Schools – Where are they? – Nick S

We recently received a rejection from Dorset County Council for ALL 3 of our school preferences (in Christchurch) for our 4 year old who should be starting school this year, due to over subscription. We were offered a school at the other end of the borough with no facilities for working parents (pre and after school clubs). Basically, once a school is over subscribed, the local council deem that the fairest way is to draw a line from the school to the applicants house with applicants who live closest being admitted. Our community is at the far West of the Borough and although our local community school is closest to us,we are not closest to it and therefore do not get a place in not just this school but also the next 2 closest.

Basically, there are not enough schools in this country with an every expanding birthrate. We do not have a local school for our 4 year old children (the whole community -25 x 4 year old’s) and we are expected to put our 4 year old’s into private transport and adjust our lives (basically quit work) to fit in with the councils decision.

There are plans in our area to build an extra 3000 affordable and social housing within the next 10 years without plans or provision of extra services to accommodate the extra population.

The only people who are going to get affected by this are our children.

Due to non-UK nationals giving birth in this country, going back to their county of nationality to register the birth and then returning to the UK for schooling,the government do not have a grip on how many children will require school places and therefore, not enough school places for children requiring them.

Not to mention the levels of manipulation performed to ensure that their child goes to the school in question with many parents renting properties close to the school to only move once admitted….not easy when you have a mortgage on your house.

I pay top council tax, find myself in 40% tax rate even though I wouldn’t consider myself to be ‘well off’ (disposable income of £100 per month after bills etc), get less and less services from my local council for more money, have to pay private for dental treatment, have had to go private for decent healthcare, have a private pension as the state pension is a joke and now to add insult to injury, as my child does not have a local school and the council cant provide me with the services required for working payments, I will need to get a second job at night to pay for my child to attend an independent school at 5k per year!!

Wouldn’t be in this country if it wasn’t for friends and family. I am fed up with being a normal, law abiding, tax paying middle Englander as we are the ones getting screwed the most at the end of the day! Better to not contribute to society in a positive way in my opinion….you get more support, have a better quality of life and will always get what you want by manipulating the system.

Rant over….

 

That’s what we’re here for!

I was actually on the verge of creating something to not only allow people to vent their anger and frustration but also to galvanise people into some kind of action.

It’s great to have a moan but better to actually do something about it. I was getting more and more fed up with revelations of big corporations not paying a fair share of tax by shifting profits abroad but if only we consumers realised we have all the power.

Startbucks eventually made some payments because people started boycotting their stores in favour of costa.

If a business wants to operate in the UK it pays a fair share of corporation tax. If it if revealed it has avoided this responsibility we as consumers should boycott its products and services until such time as it does pay up.

Also fat cat bonuses to senior staff should only be paid out of a pool which can be no bigger in total than the declared net profits of that organisation. Therefore if they want big bonuses they have to declare full profits and so incur the taxes on them.

Come on AngryBritains. Moan by all means but lets start taking some collective action otherwise we deserve to be crapped on.

Also please don’t moan that someone won’t ‘give’ you something such as a pay rise, job, promotion etc. You have to show your worth and go out and get things. Nothing is yours by right. If you feel you have a value thats not being appreciated what about starting your own business delivering just that.

It’s amazing how people re assess their worth and value if they have to try and sell themselves.

Great site lets hope it can be used to improve our lot as well as serve as a welcome sounding board.

Regards

Steve

Tax efficient – Jean B

Why is it that the only way the government can think of raising more money is by taking it out of hardworking Britains.  Why not charge tourists and foreign businesses for using our roads when they enter our ports, we have to pay their road tolls.  Instead of stopping payments altogether which they are proposing why not charge pensioners (of which I am one) £40 per year or at least something for bus passes, I don’t know anyone who would object.    Why not stop all this heating allowance going to ex-pats who move out of the country.  The other thing is why not legalise prostitution and build brothels out of town, we all know it goes on illegally.  It would produce more taxes, save on police time and put a stop to a lot of nasty diseases.

An Englishman in Al Ain by Carl F

Hello there

I’ve seen your website today and had a look on Twitter and thought I’d drop you a line and have a good old rant.

I’m a 42 year old ex pat living in Abu Dhabi, teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the schools and military schools. Back in the UK I was a very angry man, angry at the way the UK has fallen into complete social and moral decay. It’s a UK I no longer recognise nor wish to be a part of, I worked as a doorman for twenty years in Bolton and Manchester and all over the UK and I’ve seen my own home town slide down the pan year after year, it truly is a depressing place these days.

Like most towns my home town is overflowing with immigrants from all nationalities and they bring with them their own troubles and problems and over 80% of the nightclub scene comprises of immigrants who see local girls as easy meat and our nights are spent dealing with these idiots alongside the local morons who make up the rest of the scene.

Manners and respect are zero these days, I left my PGCE course after one term, as the kids were horrendous, you can’t say anything or do anything to them and God forbid you ever touch one of the little sods, you’ll be in prison and on the sex offender’s register for life. The UK is a hole, a depressing country, where immigrants and scum of the earth are looked after, the hard working public get ripped off every way they turn, petrol is scandalous. Out here I filled up my 1.4L car for a tenner!!

All the kids want is instant fame and glory, the godawful Xfactor and other shows have eroded anything like hard work ethics into kids these days, it truly is a sad state of affairs; we’re monitored and spied upon by CCTV and don’t get me started on the lowest form of life on the planet, the Civil Enforcement Officer, little jumped up power trippers, mainly fat and riding about on mopeds giving out parking tickets. How they sleep at night is beyond me.

I could go on for days and days but will stop now before my blood pressure goes sky high!

The UK was once a glorious nation but is now bogged down with a seething underbelly of social breakdown and a misguided and lost generation. One time I used to be proud to be British but not anymore; not after the way Labour tore the country apart with its immigration fiasco and the erosion of the family unit, marriage and many other ill guided projects, all doomed to failure.

I am glad and one of the lucky ones that has found work out of the country, I miss my friends and family but that’s all. There’s no future for me in the UK not work wise, with door work all but dried up and even with a solid 2:1 degree in sport science, I am hard pressed to find any graduate work, in fact since leaving Uni in 2006 crippled wirth 20+K debt, the only decent job I got was back on the doors, a well edcuated doorman, not many of them around these days lol

I remember being told by a woman at the jobcentre not long after graduating, in a most patronising manner that I was not allowed any financial help as I hadnt paid enough NI contribtutions, even though I was at Uni at the time; she took great pleasure in informing me as well, yet the Govt is quite happy to shell out money to alcoholics and druggies, that were slumped on chairs beside me at the jobcentre and throw maoney at scrotes released from prison. If ya hard working in the UK, forget it! The govt gives you nothing!

That’s enough for now, thanks for providing a platform for angry men

Carl F, Bolton, now residing in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

 

It’s not about the money, money, money by Craig N

After recently selling our cars, I cancelled a multi-car policy with an insurance company who shall remain nameless. I was angry but not surprised to find out that I would have to pay a £45 cancellation fee, as it was only 6 months into the policy. I accepted this due to the fact I was tied up in knots with pages and pages of T&C’s, which according to the lovely customer’s service representative, confirmed the said fee.

After lots of banter and cleverly disguised scripted nonsense, I was informed that because I had recently made a direct debit payment, I only owed them £5. Great…isn’t it? I paid the £5 and left it at that.

After a night’s sleep I woke up with a strange sense of ill feeling (not the one brought on by last night’s dodgy bhuna I might add). I thought there may have been a little dishonesty by the lovely guys at the insurance company. I decided to go all Johnny Ball on their ass and “do the maths”.

Here it comes…

I divided the annual premium by 365 days and multiplied it by the amount of day’s insurance I had used before my cancellation. I then added the £45 cancellation fee. This is the total for my time with the insurer.

Next I worked out the amount I had paid, to date, in direct debits. After subtracting the first total from the amount I had already paid…low and behold, I was in fact owed money!

As you can imagine, my fingers dialled the insurers “lo-call” number with a blurry speed and once I had got through all the options, musak and “thank you for holding, your call is important to us”, I got through to another nice lady.

I explained my concern at the discrepancies between my workings out and theirs. We worked it out together and we got to pretty much the same result. She then decided to say that even though my working were correct, due to changes in address and discounts on the policy the total that I had been given will be right and It was right to take the £5 off me. The nice lady could not back this up with any figures as it was “too complicated to work out”, so I decided to go for the jugular. I asked her to provide me with the insurers calculations, from which I could see how they came to the conclusion I owed them money. “Please hold the line Sir”, said the nice lady, “I will just have to speak to the department who worked this out and see if they can provide you with the figures you require.” A moment’s silence, followed by more musak, followed by “thank you for holding Sir…”

I was expecting some more banter and cleverly disguised scripted nonsense, but instead I was offered the cancellation fee back. After a brief stutter I said “At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, why are you giving me this back?” Yeah I know, just take the money and run I hear you say, but something was not right here. Why, if they were confident in their figures and happy to prove it, were the returning the fee? FYI, the money I calculated they owed me was half the amount of cancellation fee!!

The next few words from the nice lady were most certainly not scripted. “Well Sir, we don’t need that money, so I can get that refunded for you and it should be in your bank within the week.”

Yes, you read that right, I could not make it up. “we don’t need the money”.

I won’t transcript any more of the conversation, but before I said goodbye to the nice lady I accepted her offer but also requested the figures from them. Reluctantly she agreed.

Now, the cynic in me that “looked the gift horse in the mouth” would say they had tried to rip me off. The more forgiving me would say they made a mistake. Either way I was given what amounts to “hush money” for exposing their error / fraud.

The reason I thought I should write and regale you with the tale of “The Dashing Motorist and The Nice Lady” was to both advise and educate. Trust no-one and question everything. Especially when dealing with the evil spectre of financial institutions.

AB says: Name ‘n’ shame!

Conmet by Steven F

On 27/12/10 I bought a new TV from Comet as our old one (we had it 10 years) had packed up. Around 4 weeks ago (20 months after purchase) the TV broke with the screen packing up. I returned to Comet to claim under the SoGA 1979 but was met with resistance & in all honesty the attitude of tough! My argument was that the TV was not fit for purpose nor did it meet the criteria of suitable durability. Emails have been going back & forth between myself & a member of the directors office called Jayne Gustar. They refused to fix it claiming that TV’s only have a life expectancy of 12 months contrary to Samsung’s admission that a TV should in fact last between 5-8 year minimum. I went back to Comet again saying I would then like to claim under the EU directive 1999/44/EC to be told “we don’t accept that in the UK” this I’m informed is not the case.

Since then I have talked Samsung in to fixing my TV but at a charge to me, to date I estimate with time, travel, calls etc I’ve lost £500 or close too. Comet have now said (knowing full well Samsung have repaired my TV) that they’ll fix it! Obviously it’s now too late, I have told them however that I expect to be compensated. This was met with silence.

I have kept all the mails between us if you’d like them but there are a lot to send across!

What would be your advice? I started a campaign on twitter with the hash tag #conmet & that’s when they offered to help albeit too late.

AB says: ‘Let’s see what our readers think @cometltd should do?’

Lazy Parents by LeighAnn O 

After another (long) day at work – for all the wrong reason – i came across your website and thought i’d submit a beef myself:

Dear Lazy parents,

I work as a Sales Advisor for a national electronics retailer (who I won’t name). We sell mostly adult products with a little area for electronic kid’s toys. My beef here is aimed towards the many parents who view the ‘children’s toys’ section of the store as some sort of crèche area. I’m shocked at the amount of parents who just leave their kids there to play while they browse the store. It’s even worse at Christmas as parents will quite happily leave their kids playing in our store while they go to the store next door to shop.

As a parent myself, I wouldn’t dream of doing this with my kids. I know it’s not always easy to get shopping done when you have the kids with you so, if I have to do something important, I get a babysitter to look after them while I do it. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out that unsupervised children can only lead to trouble. The worst parents, I’ve observed so far, for this obvious parental neglect are actually the middle class ones whose children are called Harold, Imelda or whatever other idiotic name will have them beaten daily in senior school.

We seem to be moving into an age of ‘Madeline Macann parenting’ where parents leave their kids unattended and think that nothing will happen to them. My job is to advise customers on products and put money in the tills – it is not my job to babysit your kids because you can’t be bothered. These are the children who grow up with no boundaries which is exactly what is leading this country’s next generation in ruin. When my sister and I went to a shop with my parents, we didn’t get left to our own devices, we either held a hand or (later on) walked next to/right behind our accompanying parent.

There are more crimes against children now then there ever has been for one simple reason – there are more children being left unattended these days. As a parent you have be given the gift of an innocent life that you can mould and shape into a wonderful addition to the human race. Don’t waste that opportunity by letting your kids run off while you’re too busy shopping to supervise them or that little miracle you created will end up becoming tomorrow’s front page news!

Your Sincerely

‘The poor woman who has to put up with your kids because you don’t want to’

Comment:

by @Winerackd

 As someone who runs a retail business, I have every sympathy with the lady who has to look after lazy parents children. BUT, it takes 2 to tango. I know this lady does not make the rules at her work place. Does she risk being disciplined if she does not act as childcare? As much as we are moving towards a society of many children with no boundaries, we have moved towards a retail culture of the customer is ALWAYS right (no they aren’t) and one of the customer feeling fully self-entitled.  Either the business should accept the fact that there are some lousy parents out there and create a supervised creche area so parents browse in peace (and buy more) or quite simply not engage with customers who are permitting their children to run riot. We do not accept bad manners or bad language where I work which we know ultimately benefits everyone (staff and other customers, as nice customers get better service).

Chiltern Failways 30/8/12 by Tony M aka @the_spiz 

My beef is with Chiltern Railways (@chilternrailway) .  A couple of weeks ago I went online to purchase 3 railway tickets so my wife, mother-in-law and daughter could get to Great Ormond Street for an appointment.  I filled in all the details on the booking form and it gave me a screen of prices and times and I duly picked the cheapest that allowed them to get to London and back.  Chiltern are unique (I believe) in that they don’t operate an afternoon peak period out of London so when the cheapest ticket said it was valid on off-peak services I paid for it.  On the Friday afternoon they arrive at Marylebone just after 4pm and the ticket barriers refuse them entry – the staff member there looks at their tickets and tells them they’re not valid on any train until the 18.45 departure.  So off they trudge to the ticket office to buy upgrades and get on a reasonably timed train.  When my wife tells me off for not buying the correct ticket I look online and see it says off-peak on the booking confirmation and fire off a complaint to Chiltern.  13 days later I get a reply (first beef, it shouldn’t take that long!), and it’s apparently my fault because I didn’t head off to a page that is unlinked from the booking page which would have told me about the extra conditions for the Super Off Peak ticket I had booked. So Chiltern have this information on their website but expect you to realise there may be differences and extra conditions even though the booking system doesn’t tell you.  Given the price of tickets a little red warning link wouldn’t break the bank.  It’s a thing a lot of companies are starting to do and I don’t think it’s right that we, the consumers, have to do all the leg work when the company has the information, knows it might be of use to the consumer, doesn’t tell the consumer and then fines the consumer when they haven’t done the research.

UPDATE 13:00 GMT: Tony tells AngryBritain.com that having contacted Chiltern’s MD he has now been offered a refund. Nice work Tony, it pays to complain – AB

Short sighted 30/8/12 by Penny K 

Today I received an application pack for DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE and according to this most of the PARALYMPIANS are not disabled at all. Only one leg?? Not good enough, has to be two missing….Deaf??? Need to be blind as well…..Dialysis? maybe..as long as you don’t receive help from hospital staff (WHAT???) ..Partially sighted? No, sorry!

After 30+ years in work, making contributions to our great welfare state, the safety net I was expecting has been abruptly withdrawn. Go to Tesco, pay for your shopping.. they take it off you at the door, no apology or valid explanation, you protest “I paid for that”, they reply “Tough s**t”….FAIR???
DAVID CAMERON….BENEFIT CHEAT

Cash for Gold 19/8/12 by Jane 

The government go on about how they need to make a load of cuts to sort out this big debt problem. They do this by taking money from the people who need it most!. What I can’t get my head around is how they say this but then go and spend millions or billion of pounds on the olympics! It’s like someone having serious debt problems then going on a shopping spree, it’s not right. I don’t have a problem with the olympics and its good that its inspired many people into sport but when we are having money problems like this, now is not the time for it. The last thing the government should be doing is hosting the olympics. They could have saved loads had they not done this.

A Waste of Energy 16/2/12 by Dan M

Forgive me for going into some detail at the start of this email, I feel it important to the story.

Unfortunately today I had to contact Southern Electric because my dad is an elderly pensioner who has emphysema and is on antibiotics and steroids because of it, he lives alone in a first floor flat and has been having problems with his gas meter.

He had used his emergency credit on the meter and put in an amount that should have covered it for it be to reset, this didn’t happen.

I then put £2 in because the meter told me he owed £0.60. The meter then told me it was taking 38pence, then another £1.60. This left my dad with approx 60pence gas(??), and still no emergency.

So I went and put another £2 in the meter. It then took another 24pence, AND THEN ANOTHER £1.16 leaving approx £1.80(??) gas, STILL no emergency!

So I rang the CS’s at Southern Electric and after 5 minutes of being on hold at £1.10 per minute I finally got through to a chap who asked me to go to the meter but not to put the actual gas card in. He asked me to:

“Press the red button until it bleeps, then press it until you get to screen 30″
I replied “There is no screen 30″
He told me I must have missed it and to try again. Bearing in mind these screens don’t move up in chronological order like any normal programme would, they skip to 31, them 4 then 25, 26, then 17 etc etc etc and you have to ‘reset’ it each time to start again.

After that he asked me to go screen 13, then 25, then 27(all relatively apart from each other again) and he proceeded to tell me nothing more than I already knew other than the fact that it takes 30% of whatever I put in!!!!
I was so infuriated by the ineptitude of his commands and customer repertoire that I actually asked him if these meters and his training were designed to be completely confusing for people understand! And not just a 30 year old like me, they must be like programming the space shuttle to the elderly!

This went on for another 5 minutes until he eventually told me to put the card in! So I flew up the 2 flights of stairs to retrieve the card, I put the card into the meter and we went through the same rubbish as the first time. I’m quite a calm pacifist 99.9% of the time but this was making my blood boil, we were getting know where and he was just making things more complicated.

He asked me if I’d like to speak to a manager, to which I replied I would love to! After another 5 minutes on hold he came back on the phone and told me that there wasn’t a manager available at that time, PERFECT!
This doesn’t surprise me at all because as we all know the ‘managers’ of these teams are spineless cowards who shy away from dealing with real concerns of real people, and they KNOW the scam that they are a part of and facilitating!

I told him there would be a letter detailing the complete farce that is their ‘customer services’ and ‘advice’ and one would also be sent to OFGEM which would include the disgustingly astronomical tariffs.

So after all that I thought I’d time how much was being taken when the gas was on. I found out that at 22 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes it took 58pence, that is an unbelievable £1.20 per hour!!!!!! As you can imagine that was the icing on the cake!

I urge everybody to avoid Southern Electric & Gas like the plague, it is disgusting what these companies are doing to our families in the hope lining their already diamond encrusted pockets.
I Shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t had been there to help my dad, he’s a proud man and would have suffered in silence, and quite possibly have been hospitalized, which would have been very serious given his condition.

I would have held that company solely responsible because of their complete lack of any real customer care, ok they might not know of individual case which is fair enough but they DO know that they are draining the elderly, disabled and infirm of all and any savings they might have so the bosses can have a third holiday in the Maldives this year, utterly disgraceful and disgusting.

To give them credit I did get a tweet from S.E. asking me to message the details so it could be looked into but this too little too late in my opinion as I’ve contacted them many times over different things and could tell that it was just to appease their ridiculous sense of worth to the viewing customers on twitter.

In relation to this EDF have announced they will be dropping gas prices by 5% across the board for all customers http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/813df45a-3c3c-11e1-8d38-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1jBKoJDDl which is brilliant news and I applaud them for it. Lets hope other companies take a leaf out their book and set a new precedent for the real struggling people of the UK.

Yours sincerely
Dan – Manchester