Do Not Adjust Your Set

When I was growing up during the 1960s, we had two TV channels – BBC and ITV. BBC 2 came along in 1964, although the scheduled opening night of 20th April was disrupted by a power failure, and the first programme, Play School, was broadcast on the following morning. Not everyone could receive BBC 2 however, it depended on where you lived and how up to date your TV was.

 

We didn’t get a fourth channel – the imaginatively titled Channel 4 – until November 1982, and had to wait until March 1997 before the equally imaginatively named Channel 5 came on line. With the advent of satellite and cable TV there was an explosion in the number of channels available, but as Bruce Springsteen said, there were "57 Channels (And Nothin' On).”

Back in the 1960s and with just two channels, there were times when there was literally nothing on; midweek afternoons were a particular desert with hours passing and nothing but the test card to see if you turned on the TV set. 

The BBC continued with afternoon shut downs until 1986, although ITV removed them in 1972. Switching the TV on five minutes before the show you wanted to watch to allow the set to warm up was a given, as was the picture that vanished to a little white dot when you turned it off. At some time between 11pm and midnight, the channels closed down completely.

 

As well as the limited choice, Britain’s TV viewing public had to contend with many technical issues during the 1960s, either from the broadcasters or their TV sets. Many programmes would be interrupted with the news that there was a technical problem with an announcer telling viewers not to adjust their set. 

Often though, we did have to adjust our sets, either by fiddling with the horizontal or vertical holds, or simply by slapping the top of the set, which worked by temporarily fixing minor issues as it jostled loose connections or components.

 

Frequently our screens went blank because a tube had blown, which meant calling out an engineer to replace the faulty part, resulting in a few days of staring forlornly at the now useless box in the corner of the room. This was a fairly common occurrence in our household as the TV set we had was old, second hand, and unreliable. At some point we started renting a set (who can imagine doing that today?) that was more reliable. It was still a black and white job though – watching sport could be a trial with two football teams wearing almost indistinguishable shades of grey, for instance, while snooker was particularly difficult to follow – "For those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green," as commentator Ted Lowe once famously remarked. We didn’t get a colour set until some time during the 1980s – Star Trek was the first show we watched in colour, which meant that the member of the landing party unlikely to survive was easier to spot because we could tell that they were wearing a red shirt.

 

The advent of video recorders was a sea change in the way we watched TV. We were no longer tied to the schedules, although the cost of the machines was eyewatering in the early days. In 1982, when the average weekly wage in the UK was £136, a video recorder could set you back £600 and even the tapes were expensive, typically £25 for a blank tape and up to £80 for pre-recorded ones, hence the sudden growth of video rental stores like Blockbuster. By the time I bought my last VCR (as opposed to a DVR) they were about fifty quid and blank tapes were almost being given away.

 

TV sets are now much more reliable, there are more channels than it is possible to count, and most significantly, the way we watch TV has changed immeasurably. Linear TV isn’t dead yet, but it is estimated that 95% of UK households will have the capacity to watch TV over the Internet by 2040. Frankly I’m surprised it is expected to take that long. There has been some talk about Freeview being demised and although its broadcasts are protected by government policy until at least 2034, by the time we get to 2040 with only 5% of the viewing public expected to be unable to access TV online, its days are likely to be numbered.

 

What about the old folk? is usually the cry when such changes are mooted. Well, I suppose I’m one of the old folk now (I was recently described as ‘elderly’ in a telephone conversation with a particularly obnoxious estate agent), and I’m happy to move with the times and embrace new technology: I’m sure that I am not untypical of people in my age group (I now tick the Over 65 box on websites when asked my age).

 

As I have recounted in previous blogs, Val and I cancelled our Vigin Media subscription last year when we realised that we were paying to watch Freeview and that a significant proportion of our viewing was on catch up TV or streaming services. During our sojourn in Eastbourne, we didn’t even have a television; all the TV we consumed was online through a laptop or iPad. That continued once we moved into our new home, but we recently decided that for the sake of convenience if nothing else, we would buy a new TV, our old one deemed too large (it currently languishes, swaddled in bubble wrap, in the shed) for our living room and how we want it set up.

 

Our new set has not been plugged into the aerial socket and is unlikely to ever be connected, partly because of how the living room is configured, but mainly because there’s not really a need. Although without an aerial we don’t get Freeview, all of the channels we want to watch are available through the internet.

 

Streaming services have made VCRs, DVRs, and DVD players redundant, but the downside to that are subscriptions; there’s Apple TV, Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount+, to name but five and with the content you want to watch spread out over multiple platforms, that could cost a tidy sum each month unless you are careful.

 

With the way we watch TV having changed so much in the last 60 years it’s impossible to predict how different it will be by 2040, but one thing is unlikely to change, we’ll still be lamenting that “there’s nothing on.”

 

 

 

 

The Weight of Clutter

We all own too much stuff. Most of us have books we read decades ago but have not picked up since, CDs we haven’t played for years, and clothes and shoes that we rarely wear, if ever. What we have is clutter, and a cluttered home makes for a cluttered mind. For me, clutter is like noise - painful and intrusive.

 

Over the years I have made efforts at decluttering, sorting through clothes, books, and CDs in a desultory fashion and disposing of a pitiful amount of stuff, the net result being only a minimal reduction in the clutter.

 

There are any number of decluttering tips to be found online, such as getting rid of two items for every one you acquire, and disposing of things you haven't used for a year. Marie Kondo, the Japanese professional organizer and consultant, has a principal that you should keep only those possessions that spark joy.

  

Marie Kondo

Some possessions can be hard to get rid of, especially those that hold sentimental value. It can be difficult to separate the possession from the memory, but discarding the possession does not mean that the memory is tarnished or lost. Or, we justify keeping things in the belief that what we now treasure will be similarly treasured by our children; having cleared out my mother’s house when she died, and that of my late mother-in-law, I can see that that is true of only a tiny number of keepsakes. 

Sometimes there is a powerful incentive to declutter, and Val and I recently encountered one: We moved house.

 

Moving house is one of the most stressful life events that we will ever undertake voluntarily, and our recent move was probably the most stressful of the six that I have made, even more so because it was our first for 25 years.

 

After a quarter of a century in our four-bedroom house we decided to downsize, what with our daughters having moved out. Our house was in desperate need of some TLC, crying out for a refit of both bathrooms, a new boiler, redecorating, and a complete overhaul of the plumbing, which had caused us no end of headaches over the years and cost us a shedload of money.

 

Val has always hankered after living by the sea, and some years ago a move to Eastbourne was mooted. I was reluctant, largely because I didn’t want to move somewhere that would make it hard to travel to watch my beloved Romford FC. Five years ago, we compromised and bought a flat in Eastbourne – I say flat, it’s actually a bedsit with a bed that folds into the wall – that we could visit whenever we chose. It proved to be a fortunate decision.

It might not look like much, but this is what we lived with for four months.

"Compact and bijou"

As for our permanent move, we chose Rotherhithe and a house close to the Thames. At our time of life, when most people decide to move outward from London’s suburbs, moving further into London did cause a few raised eyebrows, but after a few false starts, we found a house that we both loved, in a location that we found fascinating, and after finding a buyer for our property, put in an offer that was accepted. Now the fun started.

 

Since the sale of our property was advancing quickly, synchronising sale and purchase did not look possible, but we were keen to have as small a gap between the two as we could, and since the house we were buying was empty, the seller’s estate agents (who proved to be completely hopeless, unlike the agents dealing with our sale, who were excellent) assured us that we should be able to move in with minimal delay. The minimal delay turned out to be five months.

 

In the end, and in order not to lose our buyers, we agreed to move out and decamp to Eastbourne while our purchase proceeded. We packed up all the possessions that would move with us, and the removers took them away and put them in storage.

 

There were tough decisions to make deciding what we could keep and what we had to dispose of. There were multiple trips to charity shops to donate things, and many trips to the tip to throw away other stuff. Come completion day, and with the removers having taken most of our things a few days earlier, we attempted to pack the things we were taking to Eastbourne into the car. The only way it was all going to fit was if the car drove itself and so even just a couple of hours before we moved out, I was making trips to the tip with things that we could not transport. As it was, there was room in the car only for a driver so Val had to travel to Eastbourne by train.

 

When we unpacked at our flat there was a sense that we were trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot, even though we had brought just the essentials. Having moved out in mid-November 2024, we still harboured hopes that we would complete on our purchase by Christmas.

 

As Christmas approached, a bombshell dropped. The partners at the firm of solicitors acting for the seller were struck off and the firm went out of business. The sellers appointed new solicitors but we were effectively back to square one. A further complication stemmed from the property we were buying being on a private estate, with a management company involved.

 

The enquiries dragged on for weeks and our solicitors were finding it hard to get answers, so much so that by February we were contemplating abandoning the whole thing, going with our Plan B, and buying a house in Eastbourne as by now we had become pass masters at commuting up to London for gigs, football, and meeting friends, even though it sometimes entailed an overnight stay in a hotel.

 

Eventually, after much stress and compromise (mostly on our part, the seller was quite inflexible with a few proposals we made) we completed, having been in Eastbourne till late-March 2025. What our experience taught us was that we still owned too much stuff because as the weeks grew into months, we realised that we could live quite happily without many of our possessions. The only thing we really missed during our time in Eastbourne was broadband.

 

It was still a few days before our removers were able to deliver our furniture and other belongings, and when they did, we realised that our sofas and some other furniture would not really work in our new home and we had to ask them to dispose of them for us. Even then, having unpacked more than seventy boxes of clothes, books, CDs and other assorted possessions, we decided that in the interests of limiting clutter, lots had to go. Numerous trips to charity shops and the tip have followed.

 

These are very edited highlights of our moving experience, but one thing that I need to emphasise is how enlightening it was. Neither Val nor I expected to be living in a bedsit for four months, but it proved invaluable in teaching us what was important and what wasn’t. We feel much lighter and happier for the decluttering that circumstances drove us to and we are determined that we will not allow our new home to become messy and full of things that don’t add value. It will be an ongoing process, but one which we now feel much more capable of approaching effectively.

Virgin On The Ridiculous Part Four – The Netflix Debacle

I last wrote about my experiences with Virgin Media way back in April 2016 after their umpteenth unsuccessful attempt to connect my property (you can read about that, and VM’s previous attempts here). That, I thought, was that: It wasn’t.

 

I cannot now remember how I managed to get myself talked into another attempt to have Virgin Media installed– I’m sure it must have been they who initiated contact with me, and that in a state of bloody mindedness, I allowed them to have another go in the fairly certain knowledge that it would be an abject failure. If I knew then what I know now, I don’t think I would have bothered.

 

On the 30^th March 2017 two men arrived in a van, armed with a giant reel of cable and the optimism of men who had not previously been beaten in their attempts to connect me. After they had announced their arrival, I retreated indoors and let them get on with it, confident that they would soon be admitting defeat. About twenty minutes later they rang the doorbell, and, much to my surprise, told me that the cable was now in place.

Cable installed! Only took five years.

For some time, all was well. Broadband speeds were good, and to Virgin’s credit, the service was pretty reliable with very few outages, and I now had loads of new TV channels.

 

Over time however, dissatisfaction set in. Before 2017 I had not given much thought to streaming services or catch-up TV as the broadband speeds I was getting often made it a slow and frustrating experience, added to which was a lack of content that I was particularly interested in. As the years passed however, streaming services and catch-up TV increasingly became part of my TV viewing experience. For all Virgin's much vaunted number of channels,  there were very few that I was interested in that were not available through Freeview.

 

Companies like Virgin penalise customers whose loyalty you would think they would reward - the so called loyalty penalty - relying on customer inertia to accept annual prices rises. This often stems from a reluctance to switch suppliers, usually driven by the hassle that comes with such a change. I was as guilty of this as anyone, and by the middle of 2024 I realised that I was paying way too much money for a TV package that was effectively Freeview. In addition, I was paying subscriptions to Prime Video and Apple TV.

 

I therefore decided to dispense with my TV package and limit my subscription with Virgin to broadband (and the now nearly forgotten landline, as cutting it off wasn’t going to save me any money and we still received the odd call now and then on that number). But before I was able to do that, we had to deal with the Netflix Debacle.

 

We were not subscribed to Netflix but were interested in watching The Dropout, the drama series about Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, the company that claimed to have devised revolutionary blood testing equipment, which Netflix were showing. Our daughter offered us guest membership to her Netflix account so that we could watch the series, and for the first couple of episodes, this worked seamlessly. Then one fateful Saturday afternoon, when we tried to watch an episode, we somehow, accidentally, found ourselves subscribed to Netflix, and not for the basic package either, but for the Premium package at a princely £17.99 a month.

 

I immediately contact Virgin – via WhatsApp – and was assured that Netflix was cancelled and that I would not be billed. You won’t be surprised to learn that my next bill included a £17.99 charge for Netflix. I then embarked on a series of calls to Virgin – seven in all from August through to November – in which their inefficiency and ineffectiveness was astounding.

 

Just about the only thing that Virgin managed to get right was cancelling my TV contract and sending the packaging to return my TiVo box. Each and every month from August to November they refunded me for the previous month’s Netflix subscription but charged me again. I spoke to Zed, Aysha, Tista, Dave, Salma, Chris, Wilkie, and Beverley (not all of those spellings may be right) who all promised that Netflix would be cancelled but failed to deliver. I also spoke to Tyler, who told me that my subscription could only be cancelled by Netflix and that I should ring them. “I’m your customer, not Netflix’s, they won’t speak to me,” I told him and putting him on hold, I phoned Netflix. “You’re not our customer, we can't speak to you,” they told me, “only Virgin can cancel the subscription.”

 

At one point I received a call from a manager in customer services. He was not interested in my problem or in fixing it, but just wanted to understand why – when I’d been asked to provide feedback -  I had been less than complimentary about Virgin's customer service. He seemed to think that I should have known more about Virgin’s systems and procedures than the customer service representative I had spoken to. At one point he accused me of being unreasonable. “If you think I’m unreasonable, you should speak to my wife,” I said, handing the phone to Val.

 

Matters reached a head when we entered the latter stages of our house move. Virgin told me that to disconnect my services before the end of the billing cycle I would have to pay a disconnection fee, which I wasn’t prepared to do. So, they said that they would have to bill me the whole amount for one month, even though I’d only be connected for a few days, and that they would part refund me – by cheque! - within 42 days. I told them that that wasn’t going to happen and if they billed me the whole month, I would stop the Direct Debit and they could send me a bill, for which I would pay only what I deemed appropriate. As it transpired, they didn’t bill me and to their credit, they made me a payment for goodwill.

 

Like most organisations that rely on customer inertia, Virgin also seem to hope that when there are problems that they are unable or unwilling to fix - especially around billing - customers will give up complaining, write it off to experience, and accept the charges.

 

No doubt Virgin are no worse than other suppliers and I’m sure that customers of Sky, Talk Talk, EE, 3 and BT et al can all recount similar tales of woe. The measure of any organisation – whether it’s your broadband supplier, mobile phone company, energy provider, or bank – isn’t how they perform when things are going well, but how they react when problems arise, as I know full well from having worked in customer services in HSBC for many years. Virgin failed miserably in this respect; it should not take four months and seven phone calls totalling more than ten hours to fix a straightforward problem, but it did. The only good thing I can say about Virgin’s customer service is that I rarely had to wait more than a few minutes before being connected to someone whenever I phoned them; it all went downhill once I was connected though.

 

Having finally moved house –  a saga in itself which will be the subject of a blog in the near future – we now just have a broadband connection; no TV, no landline. I’ve had to phone our new ISP (Hyperoptic) twice since we were connected, both times about technical issues that they dealt with quickly and efficiently. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that that continues.

 

Readers Warned: Do This Now!

The remit of a local newspaper is quite simple, to report on news and sport and other stories relevant to the paper’s catchment area. In recent years this has become increasingly difficult as local newspapers have been bought out by groups like Trinity Mirror (now known as Reach plc) which publish 240 regional newspapers. To offset cutbacks in reporting staff, these papers publish more and more syndicated articles, many of which lack local relevance.

Many print versions of local papers continue to do a sterling job in reporting local news and sport despite cutbacks, even if a lot does rely on members of the public providing stories. This is especially true on some sports pages where sports teams’ websites and blogs are relied upon for a good deal of the content.

Most local newspapers now publish e-editions where the print version is faithfully reproduced online, but will also have an online presence that consistently falls into the trap of publishing news that isn’t local, or isn’t news at all, and much of which is trivial or puerile.

As I scroll through my social media feeds, I see loads of posts from local newspapers that I follow with links to dramatic sounding stories, but when I click on them I find that the events that they describe have happened many miles from where I live; the story is not local at all.

Then there are the puff pieces thinly disguised as journalism, like “I tried Kent’s best ice cream parlour and now I’m spoilt for anywhere else,” or “Inside town’s fabulous house that’s a steal at £2million.” It’s little more than free advertising much of the time.

Much beloved of local newspaper websites are the stories of potholes, parking problems, school uniforms, and the perils of purchasing alcohol with a minor in tow.

Potholes, stories of which must be accompanied by a picture of a local resident (usually male, over 60, balding and wearing a drab anorak) pointing at the offending pothole, are meat and drink to local newspaper websites. It is mandatory to include reference to the age, occupation (or former occupation) of the person complaining about said pothole, as must any damage – or even potential damage – done to their vehicle. Extra kudos for describing failed attempts to get the local council to do anything about it.

Parking is another favourite, especially tales of motorists charged exorbitant penalties for some infraction of the regulations in some car park or other. A photograph should accompany the piece, perhaps showing the victim in said car park; failing that, a picture of them and their vehicle may suffice. It goes without saying that the offended party must vow never to return to the location in question.

Children sent home for school for wearing non-uniform clothing or shoes, or for having a haircut deemed inappropriate are other favourites. These must be accompanied by a picture of parent and child looking sad, along with offending item of clothing or haircut. The article must contain reference to how much the item of clothing or haircut cost and why the school’s ruling is blatantly unfair.

Selling alcohol or other age restricted products to persons under the age limit is of course a serious offence and can get shop keepers and individual shop workers in trouble if they breach the regulations. A story much loved of local newspapers features the parent who has a child under 18 in tow as they do their weekly supermarket shop, which includes a bottle of wine or some beer. The cashier refuses to sell them the alcoholic beverage even though they are clearly over 18 because they have a minor with them, the thinking being that they might supply that minor with said wine or beer. Often the parent will suggest that their child goes and waits in the car while the transaction is completed; this is refused on the grounds that the child may still be supplied with the booze. In a recent example of the story however, a spokesman for Tesco stated that shop staff should not refuse to sell alcohol to adults who are clearly over 18, regardless of the age of any child who may be with them.

Potholes, parking, and sales of alcohol being denied are old hat, however. A new breed of local newspaper story has begun to appear online and there’s no other word for it than clickbait.

We are already familiar with clickbait and headlines that look like these:

“You’ll Never Believe This _________ “

“How to Achieve Results Using This One Weird Trick”

“They Didn’t Know _________ . Then This Happened …”

By now most of us ignore these sorts of headlines but recently I’ve started to see a new breed, one that is more subtle, more intriguing, and more likely to pique our interest to the extent that we do click on them. They come in the form of warnings or commands and I confess to have become addicted to reading them, if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity at the bonkers way something that is either well known or completely mundane has been used for an article with such a sensational headline.

For your delectation, delight, appreciation, and reading pleasure I have curated a few of them here. Most of them appear on the Birmingham Live website which, were it not for the genuine news stories that also appear on it, might be mistaken for a spoof site, so many are there. (Click on the links to see the stories in all their glory).

Drivers must keep wet wipes in car for 'three months' from this weekend

The long and short of this is that fuel pump handles at petrol stations may be a source of virus transmission and wet wipes may prevent the spread of things like colds or flu. It’s like Covid never happened.

UK households urged to put sheet of A4 paper in fridge this week

This one took two people to write apparently, and what it all boils down to is that your fridge may become less efficient if the door seal starts to deteriorate. The article describes way to check its integrity using a piece of paper.

UK households with soup in cupboards in September and October warned

Okay, this one looks important. Most of us have tins of soup in our cupboards as a standby to provide a hot meal, especially as autumn starts to give way to winter. This is a warning we need to read, surely? It turns out that this has nothing to do with any tinned soup we might have, instead it warns of the dangers of injury that may occur when using a knife to chop slippery veg like butternut squash and pumpkin. So basically, the message is, take care when using a knife.

Drivers must 'reverse onto their driveways' or face 'unlimited' fine

Wow, an “unlimited fine” for not reversing onto my driveway! Read the article and you’ll find that all the author has done is take a section of the Highway Code and write 400 words about it. Here is the relevant section. As you’ll see, it doesn’t say you must reverse onto your driveway, just that you should if you can.

Finally, another motoring headline:

Drivers must 'completely' empty their car in October due to new Labour rule

Again, wow! The Labour party are bringing in a rule that I must empty my car of everything in October! Well, no they haven’t. There’s a rumour that Labour’s upcoming budget may see an increase in fuel duty and driving around with an overladen car increases fuel consumption; the idea behind the story makes sense even if the headline is way over the top.

These are just a few of the stories that I’ve come across that pair sensational headlines with mundane stories – I found ten in an hour browsing Apple News alone – and now that I’ve brought them to your attention, I reckon you’ll see them everywhere too.

 

 

 

“Your Call Is Important To Us”

The recorded voice on the other end of the phone insists that your call is important to them. Not important enough that they are going to answer it anytime soon though, because they are “experiencing higher than normal call volumes,” as if there were any other type of call volumes.

It didn’t used to be this way, but once upon a time we didn’t have to ring our energy provider, our cable TV provider, our internet service provider, or our mobile phone company to fix some problem or error on their part. My parents were supplied with electricity and gas by the nationalised London Electricity Board and North Thames Gas; the landline telephone (and they didn’t get one till I was a teenager) was from the General Post Office and TV channels were free (TV Licence apart) and came through the aerial in the loft. My mum and dad didn’t have a bank account until sometime in the 1970s, before that whatever money they saved went into the Post Office.

Bills came in quarterly and were paid in cash at the Post Office. The rent was paid in cash to the rent man who called each week, likewise instalments on insurance policies. Problems were few and far between; if the power went out it was because the whole area had a power cut. There was much less to go wrong and years would pass before my parents had cause to contact anyone with a problem about anything.

It’s different today.

There’s a whole raft of different energy suppliers eager to sell you gas and electricity at a bewildering array of tariffs. There are cable and satellite TV companies, who may or may not be the same company that provides you with broadband; there are numerous mobile phone companies, and any number of banks and other financial institutions offering a wide range of different savings and loan products. And that wide range of highly sophisticated and specialised services and products means one thing: There are more things to go wrong, and go wrong they do, all too frequently. It’s bad enough that things go wrong because getting them fixed is always a challenge, but the first hurdle to get over is actually getting in touch with someone who can help.

You know how it goes; you’ve got a problem with one of the companies that supplies you with something, gas, electricity, cable TV, the internet. They’ve done something wrong. Typically, they’ve charged you incorrectly and you need to speak to someone to fix it, so you go on their website and click the link that says “Contact Us.” What you now see are barriers to actually communicating with them going up.

“Chat to us online,” they offer. So you do. What you get is a bot that wants to direct you through a very narrow and limited set of options and which is really no more than a sort of interactive version of their FAQs. Want to chat to an actual human being? No chance. Perhaps you would like to email them. There’s likely not an actual email address, more likely a web form which, in my experience is no more likely to produce a response than the chat bot does. Ideally, you’d like to phone them but there are plenty of websites that don’t list a phone number under Contact Us, so you Google it, and lo and behold, there’s a number that some previously frustrated customer has found and published, so you ring it.

Back in the days before Call Centres were a thing, ringing a bank or a utility company either got you through to someone straight away or you got an engaged tone, in which case you kept redialling till you did get someone. That was frustrating in itself, particularly in the days of rotary dial telephones that had no redial facility, but eventually you got through. Now you dial the number and listen to an interminable menu of options and, having chosen the one you think most closely resembles the one you need, you listen to the announcement: “Your call is held in a queue and will be answered by the next available operator.” If you’re lucky, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or more later, a real person says, “Hello,” if you’re unlucky then you’ll encounter something that seems to be happening frequently now and which is completely unacceptable in my view.

I first encountered it with Scottish Power. It wasn’t even my problem. My late mother-in-law had been receiving emails from them even though she didn’t use Scottish Power. Someone with a similar email address had obviously set up their online account incorrectly. There wasn’t really any responsibility on my part to do anything but I thought I’d be helpful and bring it to Scottish Power’s attention, so I rang – several times. I never got to speak to anyone because their automated response was to the effect that they were very busy, too busy to take my call in fact, and that I should try again later so they were disconnecting the call.

Twitter and Google eventually connected me to someone in the CEO’s office. We spoke on the phone and she offered me a telephone number, different from the Call Centre number, to call in the event of further problems, which there were. When I called the number I got the Call Centre, the message, and a dial tone.

This week Val had reason to call P&O Cruises. She wanted to speak to Customer Services. No one answered the phone of course, instead there was a message to the effect that all their agents were busy and that it was unacceptable to make customers wait. She should call back “at a later date,” the message said, then the call was disconnected. More acceptable to simply cut people off than ask them to wait in a queue, it seems.

Finally, Virgin Media. A slightly different story here as I’ve had to call them on a number of occasions recently after we accidentally subscribed to Netflix and wanted it cancelled. On the plus side, on the three or four occasions I’ve called, I’ve been connected to a real person within an acceptable length of time. The downside has been that the people I have spoken with have been universally hopeless – in one conversation I was actually told that I should have been aware of how Virgin Media’s internal processes work, even though the person I had previously spoken to clearly didn’t! Virgin actually phoned me after one call, not to sort out the problem of course, but to ask further questions about the less than complimentary answers I had supplied on an online feedback form about how my problem had been solved – or not solved, I should say.

The long and the short of it is that we are now living in an age when communication should be quick, easy, efficient, and achievable through a variety of channels. What we have are organisations that erect barriers to communication, leaving customers frustrated and often out of pocket while they try and get their problems sorted.

The pretence of solving customers’ problems is now slipping:  By not even taking calls, organisations are crossing their fingers and hoping that people give up, go away, and accept whatever errors and poor service is being foisted upon them. We mustn’t let them get away with it.

 

 

 

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce…Reform?

The first General Election in which I was able to vote was in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. With the exception of the 1997 election when Tony Blair’s Labour Party swept aside the by now tired and scandal struck Tories (sound familiar?) and the 2016 EU Referendum, there has not been a political event so intriguing or fascinating as the lead up to next week’s General Election.

 

It seems that more people are taking an interest in politics than ever before and if that translates into footfall at Polling Stations on 4^th July, we could be in for a record turnout. But social media – Twitter (I really can’t be doing with calling it X) in particular – is not the real world and if the number of canvassers that have come to my door, the number of posters I’ve seen in windows, and the number of promotional leaflets that I have received (which are zero, zero, and one), are any guide, then in my local area, the apathy is overwhelming.

 

In contrast, I was in Eastbourne recently and the number of posters and placards supporting Liberal Democrat candidate Josh Babarinde in evidence suggest that the Conservative majority of 4,000 at the last election will probably be overturned.

 

The only poll that counts is the one on Thursday, but opinion polls have consistently placed Labour ahead of the Conservatives in recent months, to the extent that a complete wipeout of the Tories has been predicted, and their plight may become even more desperate after the recent arrival in the election of Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

 

This YouGov poll may be a realistic indication of how the election will pan out – or then again, it might not be - because a week is a long time in politics (Harold Wilson, 1964, allegedly). Some opinion polls suggest that Reform UK are hot on the heels of the ailing Tories, while anecdotally, Farage’s party are said to be gaining the votes of people who might have been otherwise inclined to go for Labour.

 

This poll would, if translated into crosses in boxes, mean Reform UK forming a government. But it’s a Twitter poll, so it’s about as authentic and accurate as surveying the customers of your local pub at closing time. More realistically, Reform UK are predicted to win somewhere between 3 and 18 seats, although even that latter figure may be optimistic.

 

 

YouGov’s poll may less accurately reflect the national mood now than it did when it was taken, but the notion that Reform UK are in power come 5^th July is even more fanciful than the idea that the Tories will only get 4% of the national vote as this Twitter poll suggests.

 

Any party that is in power for as long as the Tories have inevitably succumbs to scandal, infighting, fatigue and the desire on the part of the electorate for a change, hence the lead that Labour hold in YouGov’s poll.

 

There have been many depressing aspects to this election campaign, and although many of them have featured in the run up to previous elections, they haven’t been as prominent before, nor have all of them featured before.

·        Negativity: The campaigns of all the parties have focussed a great deal on negativity: It’s less a case of how we (insert name of party here) will help you if you elect us, but rather this is how you will suffer if (insert name of an opposing party) get in. It’s also interesting that when a Twitterer asked whether Farage could become PM, a lot of replies were not that respondents hoped so because they thought Farage would do well in power, but that his victory would upset those of a left wing persuasion.

 

·      Manifestos: How many manifesto pledges have been fulfilled by governments in the last fifty years? I have no idea, but I’d guess that the number is vanishingly small. Manifestos are a bit like a 10 year old’s Christmas wish list, ambitious but ultimately unrealistic. Manifesto pledges are probably less important than the personality of party leaders and local candidates.

 

·        Left v Right: Reform UK complained about being labelled far-right. There are suggestions that the Conservatives are now a left-wing party. Those who we traditionally think of as right-wing think nothing of throwing out insults to “loony left liberals” while resenting the description right-wing made of them. Right-wing, left-wing; small ‘c’ conservative, lower case liberal, all becoming blurred and increasingly irrelevant labels, especially given the uniparty idea, or the notion that all parties are under the control of the Word Economic Forum, among others, which is where Nigel Farage has broken the mould somewhat.

 

·        Lies, lies, and more lies: All politicians lie, that’s a given, albeit some more egregiously than others. A major problem today is that lies, even when debunked, continue to circulate and repeated. For every person who hears the lie and the rebuttal, there are a dozen who don’t hear it refuted so continue to believe it. More than ever, it’s best to treat with suspicion anything a politician says that you don’t already know to be true and then get it fact checked.

 

·        Even more lies: Unlike some of their more docile colleagues, journalists like Michal Husain, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and Victoria Derbyshire have been holding politicians to account in interviews – and the politicians don’t like it much. From Richard Tice being upbraided after falsely claiming that the Office of Budget Responsibility had costed Reform UK’s manifesto pledges (sorry, contract terms) – a task the OBR are prohibited from performing for an opposition party-  to Richi Sunak’s tetchiness when questioned about the false claim about Labour’s tax plans that he said would cost every Briton £2,094 and his early departure from D-Day ceremonies, to Sir Keir Starmer’s inability to define what is a woman or whether he would use private health-care, to Nigel Farage’s sulk when Nick Robinson pointed out an error about foreign student’s dependents, all the leaders have come under greater scrutiny than usual, which can only be a good thing, no matter how much they hate it.

 

·        Immigration: The Rwanda scheme and the Bibby Stockholm barge are astronomically expensive gimmicks dreamt up by an increasingly desperate Tory party to control a problem of their own making. They claim that the Rwanda scheme would be a deterrent to the migrants crossing the channel in small boats, but since the scheme would take over 300 years to clear the current numbers of claimants given its minute capacity that clearly isn’t true. A better deterrent would have been processing asylum claims in a timely manner over the last 14 years rather than letting the backlog build to unimaginable proportions.

 

·        The betting scandal: You think that there’s nothing new under the sun in terms of political corruption and then comes the news that Conservative party workers started placing bets on the date of the election just the day before it was announced and that some conservative candidates are placing bets on losing at the election. Given that footballers and club officials in England are banned from betting on any football related matters from the Premier League down to their eighth tier– not just games involving their team but also the result of the World Cup Final and who is going to be the next manager of Chelsea – it cannot be right that party figures and candidates can benefit from insider information or gamble on events that they can influence.

 

 

This General Election campaign has been eventful and some might say, exciting, but I’m not sure that politics and government should be eventful and exciting; it should be efficient and effective. It would be nice to think that whoever wins on 4^th July, that’s the type of government we will get, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

We’ve Only Gone and Done It! – Romford Win The FA Vase

If you support a team that is regularly involved in games at Wembley Stadium you might get a bit blasé about visits to English football’s national stadium. In fact, what with kick-off times dictated by broadcasters, the cost and inconvenience of getting there, especially if there’s industrial action on the railways, and then the costs once at the stadium, you might find it something of a chore.

 

If, however, you support a team like mine the chances of getting to see them play at Wembley are slim, so when they reach the Final of a national competition the whole thing takes on an unreal aspect. In an earlier blog, There's Only One F In Romford and We're Going To Wemberlee!  I said that even Romford reaching the Semi-Final of the Isuzu FA Vase was surreal. Knowing we’d be at Wembley on Saturday 11^th May to play fellow Essex Senior League side Great Wakering Rovers was even more unimaginable.

 

For a club run entirely by volunteers – the lifeblood of non-League football all over the country – and with an average gate this season of just 100 (boosted by crowds of 561 and 424 for the Vase Semi-Final and the Essex Senior League Play-Off Final respectively), the prospect of the organisation and logistical effort required to play the game was daunting. Club chairman Steve Gardener and secretary Colin Ewenson were faced with numerous tasks that are not normally associated with running a club at our level and along with manager Dan Spinks and club captain Kris Newby – who has done a hell of a lot of work off the pitch since we moved to our new home at Rookery Hill – were suddenly faced with new media demands not previously encountered, including radio and TV appearances.

 

With that average gate of just 100 this season a big question was how many tickets could we sell? Well, we sold more than 2,500 and probably would have sold more had West Ham not been at home that day. Regular supporters, fans who haven’t been for a while, and lots of people who don’t normally watch us but were caught up in the excitement of Romford going to Wembley bought tickets. Even my wife, who’s not been to a game with me before, wanted to go. And there was a surprise in store for her when I told her that we’d been given tickets for the Royal Box!

 

I mentioned in my previous blog that I have been preternaturally calm throughout Boro’s cup run, and Val was surprised at how tranquil I was on the day of the Final. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that that unlike my usual matchday attire, I had to wear a suit and tie for this match. Getting ready and going to Wembley didn’t seem like going to football, more like going to a wedding or a similar event.

 

It started to get real once we got to Wembley Park Station and started walking down what I still think of as Wembley Way (it’s actually Olympic Way) and saw the merchandise stands (half and half scarf, anyone?), fellow Boro supporters – all with soppy grins, unable to believe that this was actually happening - and the electronic signs welcoming the fans of all four clubs taking part in Non-League Finals Day (the FA Trophy Final between Gateshead and Solihull Moors followed our game).

Entering the stadium wasn’t like a normal matchday experience either. Up the escalators and into The Atrium, which was like being in a hotel or on a cruise ship. We were fed and watered and shown to the Royal Box.

Here I must pay tribute to the staff at Wembley, all of whom were friendly, efficient, and extremely helpful. I said to the chap who showed us to the Royal Box that he must get a bit blasé about working there, especially at a game involving two non-League sides. Not at all, he said telling me that he had worked there since the new stadium opened in 2007, and still got a buzz out of it every day. All the staff we encountered were brilliant and our experience was mirrored by everyone else’s. Our kitmen, Keith Preston and Paul Adams (who had seats on the bench with the substitutes and management) were highly complimentary about the Wembley staff in the dressing room area. 

Our club photographer Bob Knightley was allowed free rein to take a brilliant series of photos that captured the day, and our fans who had mobility issues also praised the staff that helped them to their seats. Nothing was too much trouble for the stadium staff, who all deserve high praise.

One of Bob Knightley's many pictures from the day with Boro manager Dan Spinks in the changing room

The first half was somewhat disjointed. There’s a tendency for players to play the occasion rather than the game, although Romford had a trio of players – Scott Doe, Remi Sutton, and Sam Deering – who have played at Wembley before, and their experience was invaluable. The occasion certainly seemed to affect Great Wakering more and they didn’t really show what they are capable of.

 

Romford had the better first half chances, but couldn’t score. After the break however, Boro found the net three times. Hassan Nalbant scored after 52 minutes, Sam Deering made it 2-0 three minutes later and Nalbant bagged a third in stoppage time (for a full report, see https://www.romfordfc.com/teams/8433/match-centre/0-5923533/report)

 

The sight of the Romford players climbing the steps to the Royal Box to receive their medals and the FA Vase itself was a marvellous one, although despite the obvious pleasure of watching from there, a small part of me envied the fans on the opposite side of the stadium where the players next went to celebrate. But as much fun as that would have been, the chance to watch the game from the Royal Box was one that I could not pass up, and I know that Val thoroughly enjoyed her Wembley experience, not just the game, but meeting people I’ve mentioned to her, and the post-match meal. Obviously, I’ve told Val that if she comes again it will probably be a little different (a wet Tuesday night at one of the Essex Senior League’s further flung outposts is a tad more basic).

Just as we were about to leave, the trophy itself made an appearance in The Atrium, so naturally I had to have a picture with it, a souvenir of a brilliant day!

 

Left to right: Colin Ewenson, Lee Dorling (Essex Senior League chairman), Steve Gardener

Everyone’s experiences at Wembley were different: From Steve and Colin, who were able to move freely from Royal Box to changing rooms and onto the pitch at the end; Keith and Paul, who are more used to the cramped dressing rooms they find in our normal football and had the wonderful experience of the all mod cons Wembley facilities, to the couple of thousand fans watching from the sidelines. Everyone will have stories that they will tell to everyone who will listen, and none of us will ever forget that marvellous afternoon in the Wembley sunshine. Even the trackside fire at Neasden that closed the Jubilee and Metropolitan Lines, making our journey home a little convoluted, didn’t detract from a brilliant day, the best I have ever had in the 50 odd years I’ve been watching Romford.

 

And when I got home, I grabbed a beer and watching it all again, having recorded TNT Sports’ coverage of the game, another surreal experience because while Premier League fans get to see their teams on TV all the time, this was another first for me! TNT's coverage also enabled our daughter, holidaying in Cyprus, to watch the game and see Val and me in the Royal Box!

 

On Sunday morning there was proof that this wasn’t just some wonderful dream; there it was, in black and white, in The Non-League Paper: Romford had won the FA Vase!

Perhaps we’ll get the chance to do it all again at some point in the future, but if we don’t, I will still have memories that will last me a lifetime.

 

Photos in this blog are either mine, or were taken by Bob Knightley. I think that the superior quality of Bob’s betrays whose is whose!

 

 

 

The Wrong Type of Football

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola’s rant after his team’s FA Cup Semi-Final win over Chelsea about how unfair it was that his squad of 25 highly trained and extremely well rewarded professional athletes should have to play on Saturday afternoon having already played a game on Wednesday was typical of the Premier League managers’ mindsets.

 

“Unacceptable,” he called it, "I don't understand how we survived," he added, and all the while, up and down the country, non-League footballers, managers, officials, and supporters howled with laughter at a club complaining at playing three games in eight days while many teams below the Football League would look at that schedule as quite benign. Take National League South side Truro City for instance, in the time that Manchester City played those three games, they played four. Between 1^st April and 20^th April, Truro played ten league games; Manchester City played six matches.

 

Pep Guardiola
Picture - Football.ua, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

 

Even more extreme is the schedule faced by Colne FC of the North West Counties League who will play 14 games in April, six more than City will, and Colne are by no means unique. Thanks to postponements, it’s not unusual in non-League football for teams to play almost half of their league fixtures in the last two months of the season, and these are players holding down full-time jobs and driving themselves to away games after a day at work, yet the ones we are supposed to feel sorry for are the Premier League guys whose full-time job is playing football and whose every whim is indulged.

 

The fact that Guardiola’s complaint was about playing an FA Cup tie was significant. The FA Cup used to be the jewel in the crown of English football but it has become debased and devalued over the years; to be blunt, it’s an inconvenience for Premier League clubs. The demands of the vastly over inflated Champions League make FA Cup replays an inconvenience, especially since Uefa’s demand mean that they can’t be played on Champions League dates, hence their abolition from the Fifth Round onwards during the 2018-19 season.

 

This week, The FA announced that from next season there would be no replays in the FA Cup from the First Round onwards, a sop to the Premier League clubs (although since they don’t enter until the Third Round, replays in the First and Second Round are an irrelevance to them). Other than their proposal in 2014 to introduce B teams into the Football League, I don’t think that any announcement made by The FA has met with so much opposition and outrage.

 

At this point I have to say that despite many years of believing that FA Cup replays must be preserved at pretty much any cost, I’m beginning to become a little less vehement about that. It is in the first four rounds of the competition proper that replays have value; non-League or teams from the Football League’s bottom two divisions getting draws against higher level opposition and setting up money spinning replays have always part of the competition’s attraction, but in the competition’s early and later stages, the arguments for their retention are more difficult to sustain.

 

As we know, from the Third Round on, arranging replays can be difficult because of European football getting in the way, but in the qualifying rounds is there really much magic in a Preliminary Round replay between two Step 5 teams? This season for instance, Buckhurst Hill and Brantham Athletic met in the Extra-Preliminary Round. The first game, at Buckhurst Hill, attracted just 88 people and the replay drew in only 58 spectators. Gate receipts would not have covered the match officials’ fees and with it being 70 miles between the clubs’ respective grounds, travelling costs and the like would have resulted in both clubs losing money.

 

Brantham Athletic v Buckhurst Hill FA Cup Replay – Picture: Brantham Athletic

 

Phil Annets – the man behind the FA Cup Factfile Twitter account – has said, “Everyone talks about FA Cup replays being important for financial reasons and that's been the case for a small number of clubs, but the real reason replays are needed is for competition integrity. Replays give clubs disadvantaged by being drawn away a chance to take game to their ground.” While that’s an understandable point – and Cray Valley PM and Horsham, who earned replays against Charlton  Athletic and Barnsley respectively this season would undoubtedly agree -  a one off game could actually give lower league or non-League sides a better chance of progressing. Charlton won their replay at Cray Valley 6-1 while Horsham were beaten 3-0 by Barnsley (Barnsley were subsequently found to have fielded an ineligible player and Horsham were reinstated), but had those first games gone to penalties the playing field would have been levelled; there’s no reason why an Isthmian League side shouldn’t be able to beat a League One team in a shoot-out, even if they couldn’t over 90 minutes.

 

There have been angry suggestions that Football League and non-League clubs should boycott next season’s FA Cup, but that isn’t going to happen. Despite my increasing ambivalence towards FA Cup replays, what I do object to in The FA’s announcement – and many of the clubs that have issued statements expressing anger at replays being done away with seem to hold a similar view – is that a competition with more than 700 entrants is having its terms dictated by a tiny number of clubs, the 20 Premier League clubs, who largely view the FA Cup as an inconvenience.

 

The fact that the abolition of FA Cup replays from the First Round onwards is proposed from next season is no doubt driven by the increase in the number of entries in what we might now call the Not The Champions League next season when instead of 32 clubs in the group stage, there will be 36 in a rejigged league stage. Instead of it taking 13 games to win this bloated competition, it will take 15, at which point it’s worth remembering that for a Premier League team to win the FA Cup they need play only seven games.

 

When managers like Guardiola, or Jurgen Klopp, or Eric Ten Hag, complain about their teams having to play too many games, it is always the potential FA Cup replays that vex them, and I say ‘potential’ because Manchester City have had only 10 FA Cup replays this century, Manchester United have had 9, and Liverpool have had 12, so not exactly an onerous schedule.

 

Looked at logically, if the elite Premier League clubs are concerned about fixture congestion then the target for their objections should be the Champions League, but apparently a hypothetical FA Cup replay that might involve a 100 mile round trip once every few seasons is considered more taxing than travelling a couple of thousand miles several times a season for European cup games. How about increasing the number of teams in the Champions League to 64, but make it a straight knock-out with no group stage; it would take only 11 games to win the competition, freeing up some midweek dates to reinstate FA Cup replays

 

And there is the rub; the problem isn’t too much football, but rather the wrong type of football. The Champions League is more lucrative than the FA Cup, and the bottom line is, well the bottom line on the balance sheet.

Addendum 2nd May 2024:

Since I published this blog, the Premier League and the National League have announced a new competition for 2024-25 involving 16 clubs from the National League and 16 Premier League Under 21 teams, hence the National League's willingness to give up on FA Cup replays in the First and Second Rounds. In addition, the Premier League have once again floated the 39th Game idea - an additional fixture in the Premier League programme - to be played in the USA. Further proof - if we ever needed it - that there aren't too many games, just the wrong type.