It’s the annual BA IT meltdown event

Another day, another IT meltdown at British Airways causing problems for travellers all over the world. Nothing new, this is exactly what you get when you outsource jobs to India in the name of “cost cutting”; Cheap, incompetent, clueless, script-reading drones who can barely string a sentence together.

Still, this is to be expected when you have the likes of Alex Cruz in charge of BA. Cruz used to run budget Spanish airline Vueling and seems to think he can use the same approach with BA. No surprise then that since he took over British Airways, it’s become Bloody Awful. Cruz was told repeatedly that outsourcing the IT systems and relying on Indian “expertise” would lead to outages and system downtime but didn’t listen. The board should have sacked his useless behind long ago but as usual, all they care about is the share price, dividends and to hell with the customers.

And when Cruz finally does get the sack, it’ll be the usual merry-go-round of safe jobs for the boys where incompetant spivs like Cruz leave with a golden goodbye and are simply parachuted into the next cushy number with a golden hello. Welcome to Club World where every failure is rewarded.

Is France good for anything?

Having visited France many times, I’ve been wondering of late if it serves any useful purpose. Let’s examine the evidence:

Food
French food on the whole sucks. All poncey, pretentious crap that is full of wine (I don’t drink) with cheese served as a dessert. Frogs legs and snails? You’re having a giraffe. Their gateaux are great though, the French know how to make good cake and delicious pastries.

Cars
There is no such thing as a good French car. There’s a reason Peugeot, Citroen and Renault motors are boring to drive, less reliable than a politician’s promise and depreciate quicker than a falling brick. At least Citroen shows some flair but this merely elevates it to the top of a large crap heap.

Language
No doubt that French is a sexy language capable of making anyone weak at the knees but why does it have to be so bloody annoying? All the “un” this and “une” that, frankly, I have enough going on in my fuddled brain without having to worry about whether or not the correct expression is male or female. Plus, just how useful is French outside of France, especially in the business world? Exactly.

People
On the whole, French people are aloof with a reputation for arrogance and rudeness, one that is well deserved if you have ever visited Paris. The women can be quite sexy but the men have a polarising pompous Gallic tendency to either shrug at everything (“Je ne pas bothered”) or work themselves into a lather over tiny miniscule things of no importance (“Le spoon is bent at un wrong angle”).

Fashion
Ah yes, fashion. That most essential of industries, vital to the well being of the entire world. France is home to many fashion houses and you know what? I think the world would be a much better place if every single one of them would just sod off and die.

Films
French films are as popular as Hollywood Blockbusters. In France that is. Outside of France, French films are about as welcome as a box of rodents in a cheese factory. I once watched a French film and it was all moody drama with subdued lighting and monotonous dialogue that would have made even a coked up caffeine freak nod off. When was the last time you heard someone say they just watched a great French movie?

Culture
If you can ignore the revolting open air public lavatories, there are lots of museums, famous artists and splendid old buildings to admire. I don’t think Crazy Horse counts for much but if cabaret is your thing, you could do a lot worse. And I just love the Asterix books.

History
The French Revolution was a Good Thing; kick out the lazy thieving useless nobility. World War II was not so good; drop rifle and run scared from the Germans without so much as putting up a fight.

Government
The French government is typically socialist, loves red tape and about as financially savvy as a meth-addicted lottery winner. The country has a lazy, fully unionised workforce which means a high tax economy with the Government forever throwing money around and going bust. Fiscal austerity is a dirty word in France and there is no attempt to balance the books lest an angry mob of pitchfork wielding farmers storms the National Assembly. This is why the country has been in decline since the credit crunch and why all the wealthy French have decamped to London. Worst still, France is one of the standard bearers for the despised EU project but at least they don’t slavishly follow each and every rule like pathetic Britain.

Music
Mostly crap folk music nobody listens to but luckily, on the dance side there’s a fabulous selection of house, disco, electronic and even hip hop that everyone can enjoy.

Holidays
Nice place to visit if you stay away from the big cities. Paris is a bit crap, Marseille is even worse and the less said about Lyon, the better. French countryside is beautiful though and the Alps are well worth a visit, even if you don’t like snow. Americans and other similarly obese tourists will likely enjoy Euro Disney.

Transport
Fast, efficient and comfortable. Miles better than the UK and much cheaper too.

National Anthem
Have to admit that I like the French anthem. It’s uplifting, inspiring and so much better than the dreary English crap that needs to be put to bed, much like the entire useless freeloading Windsor monarchy.

 

So there you have it. I think on the whole, France just about scrapes through as serving a useful purpose which is more than can be said for shitty Belgium.

Welcome to the laughing stock UK Olympics

Welcome to the 2012 Olympics being held here in the UK. Our level of incompetence in holding such an overblown, overrated, waste-of-money event is matched only by the level of utter contempt and wholesale unenthusiasm that Brits hold for having the wretched games foisted upon us by a thieving money grabbing elite riddled with cronyism. An extra special mention to our expense fiddling scamming politicians who grossly underestimated the bid meaning the final bill has ballooned from the original £4 billion to £11 billion.

Nevertheless, we look forward to athletes from across the globe taking part in one of the most corrupt, money making and pointless spectacles in the world where sporting prowess plays third and fourth fiddle to the more important business of ripping people off and making money for official sponsors. And we especially welcome our IOC (International Olympics Committee) Mollusc Olympian Overlords for the sheer contempt and disgust they hold for ordinary folk daring to question the serious business of making the IOC members rich.

When you land at third world Heathrow Airport, our warm welcome extends to keeping you waiting for a minimum of two hours to pass through border security. This is on account of our stupid, expense fiddling politicians having cut UK Border Agency staff to the bone. However, should you wish to be whisked through with any delay, please claim asylum where you will be eagerly directed to the nearest benefits centre and a bump to the top of the housing list. In the meantime, please take full advantage of our decrepit National Health Service, it is here for the whole world to use for free.

Once you leave the airport, a plethora of buses and trains are waiting to rip you off with sky high prices and a mediocre service that seldom adheres to a timetable. Should you wish to use a car, the authorities have helpfully blocked off large parts of London to create gridlock and herd the peasants into single lane roads. Hence, there are plenty of route closures, new no right/left turns, suspended pedestrian crossings, traffic flow direction on one way roads reversed, contraflows and altered traffic light phasing to stop traffic getting anywhere near Olympic routes.

A network of CCTV covers the worlds most spied upon country and special Zil lanes have been created for Olympics VIP’s to whisk self-important sponsors, business backscratchers, MP’s, lickspittles and cronies to and from the venue in chauffeur driven BMW’s. Do not be surprised if the traffic lights remain red for eternity to create gridlock whilst miraculously turning green for the Zil lanes, this has been expressly designed to ensure you don’t go anywhere so that corrupt IOC members who are in a hurry to get back to their 5-star taxpayer funded hotel suites to dine on caviar and champagne do not get held up. However, please do feel free to try and use the Zil lanes, there’s a £130 fine that will be shoved directly into the pocket of some grinning idiot in LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) but the rest of London will cheer you to the echo for sticking two fingers up at the robbing Gestapo bastards.

Upon arrival at the official stadium, a stream of bureaucratic overbearing Olympics nonsense is ready and waiting to wash over you like a visit from the Soviet Politburo. It’s already been declared that chips can’t be sold by anyone apart from official sponsor McDonalds and that you can’t take your own bottled water or food inside the Olympic stadium. However, picnic hampers are available from the official picnic hamper supplier camped outside who will be glad to offer a range of measly sandwich options excitingly priced from 40 quid upwards.

Security for this pointless grubby event is supplied courtesy of G4S, a bunch of incompetent, incapable, inadequate brainless monkeys led by leering clueless inbred chief executive Nick Buckles who is on a £1.4 million annual package. Several MP’s, including hapless Home Secretary Theresa May, have a vested financial interest in G4S which is why the company has been awarded the contract. Rest assured, G4S has promised to not recruit enough suitable candidates or bother vetting potential applicants so you can expect a bunch of grunting ignorant chav yobs manning the gates accompanied by an assortment of eager suicide bombers and terrorists who not so much as slipped through the net as they did walk through the open door of G4S’ laughably inept non-existant security checks. Semi-coherent English language skills will be a minor bonus although should not be assumed by any means.

Once the Olympics is over, and 2 weeks can’t arrive soon enough, we expect a significant proportion of visitors, athletes and spectators alike, to remain in Britain outstaying their visa, especially from the grasping African countries and Indian sub-continent. Once again, playing the asylum card will work wonders but you can also just disappear into the economy since the Border Agency won’t bother to try and track you down for deportation. Everyone’s welcome in benefits Britain so come on in, the water’s lovely.

Meanwhile, the locals will be left to pick up the bill for the entire shitty event whilst the bent Olympics committee begins the whole sorry affair again by trying to hoodwink another gormless country into staging a spectacle that should have been paid for and staged by the bloody Greeks.

We hope you enjoy your stay in the UK, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Welcome to pathetic third world Britain

Heathrow Airport has long been the type of embarrassing dump that shows visitors and tourists exactly what to expect from Britain. The laughably inept UK Border Agency, when not busy waiving through the worlds supply of asylum seekers, immigrants, drug dealers, rapists, thugs, paedophiles and other assorted scum of society, is only too pleased to have a single immigration desk open out of more than a dozen to ensure the hundreds of other legitimate travellers are kept waiting for hours on end.

And it’s not just the non-EU countries either, Brits and Europeans are also being forced to wait in the immigration hall as queues snake all the way back to the plane terminal. Meanwhile, the fast track automated machines remain idle because the kit doesn’t work and nobody can be bothered to get them fixed.

It’s absolutely pathetic and further cements Heathrow’s well deserved reputation as the dumpiest, crappiest, most run-down main terminal airport in the West. No wonder everyone avoids it as much as possible and choose to make their connections on mainland Europe where they can expect efficiency and fast connection times as well as more direct routes to China.

Of course, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has dealt with Spanish owned BAA that has responsibility for Heathrow. As one of the world’s busiest airports, Heathrow has long been a cashcow for the lazy bastard Spaniards who run Ferrovial, the parent company which has huge debts. They have absolutely no financial incentive to improve facilities there when they can just simply take the money out to plump up the balance sheet which is why Heathrow remains the third world dump of an airport it is with sky high charges for everything.

As for the UK Border Agency, this is one of the most poisonous of Labour’s many failed legacies. An unfit-for-purpose outfit run by a dickhead who deliberately relaxed immigration rules to let in thousands of illegals, it recently cut 10% of its workforce at a time when uproar and complaints about delays are at an all-time high. And the Government’s response to this? Blame the delays on the weather!

Yes that’s right, scamming lying turncoat Tory David Cameron thinks people are complete idiots and will believe this old pony. It just goes to show how completely and utterly deluded the man is and not fit to hand out free newspapers let alone him and his rich chums flushing the country further down the toilet.

Why does my paper train ticket stop working?

For anyone not stupid enough to have been suckered into buying a scamming robbing Oyster card, the only alternative is a paper train ticket. However, have you ever wondered why these paper tickets seem to stop working at the automated barriers?

You know the drill; you insert the paper ticket and get the dreaded “Seek Assistance” message. You try again and get the same message, the back of your neck now burning from the huge queue that has built up behind you with suspicion that you’re a fare dodger. At length, annoyed by the constant tutting and exasperated noises of people who think you’re an idiot for not knowing how to use a paper train ticket, you clump off to find a uniformed official to let you through the barriers.

The reason your paper train ticket has stopped working is simply because you’ve kept it somewhere near your mobile phone. The paper tickets have a magnetic stripe on the back that is affected by all manner of electromagnetic fields and even after just a few hours, can render said ticket stone cold dead.

The solution therefore is obvious. Keep it away from your moby and quickly sail through those automated barriers at ease whilst clueless mugs with Oyster cards continue to be scammed, tracked and robbed blind by London Transport.

Road accidents drop in UAE during BlackBerry outage

In news that will surprise nobody who has visited the United Arab Emirates, it has been revealed that during the BlackBerry outage, road accidents in Dubai dropped by 20% whilst neighbouring Abu Dhabi recorded an even more dramatic fall of 40%.

This is to be wholly expected; by and large the local Emirati’s are a bunch of brainless Bedouin buttheads who would have a hard time steering a plodding camel let alone be trusted at the wheels of a dangerous automobile. However, they only make up a tiny minority of the population, especially in Dubai where the majority comprises tax-dodgers, drug dealers, money launderers, pimps, Russian hookers, grasping Indians, alcoholic Arabs, scamming property spivs and other assorted rabble out to make a fast buck in the seamy underworld of Deira.

The UAE used to have some of the most dangerous roads in the world and it’s not difficult to see why. Drive down the Sheikh Zayed Road at any time and you will often be immediately tailgated by some gormless grinning dickhead in a dish-dash driving with one hand firmly clamped to a phone whilst the other is used to pump the horn.

There are laws against driving whilst using a mobile in the UAE but these are largely ignored, much like the wholesale drug dealing and prostitution which the authorities are only too eager to turn a blind eye towards. Make no mistake; Dubai is the sleaze capital of the Middle East and as superficial as the make-up that’s slapped on with a butter knife by the women there.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Etisalat to introduce a permanent daily outage on BlackBerry devices to further reduce road accidents. Mind you, with the crap service that Etisalat provides, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’d already done this unintentionally.

Oyster Cards designed to scam unwary commuters

Transport for London has long crowed about Oyster cards being the cheapest way to travel. What they don’t tell you is these sinister electronic tags also track your movements and are deliberately used by TfL as an easy way to fleece unwary customers by incorrectly robbing them of any credit when the card readers stop working. Make no mistake, the primary function of an Oyster card is not convenience or value, it is simply a revenue raising ruse with an added value proposition straight out of the bumper book of Stasi Police.

Consider the typical scenario where a commuter touches in and touches out correctly. The Oyster reader beeps but crucially, the Oyster card is not actually read meaning the full obscenely expensive single peak fare is deducted from your balance. Another popular and highly lucrative TfL scam is to open the barriers whenever there are Tube delays. Unwary passengers pass through the barriers without touching out and are again charged the full single fare which is about as competitive as a construction contract drawn up by the Mafia.

Further evidence is amply provided by the amount of incorrect fines that TfL collects through Oyster. Some £60 million was raised last year of which £20 million was paid back in refunds but only after commuters claimed the money. Here’s the thing though; the refund process relies on the commuter initiating a claim and is stupidly complicated having been specifically designed by chimps to be as convoluted as possible thus deterring even the most trivial of cases. And don’t think for one moment that any extra revenue raised is going on service improvements, TfL has far too many fat cats and cronies who will happily waste the cash on less desirable enterprises like more CCTV or less audible speakers to ensure we all miss important travel announcements.

Even the bog standard convenience argument is lazy as a Greek civil servant. How many times have you been behind someone with an Oyster card during rush hour only for their card to fail at the reader? Immediately, a crush builds up behind you and tailbacks start forming as the hapless individual scans their Oyster card again and again before sloping off to the TfL attendant who stood in the corner sniggering away at the misfortune instead of trying to help.

Best thing is to stick with a paper ticket. There’s no tracking of movements plus it’s quicker, faster, costs the same amount and more importantly, stops TfL from scamming you for every last penny.

Lonely Planet Guide denounces rip-off Britain

The latest edition of the Lonely Planet Guide describes the UK as a rip-off tourist destination, full of expensive hotels offering piss-poor service and crap restaurants selling tiny portions of overpriced food. Sounds about right except they forgot to mention the outrageous travel costs, spiralling inflation, stupidly exorbitant tourist attractions and gangs of roaming hoodies and immigrants poised to pickpocket anyone foolish enough to venture down Oxford Street. And don’t mention the rain.

The Lonely Planet Guide goes on to praise London as a centre of multi-culture although that’s rather like boasting about having the most virulent strain of a particularly nasty STD. I doubt anyone visits London to gawp at a line of assorted bogus asylum seekers waiting for benefits at the local post office.

Not even native Brits would want to holiday in the UK and it’s not difficult to see why. Accommodation costs are so unreasonable that you’d easily end up spending 500 quid for 5 nights in a pokey B&B with 80% precipitation when the same amount could buy a nice sunshine break in the Med, flights included.

We only have ourselves to blame, most Brits would rather a cup of tea with fifty sugars instead of complaining about poor service or high prices. In short, if you want a nice holiday without getting rinsed of money, visit Italy or France, the UK is finished.

Random Annoyances: Frequent Tube Trains Going The Wrong Way

Standing on a tube platform watching several trains arrive and depart on the opposite platform whilst the board indicates the next train going your way is in 2 minutes.

Aviva starts ash tax racket to scam travellers

Aviva (formally Norwich Insurance) has announced they will start charging an "ash tax" on travel insurance policies because of the Icelandic volcano which, incidentally, sounds like one giant insurance scam itself. I mean what are the odds? A country goes bankrupt owing billions to investors and then a volcano erupts that conveniently grounds flights and causes disruption.

Meanwhile, back at the trough, you’d put good money on Aviva being the first to concoct some ridiculous new charge to extract maximum amounts of money from gullible fools who think travel insurance is a necessity. If you buy tickets using your credit or debit card, most of them provide you with basic travel insurance anyway.

Aviva who specialise in scamming customers and fighting tooth and nail to avoid paying up in the event of any claim, no matter how small, have long been known for coming up with dubious insurance rackets masquerading as exciting new value propositions. Want blue parrot insurance to cover your pet flying into the tumble dryer? Certainly sir, that’ll be 200 quid plus tax plus £199.99 excess for the first claim and £199.98 thereafter.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that if the volcano stops spewing, the ash tax won’t be dropped because Aviva is interested in one thing and one thing only; hiking premiums and screwing the punters.

To be brutally honest though, anyone who insures with Aviva deserves to be scammed. Their TV adverts famously proclaim "we are not on any price comparison web site" and there’s a bloody good reason for that no matter what kind of policy you’re after including blue parrot insurance!