Category Archives: Rants

Complaints, Michael Jackson, Rants

Event Travel Complaint

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This weekend I was sorting through some old boxes and came across one of the very first complaint letters I’d ever written. It was such a moving experience, like finding an original Picasso or something. While the letter was rough round the edges, and lacked any real venom, you could see the formings of what would become MrDaz right there.

This letter was from 1997, eleven years ago, before the Internet became what it is today. Not being one to hold a grudge (;)), and someone who lets sleeping dogs lie, it’s time to dig this one up again as these bastards never replied to me!

So, for the guys at Event Travel, who ignored TWO complaint letters of mine, it’s your turn to worry. Before you had to deal, and ignore, Darren Jamieson, student… now you’ve got MrDaz on your ass, and he’s a right bastard when it comes to being ripped off.

In 1997 I attended the opening night of Michael Jackson’s History Tour in Prague, in the Czech Republic. The trip was booked by my girlfriend Lisa, using a company called Event Travel. This was her first mistake, an event with Event Travel is quite an ‘event’ indeed.

We went on the coach from Cardiff, driving through England, France, Belgium and Germany (which took hours) and then, at around 12 midnight, the coach we were travelling in blew a tire. The driver did well to slow down and pull over onto the hard shoulder of the German Autobarn, where we all got off on that freezing September night in Germany.

We waited… and we waited… and we waited.

Eventually, someone turned up to fix the tire and we got underway, at 7:30 am!!!

SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS, throughout the night, we all stood on the side of the road of the German Autobarn in September while very little happened.

What made matters worse is that we were actually travelling with two coaches in tandem, and the second coach stopped to see that everyone was OK, before driving on – arriving at the hotel some 8 hours before us.

So, why did it take 7 1/2 hours for someone to turn up and change the tire?

Why did the second coach drive off, when the services (we found out the next morning) were just a few miles up the road? It could have dropped off its passengers there and turned back for us, so we could have waited in the warmth, before it continued.

Why did Event Travel never, ever reply to me?

Maybe Event Travel will reply to me now? Perhaps Event Travel will explain why they bodged the trip so badly and never even said sorry for the disaster that befell the passengers?

I doubt it, but we’ll try. More importantly though, has anyone else had any experiences with Event Travel? Let me know here.

You could even visit their site and tell them direct.

Rants

Another reason why Americans are stupid

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Following on from my recent post on how stupid Americans are, and why the world laughs at them, I thought I’d mention something that’s been bugging me for a while.

It all started when I was editing an article submitted by someone who was, shall we say, American focused. They mentioned the season ‘Autumn’, though referred to it as ‘The Fall’. The fall, as we all know, is an American term (yes, I know it originated in England but we ditched in favour of a proper name). However this article writer, while not being from America, was so enchanted with Uncle Sam that he kept slipping Americanisms (or as I call them, Twatisms) into his work.

Now, why in the name of all that is glazed in sugar do the Yanks insist on calling a season after the most obvious thing that happens at that time of year? Is it because ‘Autumn’ is too hard for them to understand, learn and spell? Perhaps. Why then don’t they take it further and rename the other seasons?

They could have The Fall, The Sunny Bit. The Snow and… the other one.

Wouldn’t this be simpler for their tiny, rather simplistic minds?

We’ll wait and see if they adopt this new naming convention.

Direct Line Insurance, Rants, Stolen Car

Divorce Update

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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.

Rants

Police showing how useless they are again

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This last week I had another call from the good old British police force. How I love to hear their crap. What did they want this time I hear you ask? Well, it seems they were calling me to let me I know I’d been the victim of crime.

Oh really? Yes, it appears that someone has damaged my house in South Wales, they’ve knocked a hole in the underside of one of the rooms overhanging a footpath.

Yes, I know this. This happened before my tenants moved in. The letting agent is aware of it, they’re dealing with it.

Still the female copper insisted on taking my name so I could have a ‘crime number’. I lost my rag my with her (you can sense by this point that I’m cursing the fact that I’m not recording this call).

I asked what’s the point? Why take my name, why give me a crime number. She said it was for her paperwork, at which point I snapped. I questioned the point of this, the point of her and the point of the police. Were they going to catch anyone? Were they going to investigate?

She had the cheek to say that she’d checked the property and found no forensic evidence! Forensic evidence!!! It’s not a sodding murder case. What did she do, get the serious crimes squad down there? I doubt it.

And to be honest, it’s not like you need fucking Poirot to solve the case, the kids who did it graffitid there names on the wall below, two girls called Helen and Sam and they live just up the road. Not the smartest kids on the block, but then the police aren’t smart enough to catch ’em either.

Even if they did, if I frog marched the police up to the house where the culprits lived, they still wouldn’t do anything would they? They’re under 15.

Then the stupid woman asked if I could come in and make a statement. I’m in Manchester, 190 miles away. What’s the point? What good would that do?

She said it was for their paperwork.

So there we have it. Whenever a crime is committed a police officer fills out some paperwork and takes a statement, then files it. That should send a chilling warning to anyone thinking of breaking the law.

Makes you glad to be British doesn’t it?

Time wasters.

Humour, Internet, Rants

Spam aimed at religious idiots

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Religious people, by their very definition, are gullible. After all, if they’re stupid enough to believe in fictional ‘gods’ then obviously they’re gullible enough to believe in any old bollocks. This makes them prime targets for scammers, particularly if you play on the ‘Jesus card’.

There’s nothing the religious like to hear more than someone else showing how much they too love Jesus, because of course another follower of their particular bogus faith will no doubt be a trustworthy sucker like themselves.

Therefore, you’ll often get scam emails sent around that bang on about Jesus and Christianity for ages in order to establish some sort of affinity with their target sucker, the religious freak. One such scam email I received recently was this:

From: Hizbeith Carlson <hizbeith_2@hotmail.com >
Subject: From Mrs Hizbeith Carlson

From Mrs Hizbeith Carlson
Sicogi-Marcory
Abidjan Cote D’ Ivoire

Dearest in Christ,

As you can see from the first line, this one’s gonna lay it on nice and thick. Any religious idiot worth their salt will be impressed with a ‘Dearest in Christ’ intro, and will read on, their heart warmed at such a message.

Greetings in the Name above all names, Jesus Christ our Lord and saviour, I am Mrs Hizbeith Carlson. I am married to Mr.Livingston Carlson who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for many years before he died in the year 2005.We were married without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian.

It gets better, this woman is a born again Christian. She must truly be worthy of knowing, and as her husband died quickly without suffering, god must have looked kindly on him, or some such shit.

Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of (($3.200.000.00) Three million two hundred thousand dollar in a Bank in Ivory Coast. Presently, this money is still in bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem.

Here we go, there’s money involved. Who saw that one coming? She’s got cancer and millions of dollar US. The broken English isn’t some attempt to play on people’s sympathy mind you, it’s partly because the author doesn’t use English as a first language and partly because the target audience is too stupid to notice anyway.

The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a charity organization that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want an organization that will use this fund for orphanages, school and church, widows, propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained, Isaiah 56:7 For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Bible made us to understand that “Blessed is the hand that giveth”.I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers.

She’s donating money to orphanages. How noble. God’s good work being carried out once again. She’s quoting the Bible, which means she must be a Christian, and she doesn’t want her money going to people who aren’t Christian. The essence of religion, anyone who doesn’t follow the same fairy story you do is clearly not worthy of your help.

We must read on.

I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that “the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace”. I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband’s relatives around me always. I don’t want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank.

More Bible quotes and bullshit about the money being used for evil if you don’t take it from her. Any good Christian will be reaching for their bank details as they read this, feeling it is god’s will that they stupidly fall into this bullshit.

I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherd. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian.

Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life.

I’m struggling to believe at this point, that even someone stupid enough to believe in god would be so stupid as to believe this horse turd. But then I guess some people must do.

Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply with the above information.

Remain blessed in the Lord

Yes, remain blessed in the Lord. Stupid bastards.

Take care,
In Christ’s Holy Love

Yours Sister in Christ
Mrs Hizbeith Carlson

What a sign off, in Christ’s Holy Love… your Sister in Christ.

You have got to be one dumb fuck to actually believe any of this, which as I stated is why they target the religious imbeciles who believe in god.

Be wary of spam emails like this, they’re not all this easy to spot 😉

Rants

Cheshire Council are shit

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Right, this morning I was ten minutes late for work. Why? Because the council are too fucking inept to do their job.

For the last few weeks there has been a sign up by Styal Golf Course saying that the road will be shut, for one day only, on May 12th. Today’s date? May 13th.

One could quite justifiably assume that the road, already declared shut for one day only yesterday, would be open today. However, one would be wrong. The sodding incompetent morons didn’t turn up yesterday, instead choosing to do it today, obviously without any frickin’ notice.

The diversion tried to go through Wilmslow, which naturally was not happening. I had to turn around and go a different route altogether, which would still have gotten me to work on time, had it not been for the roadworks on the bridge near Poynton. For fuck’s sake.

On the way home this evening, obviously the road was open as they’d finished the work???

Fuck no, still closed.

Whenever a council states that a road will be closed on <insert date> you can safely assume it will be later, and when they say it will be shut for <insert number of days> you can quite assuredly double that figure.

Why can’t they just do their job? Why are they this incompetent? How fucking hard is it to organise a day and do it?

Bastards.

Affiliate Marketing, Internet, Rants

Text Link Ads refuse one of my sites

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I just received a refusal from the advertising network Textlink-ads.com for one of my websites. This came as something of an annoyance to me, rather than a surprise, because the site itself is one of the newest of my portfolio, but one of the fastest growing.

The traffic on the website is very good, slightly below MrDaz.com presently, but should eclipse this site in the next month. However, as I said it is new. Which means it doesn’t have any Netcraft data, it doesn’t have any Google PageRank and it doesn’t have any history.

All of the useless stuff that pointless networks take into consideration when deciding whether they’ll take on a website or not.

Textlink-Ads said:

Hello Darren,

Unfortunately, at this time we feel that your site http://www.*******.com, does not meet our internal requirements to be accepted into the InLinks publishing program. We recommend that you continue marketing your website and generate a significant more amount of traffic to your site. Once you feel you have strong enough traffic — this normally takes a few months at least — you can feel free to contact us back and we will be happy to revisit the opportunity to work with you.

I was a bit annoyed and replied straight away with:

You probably shouldn’t base your decisions on Google PageRank.

Just a hint.

😉

As a consequence I won’t be using Textlink-Ads on the site even when they consider it to have met their ‘internal requirements’. I offered them the chance and they refused, their loss.

It’s frustrating but as I say, they’re the ones who will miss out.

Humour, Rants, Stolen Car

Now I’ve annoyed the Gypsies

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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 remark

Please 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!