Same result; they came back out.
I went back to the first Pay Station, where my car was parked, to find a woman having the same problem. I told her that neither machine was working, and she couldn’t get a ticket either. I saw that some cars had tickets, but others didn’t. Assuming the machines were now full, I went into town to shop.
When I returned around 3 hours later I found I had been given a £50 fine for not displaying a ticket.
Obviously I’m not paying it. I tried to pay the £4.90 for 4 hours, but neither machine would take my money. No way am I paying a fine when the fault lies with the Pay Stations that didn’t work.
I’ll appeal this and let everyone know what happens. If I have to go to court I will. If they get away with this they have carte blanch to charge everyone £50 for parking there.
No doubt quite a few cars received fines today, which must strike them as unusual.
It’s been a while since I talked about this, and I’m in a foul enough mood so I might as well bring it up now.
Throughout the last year and a bit I’ve been mentioning how my trouble with my now ex-wife has caused me no end of problems, including how she committed fraud on my car with Direct Line and how her family changed the locks in my house when I lived there.
Well, it was supposedly all sorted this January when the financial settlement was decided and I paid her a substantial amount of money for the house and the property contained within it. One of the conditions of the settlement was that I wouldn’t mention her, or her family on any website and I wouldn’t make any attempt to get Direct Line to compensate me for the error they made as that would encourage them to reclaim the £6,000 odd they paid her.
I was happy with that. The money I’ve lost out on as a result of paying for a car loan for 18 months while the car was unusable I should be able to get back from some of the furniture in the house I’d just paid for.
However… when I entered the house in January this year, she’d stolen more items from it. More items that I’d paid for, that were noted down on a list written by her, and was signed in a court. Among the items stolen by her and her parents was a full bedroom furniture set, including two wardrobes and a chest of drawers.
I couldn’t believe it. My attempts to get hold of her solicitor proved fruitless as he’d washed his hands of her and said I’d need to go through her. She was no longer receiving legal aid so he didn’t want to know. When I got hold of her father he said she needed the stuff to sell because she didn’t have any money.
I’d just given her £10,000 cash!
Unbelievable. Well, as she’s already broken the terms of the settlement, within a matter of days it has to be said, I consider it null and void. I will now be approaching the financial ombudsman to pursue Direct Line for the full amount that I believe they owe me, and if that means they have to get the money from her, then so be it.
What’s the point in making an agreement in court, in front of a judge, and paying someone a settlement if they’re just going to steal the items you’ve just paid for? The legal system in this country is fucked up.
You may remember when my car was stolen from the Hillcroft garage in Langstone, Newport, I put up a post calling the garage ‘thieving gypsy bastards‘. It was a comical post highlighting my anger at the garage and how my car was stolen from them, with the keys, and their ‘end of year accounts’, making the whole thing look very suspicious.
Very suspicious indeed.
Well, I’ve now had a complaint for my use of the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’, from the Thames Valley Gypsy Association. The complaint reads:
From: Joseph G. Jones [info@gypsy-association.com]
Subject: Unpleasant remarkPlease remove the term “Thieving gypsy bastards” from your website, as a community we find the term offensive.
If you wish to call the garage names feel free, but please leave us out of it.
Besides which it makes you seem like a racist.
Reagrds
Joseph G. Jones
Thames Valley Gypsy Association
Joseph found my website because I rank on the first page of Google for the term ‘Thieving Gypsy Bastards’. This site tends to rank for most phrases it uses, and will no doubt rank again for the term for this particular blog post.
However, as you can see while the original post does rank for ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ it doesn’t actually have a go at gypsies at all. It’s referencing the garage and the fact that my car was stolen from there. If I were to remove the post, my site would no longer rank for the term and more, anti-gypsy posts would rank in Google in its place.
Therefor, my post being there is helping.
Plus, the term ‘thieving gypsy bastards’ doesn’t reference gypsies at all, it’s a reference to a comic strip in Viz, which is infamous and even has its own Wikipedia page. An extract from the page reads:
The comic got in trouble with the United Nations after featuring a strip called ‘The Thieving Gypsy Bastards’; unbeknownst to the Viz editorial team at the time, Gypsies are regarded as a race under UK law and thus the comic was guilty of racism. During the resultant court case, UK newspaper The Sun ran a story revealing that the principal Roma man who initiated the action against them was in fact also being tried for, and was later found guilty of, handling stolen property.
Hilarious!
You may remember from my blog that my pride and joy, my car, was stolen in July 2006. I fought tooth and nail to get the thing back to the point it almost consumed me, and did consume this website; it’s a veritable homage to the quest.
If however when my car was stolen I’d actually had some form of tracking installed, like I’m considering now that I have it back, there wouldn’t have been an issue. GPS tracking is now inexpensive and a real solution to people like me who are obsessed with their cars.
LandAirSea Systems are a leading GPS tracking provider used by private, commercial and even government clients. This means they have the technology and the coverage to ensure that when my car next goes for a drive by itself that I’ll know where the sucker is.
One of the key benefits with this system is that it’s compatible with Google Earth:
The Data Can be downloaded and view in Google Earth simply by plugging the Tracking Key into the USB port of a computer
What I also like is the fact that the magnet used is so small it can be placed under your car seat, and it’s water resistant. Though of course if my car ends up in the sea, knowing where it is won’t help me much.
This YouTube video should help to show how incredible this product can be.
I’m seriously considering this. If anyone so much as touches my car or even jokes about touching it after what happened I tend to attack them physically.
While bored yesterday we knocked out this quick TV advert for Direct Line. They paid out someone else when my car was stolen and then tried to repossess the car. This advert showcases their best points in their insurance policies.
After what happened with Royal & SunAlliance, where they shirked their responsibilities for over a year and then eventually caved in when they saw the bad press they were getting both here and in the SERPs, do you think Direct Line Insurance will also see sense and compensate me before it gets too messy for them?
They’re the imbeciles who paid out the wrong person when my car was stolen, recovered and then fraudulently claimed on by my ex-wife. They then placed a stolen marker on the car saying they wanted me to hand it over to them, and refused to speak to me on the matter. Over a year later they admitted via letter and taped phone call that they were in the wrong and should have done more to discover the true owner of the car earlier, but insisted that they were not responsible for my car being frozen in limbo during that time.
Obviously they were responsible, they’re the idiots who paid out the wrong person and refused to speak to me. They have ADMITTED their error in writing, yet they still say they won’t compensate me.
Well, now I’ve beaten RSA so convincingly, I’m turning my attentions to Direct Line Insurance. They either compensate me to the tune of what I have demanded, or this thing escalates to the likes of which they couldn’t possibly imagine.
Do you think they’ll buckle? Do you think they’ll stand firm? Cast your vote now.
Loading ...Incidentally this website now ranks on page 3 of Google for Direct Line Insurance, and page 1 for Direct Line Insurance Claims Department. The stats for this site read like a veritable list if car insurance related terms and companies. Talk about bad press!
Anyone that accuses me of being lucky really has no idea. After getting my BMW back, taking 17 months, the bloody electric gates where I live shut on the fucker this morning.
As I drove towards them they started to shut, usually when this happens the sensors realise there’s something in the way and they stop, and reopen. Not this time. They bloody closed on my car, forcing me to reverse back out with the gate trying to take the front of my car off.
I’ve been here since March now, driving the Celica and a courtesy car and this has never happened. 2 days driving the Z3 and the sodding gates try to crush it.
I swear the car is cursed. Hopefully a bit of T-cut will sort it out, but there’s a very noticeable mark on the driver’s side front wheel arch right now. Great way to start the day!
I'm an Affiliate Marketeer, SEO, web developer and all round Internet personage. I run a network of content websites on a variety of different subjects. I'm also victim to some of the worst luck in the world, and I tend to Blog about all of it here. more info
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