Lostintheplot - The Blog

What do we have for you today? We have some letters!

Pamela Maunder is first:

Having had no luck with Virgin Trains' 'voice-activate' system ('Slough', apparently, isn't recognisable), I wrote to the firm's customer relations department for help. I was thanked for my letter, but was also sent the following statement:
"We have had some planned down time as our department's office IT system was enhanced". Double dutch or what?

I'll go for "what", as I understand it. Besides, most of their services seem to have over half an hour's "down time" each day.

And a Pointy, from Anthony O Wilkinson. I think the O stands for Oh dear:

Now I know that the UK is an open house: the men's hostel where I work has just booked in its first Tibetan

Tibetans in the UK? Madness!!!!

The 22nd already? Wow. More unbelievable stuff from the Mail now. Especially in this letter from Danielle Dieppois:

The French have an extra income tax called CSG (contribution sociale généralisée), the wealth tax (impot de solidarité sur la fortune), stamp duty at around 8% and heavy tolls on all motorways.

All of which the Mail has resolutely refused to print with accents. Bloody foreigners

B. Barratt has a letter about Children In Need:

Further to Steve Doughty's criticism of the BBC's Children in Need charity, I'm disgusted with this sham. Knowing how much it collected last year, I wrote to the BBC for a list of beneficiaries.
Thinking the money would be going to children's charities, I was appalled to read how very little was actually going to children.

What? Did some go to drugs charities to help parents get off drugs so their children don't have to fend for themselves and go to school in old, dirty clothes with no lunch because they have no money for food? Or maybe some went to an animal charity to provide very depressed children with a day out looking after animals, something proven to help. Perhaps some went (gasp) to a charity which helps immigrants to integrate better into the UK, so that their children aren't bullied at school for being out of touch with society. And maybe some even went abroad to pay for teachers ensure that children get education. Or to invest in clean water so that they don't die. TWAT.

And finally, William Richards:

Is David Blunkett Boris Johnson's hairdresser?

I'm liking this 'substitute David Blunket for blind man' thing. Not.Mail,

Greetings, new readers and blog.co.uk refugees. Here is the first post of Mail Letters! There's a lot of stuff about recycling today. So let's see what L. West has to say:

According to Ashfield council, if either bin contains the wrong waste, it won't be emptied.
After a second offence, and investigating officer will visit, and following a third offence, there will be a fixed penalty notice for £110.
I have had my bins tampered with and I am not willing to be persecuted by the council for something I have not done.
Furthermore, the elderly or forgetful are likely to be harassed unfairly.

Plus ramblings about "yet another stealth tax" yada yada yada. What gets me is that she implies that elderly people are too stupid to know which bin to put rubbish in. Which is rubbish itself. I don't know how much information the residents of Ashfield get about recycling, but here we get plenty - most people can easily see what goes where. My grandparents (72 and 92) didn't recycle until the introduction of our scheme in August and now they recycle more than me!

Another recycling letter from Mrs C. McCarthy:

The public is being 'educated' in not putting the wrong items into their bins. In Soviet Russia weren't people sent to the gulags to be 'educated'?

Your point? People go to school to be 'educated' too - doesn't make teachers filthy commie bastards, eh?

Next letter from Mrs M Munro:

I read with amusement that Beverley Hughes wishes to introduce compulsory classes to force parents to sing nursery rhymes to their children.
In the 'politically correct' farce which Britain has become, I wonder how many nursery rhymes will be approved by Ms Hughes?
Baa Baa black sheep? Racist. Humpty Dumpty? Offensive to obese people. Three Blind Mice? Insensitive to the visually impaired

Etc, etc. I think we should ban them just to annoy Mrs Munro - who hates 'political correctness' so much, she says "visually impaired" instead of "blind".

Anyway, that concludes the first Mail Letters here. If there are any problems with the layout or something, don't blame me. If you can't access to post comments, I'll be monitoring the old site for a few weeks.

It seems there may be changes around here. Not only am I getting very much bored on the internet, and I need stuff to write about, but I'm also getting rather tired of blog.co.uk, and the need for writing the Mail letters blog each day has become all too much, hence so few posts in the last month (some of it not my fault admittedly).

So I'm thinking about merging into this one. More later on this "exciting development".

I was getting bored of the old 6-day one.