Not Much To Report

Hi guys, not Much To report today. I am currently sat at the dentist writing on my tosh phone, tosh by name, tosh by nature!!! my temporary fillings fell out so i have to have replacements ready for italia on monday yay, looking forward to having all that NiCe food and maybe meeting Jerry Scotty or one of the veline! will try and post a pic or two in a couple of weeks!

Truth Happens!

How Many Council Work Personel Does It Take To…

Far be it for me to cast dispersions about Milton Keynes Council and their ability to waste both time and money in fruitless exercises.  Not to mention how they seem to employ only people who have how can I say less than a basic city and guilds in customer communications?

We live in a council flat, in I think what is fair to be said the rough end of town, our neighbour seems to sell lots of small brown envelopes for what seems to be considerably more than what the post office get for them!  However he does us no injustice and the people that buy them are all old enough to know the price of a small brown envelope, even if they are unsure what day it actually is.

However the council seem to treat us as second class citizens, someimes we feel like we are interupting their 8 hour lunch break with tedious things such as graffiti, we are here because of various factors however we both have now extremely good jobs, we are clean, tidy, and sober, we claim no benefits, our flat is tidy, freshly decorated, and we pay our rent before the due date, we pay council tax, and by the reaction I got when I did buy a TV license (see post about Italian TV) we are the only ones round who have one!!!  So why is it when we phone the council they see fit to treat us with what has to be said utter contempt.

Our housing officer is a prime example, she is brass, crude, and her position in the council in no way reflect her ability to get the job done, infact I am certain that when they had the interviews she must have been in the wrong place and no one else turned up, so before she knew it she was a housing officer.  But this aside it has to be said that after being passed to what is a seemingly endless array of departments we do eventually get the job done.

The end of our guttering down-pipe fell off or was kicked or stolen when our flat was empty and before my partner had taken possession of the flat.  This was noted on the initial form which was signed when she took the flat on,  That was an impressive 14 months ago.  Here is the saga so far…

My partner took on the flat with the down-pipe fault noted on the initial paperwork, with many assurances that this work would be completed within two weeks.  Two weeks elapsed and nothing had happened, except the flat had become damp as a resultant of the water gushing down the wall, which in turn, turned green on the outside.  My partner phoned up yet again and was assured this was being given top priority.  Another 12 months elapsed with many more assurances, at this point we thought that enough was enough and something had to be done, almost daily e-mails started, we noted to them with pictures what needed to be done, I am fairly good at repairs as I am a fairly practical sort and could see that this job should take about 6 minutes assuming there is a cup of tea involved. 

We finally get an e-mail stating that the scaffolder would be with us in the next few days, now bear in mind we are talking about the bottom section of down-pipe that goes into the drainage located at the bottom of the wall near our patio, why on earth do they need scaffold?  We sent them an e-mail again with pictures stating that the uppermost part where it had broken was literally 3ft(1m) from Terra Firma, we received a reply stating that this job had been checked by a professional who deemed it would be working at height and as such would require a scaffold to be built.  The scaffolder turned up with what has to be said a rather impressive array of scaffold, he took a quick look finished his tea and left, we then get a phone call from the contractor asking why we had not had the scaffold put up and that the job could not continue without it as it would not be considered safe to do so.  Well either something has gone wrong here or they employ 2ft um-per lumpas!    After much debarkle now involving us, the contractor, the council and the scaffolder, we persuade the contractor to send out someone to re-examine the job, also could he bring a bit of down-pipe, and a hacksaw on the off chance we might be right. Great next morning we are about to leave or work when what I can only describe as a 5ft umper lumpa turns up with a lump of downpipe, he has a quick look a cup of tea, and then realises he forgot his hacksaw which is in the van! Well hey presto 10 minutes later we have a new down-pipe fitted without any scaffolding and he was able to contain the vertigo when he had to stand upright to fit it, it should be noted that special council approved training is required for council employees to stand upright on two legs, our housing officer is testament to that, one day she will have that certificate. 

The upshot is, well we did get the job done, well almost, the umper lumpa forgot his clips and drill and screws so the next downpour the pipe fell off.  But we are almost there, umper lumpa is coming back to put the clips on and we are assured that once the scaffolding is in place this will be complete :-S  The moral of the story here is just private rent or buy, you will save in the long run I promise you, and thats just on Anadin

Neighbours at War …. (My First Rant!)

Neighbours (Rant)

I think that it is fair to say that my neighbor is one of those people who is so incredibly backwards he still thinks digital watches are the height of the electronic generation.  He owns one CD which he plays in his flat (the one above oursL) at high volume over and over again.  When he is not doing this he is presumably out stealing or involved in one of his other two favorite pastimes, either clubbing his girlfriend over the head and dragging her back to their cave or more likely beating her up so that she does not leave the cave in the first place.

The man is quite unable to speak, let alone reason, to be frank the fact he remembers to breath amazes me most days.  He not surprising does not work, the mere mention of this word to close to him and he has to have a little lye down someplace dark.  Him and his stereotypical girlfriend live in a council flat with no aspirations of achievement beyond getting next weeks gyro.  You guessed the next part; we are paying for this bozo and his girlfriend and his dog.

Now for the amazing part, firstly when we moved in I parked slightly too far into my drive onto a patch of mud, all hell broke loose as this was his mud :-S in fact this “Grassed area” (mud) is communal and therefore fair game.  However not knowing better we moved and thought nothing more of it, until a few days later when there is yobbo the unemployed and looser the not pregnant YET girlfriend complete with their friends and dog under our car port having a BBQ!  Stereo blaring out the window, in fact it was so loud we had little choice but to go out.  The loud music is something we have to tollerate as the council are re-fusing to do anything.

We decided to have a shower fitted and contacted the council with a plan of action which was accepted, we booked and paid for out plumber and electrician to fit the shower we had purchased a few weeks before.  The plumber turned up at 8:30am Wednesday morning had some tea and set about routing cables and pipe work through the wall.  For this some drilling was necessary, I had to take my partner to work.  On leaving the flat we were greeted by greebo the intellectually challenged obviously fresh from his pit, stating well mumbling in amongst swear words that we could not start work till 9am as it was disturbing him, he was going to call the council.  We told him to go ahead knowing that we were in the right as we had already done a lot of research on the web and ascertained that in fact a builder can start work at 8am, as do in fact our local council.  Anyway to cut a long storey short, were phoned by the council stating that a complaint had been made about the noise!!! 

Get a job you lazy layabout stop taking our hard earned tax and acturally work then decent hard working people can go about their busness without worring about disturbing your day.  For god sake what is this country coming to?  Why am I working for everything I earn when I have to pay for myself and enough in tax to keep these wretches who then complain about me when I try and better myself. 

Needless to say this doughnut is top of the list, by which I mean that we are recording all of his antics by anymeans possible to show the council in the hope that they will eventually see that this guy is a joke and throw this sorry thieving  good for nothing lazy useless ill educated unemployed retard back where he belongs, in the gutter!

I take solice in the fact that the flat for us is a stop gap on the way to better things and that we may be called, and probably are a few things but even if we try our very hardest we could never be that useless to society.