The Lemon Fool

My Mum received a letter from some department within the government.

She's now 80 years old and entitled to receive an extra 25p per week on her pension.

I am completely speechless. There's no direction I can view this from that I find constructive.

Absolute madness. We've finally done it - we've finally managed to run clean up our own ass.

AiY

Sorry AiY but having been employed by the Civil Service for nigh on forty years you aint seen nothing yet. There isn't any part of human existance that can't be buggered up by some twit sitting in an ivory tower in London.

R6

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:My Mum received a letter from some department within the government.

She's now 80 years old and entitled to receive an extra 25p per week on her pension.

I am completely speechless. There's no direction I can view this from that I find constructive.

Absolute madness. We've finally done it - we've finally managed to run clean up our own ass.

AiY

Agreed, but this is less to do with the people who actually send the letter and more to do with excessive and increasing bureaucracy and admin, forcing those poor sods to send the letters. They no doubt get audited every few years and have to prove that the system is transparent and no, they haven't embezzled 25p and can prove that they informed the pensioners..etc etc.

The increase in so many petty procedures is making my life a misery and I am so looking forward to leaving in a year or so. There is absolutely no place for common sense whatsoever. One auditor will contradict what another auditor said a few years ago and we have to smile politely and obey.

Ten years ago, I joked to colleagues that we would be obliged to produce a Risk assessment, SOP and Working instruction for the use of the toilets, together with a card-access security system and obligatory gathering of feedback in order to improve the toilets. Today, they'd probably believe me!

Steve

stevensfo wrote:Ten years ago, I joked to colleagues that we would be obliged to produce a Risk assessment, SOP and Working instruction for the use of the toilets, together with a card-access security system and obligatory gathering of feedback in order to improve the toilets. Today, they'd probably believe me!
Steve

Perhaps not, as no-one would give a sh**

stevensfo wrote:
Agreed, but this is less to do with the people who actually send the letter and more to do with excessive and increasing bureaucracy and admin, forcing those poor sods to send the letters.

Steve

To be fair (I know that isn't really in the spirit of this board) the letter will be automatically issued via computer, there'll no be no poor sod individually involved in sending it.

A regular feature on 'That's Life' (hosted by Enid Rancid) was bills for £0.00 being sent by the gas board etc
Now, over to Cyril Fletcher for another Odd Ode

AleisterCrowley wrote:A regular feature on 'That's Life' (hosted by Enid Rancid) was bills for £0.00 being sent by the gas board etc
Now, over to Cyril Fletcher for another Odd Ode

In 2008, for the only time in my life[1], I had a tax bill outside PAYE from HMRC. It was for 10p, and I was mildly surprised they bothered with it. Also surprised it happened, since all my income at the time was PAYE.

[1] Excluding rebates.


[edit to add]
Looking at my blog post on the subject, I see comments there with other anecdotes:

The tax man has just seen fit to pay my company interest of £1.03 because, it seems, I paid my corporation tax a few days earlier than necessary. The bank will charge my company a total of 97p for banking it (unless I keep it until I get another cheque, in which case the cost per item will be less – trouble is, most of my clients pay direct into the account so cheques are few and far between). So it looks like I’ll make a 6p “profit” before tax!

and

I once paid a 16p EDF Energy bill at the post office. It cost them at least 20p to send me the bill and the post office gets 12p for each transaction, so that was silly of them.

AleisterCrowley wrote:A regular feature on 'That's Life' (hosted by Enid Rancid) was bills for £0.00 being sent by the gas board etc
Now, over to Cyril Fletcher for another Odd Ode

Crikey, that brought back memories! I know she could come across as a real pain in the proverbial, but I have a lot of respect for what she did in starting Childline and exposing paedophilia in schools.

What a shame we don't have programmes like that any more.

Steve

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:Absolute madness. We've finally done it - we've finally managed to run clean up our own ass

An oozalumocracy?

stevensfo wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:
A regular feature on 'That's Life' (hosted by Enid Rancid) was bills for £0.00 being sent by the gas board etc

Now, over to Cyril Fletcher for another Odd Ode

Crikey, that brought back memories! I know she could come across as a real pain in the proverbial, but I have a lot of respect for what she did in starting Childline and exposing paedophilia in schools.

What a shame we don't have programmes like that any more.

<cough>

And what hard luck to be such a hard-hitting, investigative BBC programme during the 70's and 80's, and not knowing anything at all about the Jimmy Saville issues...

</cough>

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:My Mum received a letter from some department within the government.

She's now 80 years old and entitled to receive an extra 25p per week on her pension.

I am completely speechless. There's no direction I can view this from that I find constructive.

Absolute madness. We've finally done it - we've finally managed to run clean up our own ass.

AiY

What is the problem here? That the increase isn't big enough? (true)
That you would rather they didn't give her the increase and hid it away somewhere?
That you would have preferred they were not transparent and didn't keep pensions informed?

OK, it's a pathetic amount of money, but what else should they have done? Would you like a cut off point in terms of cash increases where pensioners were just ignored?

Maybe we should be praising the system for being communicative for a chance - if only that went for everything else in life, especially with corporates, we would all gain.

Arb.

Snorvey wrote:gawd, 'That's Life' was pish.

Yeah but it got 28 zillion viewers at its peak.

Aye, but there was f-all else on. Same with Bruce.Forsyth. The Generation Game was awful. And as for 'Its a knockout' with Stuart Hall....well we best not say too much about him never mind the program.

And as for 'Kickstart' with Peter Purves. This was peak time viewing back in the day.

Honestly, when I tell the young 'uns what we had to watch back then, they just dont believe me.

I was having a reasonably nice day until you brought back all those bad memories

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:

Snorvey wrote:gawd, 'That's Life' was pish.

Yeah but it got 28 zillion viewers at its peak.

Aye, but there was f-all else on. Same with Bruce.Forsyth. The Generation Game was awful. And as for 'Its a knockout' with Stuart Hall....well we best not say too much about him never mind the program.

And as for 'Kickstart' with Peter Purves. This was peak time viewing back in the day.

Honestly, when I tell the young 'uns what we had to watch back then, they just dont believe me.

I was having a reasonably nice day until you brought back all those bad memories

--kiloran

Last month I visited my mum, who has one of those Sky thingies with zillions of channels, 99% absolute cr*p, but one morning I sat down and watched some really old stuff from the 70/80s.

The Avengers, The Professionals, Minder.

I remember that when I saw them first, I thought they were brilliant, but this time, although somewhat entertaining, they were almost painful to watch.

The highlight was in Minder, where Arthur Daily has a meeting with his bank manager to discuss his overdraft - cup of tea included.

Try telling the young people of today that banks used to have humans inside, they just won't believe you.

Steve

PS I accept The Generation Game, and raise you 'Sale of the Century' with Nicholas Parsons.

Wow what a load of c*ap used to be on

stevensfo wrote:The Avengers, The Professionals, Minder.

I remember that when I saw them first, I thought they were brilliant, but this time, although somewhat entertaining, they were almost painful to watch.

The Avengers (early stuff) has period charm
I watched some Professionals fairly recently - still good in my opinion! Quite gritty too- considering it was Sunday evening viewing (although well after Songs of Praise...) Some TV channels cut the Professionals heavily for this reason so you may have seen a watered-down version, with odd cuts and gaps

Seaside Special
Oh Lord...

on Video killed the radio star on Sky the other day, featuring Oasis
the producer wanted Avenger main man, Patrick McNee (RIP) to appear in one, but he felt it was bit much to ask him to turn up "in uniform"
When he pitched looking immacluate in suit with bowler hat and umbrella, the producer was delighted
"My dear boy" said McNee "of course, it's what everyody expects"
Class Act !

Snorvey wrote:gawd, 'That's Life' was pish.

Yeah but it got 28 zillion viewers at its peak.

the young 'uns what we had to watch back then, they just dont believe me.

The memory is a bit iffy but the talking dog (sausages - sausages - sausages)
and the dogs with the soda siphon must surely have raised a smile.

Now when you get to THE YOUNG ONES that was eye-watering

Driving dog?
The talking dog actually said GRRRROSSSUGEEZZZ...
And it had a limited vocabulary, unlike my great aunt Ethel's cockatoo, which had a thoroughly foul mouth

Well you bunch of moaning old farts

If you want to recall cringeworthy game shows you should try Blankety Blank.

I have no idea how the opening post about Mum's 25p a week increase in pension could generate such a morbid discussion on 70's & 80's quiz shows. Sheesh next we'll start a thread about football and end up talking about Scotland's football team.

You know it comes to something when I can't come to this board and vent my spleen. What is this site coming to I ask

AiY
Ashamed to say that in 1994 was in the audience for two episodes of The Price is Right with Bruce Forsyth. In fairness it was so bad it was good