Politics, British Gas, Red Letter Days, Guitars and morals

Whooah - what a title.

Rant

British Gas

Having moved twice now within the space of a year, I can honestly say this lot do not have a clue about running a business.

I won't go into the history as I'll probably end up having a stroke, but today I received a call.

"Hello Mr. UB41, we spoke last week about your bill"

"Err, did we? I called yesterday to point out you'd read the wrong meter"

"Let me check my notes - ah OK, we're just calling you to tell you we'll be sending the bill soon"

"Thanks"

What a waste of 5 minutes of both mine and the caller's lives.

Red Letter Days

My better half bought me a Red Letter Day gift for my birthday recently.

It was for an Allen Carr stop smoking clinic (Imagine my delight when I opened it).

In all seriousness, I have found Allen's Easyway method the most successful one I have tried in the past.

So, I call the clinic only to be told that I have to book through Red Letter Days.

OK, so I try the RLD website only to discover that no dates are available, so I call.

"No problem sir, we're just loading the new dates on, they'll be on the web tomorrow and you can book".

That was Tuesday.

Had a look Wednesday and surprise surprise, nothing on their site, so I call again. I'm told to keep checking back on the website.

I point out to the "consultant" that it should not be my responsibility to check each day, the dates should be there and why can't I book it?

He promises to call me back as soon as practical.

So I get a call today. First available date is the 5th June. I ask if it is on the website only to be told "not yet".

I'm about to write down the dates, only to discover he's telling me about the dates in Staines and I want to go to Raynes Park.

....apparently he'll have to get back to me.

What a pain in the backside - all stressed now so I need a fag.

Politics

"Troughgate" continues today with more news of expense abuses, and in the case of Margaret Moran, a lot of dodgy stuff about "not for profit" companies gaining public funding only for Ms. Moran to claim yet more expenses.
Not right.

Brown is all over the place with his handling of this. One minute Blears behaviour is unacceptable, the next minute, she's his favourite MP.

I honestly think Brown is losing the plot. His style of micro-management/control freak or whatever you want to call it just cannot cope with the volume. His performance at Prime Ministers Questions yesterday was poor, everything seems to need a committee to decide. There's just no leadership.

The idea of some quango overseeing expenses is typical of Labour. There is nothing wrong with the current system as long as it is publicised. The electorate will decide if claims are "above board".

It is NOT the system that is wrong, it is the people that abuse it. End of.

Life

More guitar practice today - I've only been learning for about a month and some days it just flows whereas others I sound liek a chimp with a mandolin. Just need to keep at it.

No news yet on the job front but CV's dispatched aplenty.

I'm thinking of getting back into dabbling in shares, although given the S&P warning on the UK economy, does it have farther to fall? Think I'll hang fire for a few days and see which way the markets are trending.

Philosophies

I started off with a rather long post about right and wrong. I'd like to extend that today to Morals and Ethics.

Firstly however, I'd like to modify my definition of Wrong.

"To deliberately set out to hurt a member of society"

The diligent reader will see I have replaced "another member of our society" with "a member of society".

My logic for this is that you must include yourself in the definition. This is to cover things like drug abuse, self harm etc.
The other point is how to define "our" society. Who is "us"?

It's a good change because it means less words in the definition, which to my mind tightens things up.

I actually looked up in the dictionary the words "Moral" and "Ethic". They are words we use a lot in daily life, and I wondered whether I was using them correctly.
It looks like they boil down to the same thing - right and wrong.

"Moral" mentions good/bad and right/wrong. "Ethic" mentions "Moral standards". All very "samey".

I won't include the definitions here as anyone can look them up.

If you're not with my train of thought here, you must be bored out of your mind reading this.

My logic is by defining these principles, I can apply them to any scenario and come up with an answer I can live with.

Most of us can generally describe something which appears "right" or "wrong", and that is probably an extent of our upbringing/education etc. So an automatic reaction.

But do we understand what underpins our interpretation of right and wrong? Hence the definitions.

So when our esteemed leader gives soundbites such as "moral compass", what he is essentially saying is to head in the direction that is "right" rather than "wrong". Viz a viz not to hurt a member of society, and in fact actually improve society.

All a bit obvious mumbo jumbo?

Maybe for now, but as I build on the definitions, we can use the principles to analyse events/politics/governments whatever to see if they are fundamentally right.