Well done Michael, who passed last week with just 2 driver faults.
We had a bit of a scare when I picked him up – he’d been cleaning his glasses and had broken them in the process. As I arrived he was just about to run across to the hardware shop to try and get some superglue. I told him some nice white duct tape would be better, and we seriously considered stopping off to get something because he was worried the lenses would fall out. In the end, we didn’t risk it in case we made things worse (superglue isn’t “super” because it sticks anything. It’s “super” because the things it does stick – usually those you don’t want to – stick hard. In the case of glasses, you may find you can’t take them off again!)
Some years ago, I was with a company called UKHosts. I ran several websites for myself and other people from their servers. They were not particularly good on the customer service front in the first place, but the final straw came when I found out that they’d been hacked and not told anyone – it was one of my clients who reported that their site was down, and when I checked that’s when I found out they all were. UKHosts didn’t have any backups – or if they did, they were not very quick reinstating their servers from those backups. Oh, and they also reckoned they’d tried to contact people!
I switched hosts immediately, and I’ve been with 1&1 ever since. But the UKHosts hacking affair (there were apparently several more after I left them) appears to have nailed their coffin shut and they were taken over by Media Marmot shortly after.
Times have changed in the ten years or so since then, and many companies run their websites on the servers of these smaller hosting outfits like 123-reg. As one of them is quoted in the BBC article:
This will wreck my business and plenty of others…
It makes you wonder if 123-reg can survive something like this (edit: their parent was bought out by GoDaddy in 2017 – this article dates from 2016). Having something go wrong is one thing, but not being able to recover from it properly is a different matter entirely.
Any decent business should have its own backup – many of them use WordPress as their content management system like this blog, and I have an automatic backup made every night. However, the hosting company really should also have complete backups of all their servers. If not nightly ones, weekly ones at least.
There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in Nottingham recently following the placement of new posters such as this one:
A true story. Some years ago, I was on my way home from a squash match. I used to use public transport so I could have a few beers afterwards, and this naturally led to the ceremonial purchase of a kebab close to the bus stop where I’d catch my bus. One night a beggar approached me and said “have you got 50p for a cup of tea?”
I’d always been told not to, but for whatever reason I gave him £1 – and I have never seen anyone run off so fast and into a pub about 200 metres away.
Since that day I refuse point-blank to hand over money to anyone. They can dress up as pathetically as they like – dirty blanket, another for the ubiquitous dog, woolly hat, the lot – but they’re not getting a penny. If they can afford to keep a dog and chain smoke roll-ups, then they should not be begging. Even the ones who are genuinely homeless are frequently – and I mean “frequently” – after money to fuel habits, be it Special Brew, roll-ups, or something stronger and which doesn’t go in via their digestive or respiratory systems.
At the London Road roundabout there is a hostel for the homeless. Like most hostels, it has a no-alcohol policy. Yet those waiting for it to open are usually to be seen standing nearby with their cans of Special Brew or Strongbow, and these can be seen strewn around during the day. The police also seem to be in attendance a lot of the time. Any money you handed over directly to these people would go to fuel their drink or disciplinary issues, and don’t let anyone try to persuade you otherwise.
Anyway, the aforementioned kerfuffle is to do with the claim that these posters “demonise” beggars. To me, that’s a bit like saying rain is wet, and then being accused of saying bad things about rain.
All these posters do is state plain facts. Money given to beggars will usually end up going on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Sure, there might be some genuine beggars who live clean lives, but you have to walk around with your eyes shut not to see the way the majority of them are. I don’t see how stating the plain truth is in any way “demonising” anyone.
Money should be given to charities – which is what this campaign is all about. But the problem with that is that the beggars then only get what they need – not what they want.
I’m sick to death of the invented word “brexit”. It’s been leapt upon by the ignorant nationalists in this country who haven’t got a clue what leaving he EU would do to Britain. This comment at the bottom of a BBC article is a perfect example:
1960. Posted by Gary Thompson
on 9 minutes ago
The UK the the WORLDS 5th Largest economy.
I think we can stand on our own two feet thank you Dave…
This guy is clearly unable to even consider a likely explanation as to WHY the UK is the world’s 5th largest economy, and how that position has been built during the UK’s membership of the EU these last 40-odd years. Nor does he mention that the same source he no doubt got his information from puts the EU as the largest (or second largest, depending on source figures) economy in the world. Him and his kind want us to withdraw from the largest economy in the world and try to go it alone? Another ignorant individual comments:
Its easier to make up your mind if you look at things from the other direction…if we were not in the EU…would we now join?….not a chance !
Again, he is incapable of asking himself if we would be where we are now if we hadn’t joined the EU. And this one sums everything up to a tee:
(Remember) KEEP BRITAIN BRITISH (as the old adage once said), and lock out the terrorists and illegals – Vote out and lets all try to get back to our proud Empire past.
This is what brexit is really all about. And they’re all idiots.
These flag-waving fossils cannot understand that economic downturns – and especially the one we experienced recently – affected everyone. They were global phenomena, and were not down to our membership of the EU. Nor can they understand that non-membership will not sort out the refugee situation – not unless we start shooting immigrants at the borders, and although some of these cretins might like the sound of that, it just isn’t going to happen.
Leaving the EU would be the biggest mistake in this country’s history. It would push the current biggest – Cameron’s pre-election pledge to allow a referendum on it just so he could get into power – into second place.
I saw this story on the BBC website. Apparently, a BA Airbus A320 flying to London from Geneva collided with what was believed to be a drone as it was coming in to land.
Apparently, it is the first such collision, though there have been numerous close calls.
…pilots have also called for the DoT to fund tests into what would happen if a drone got sucked into an engine or crashed into a plane’s windscreen.
I’m not quite sure what they think this will prove. All I do know is that if I was on a plane, I would much rather it landed without incident instead of having one of these things get sucked into the turbines. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist – or an aviation expert – to realise that the risk of a catastrophic incident goes up, not down, if something gets pulled into an engine, and quite frankly I wouldn’t give a damn about the results of such tests.
One thing that is clear is that people who operate drones are predominately twats. It’s already illegal to fly them near airports, with up to five years in jail being up for grabs, and yet between September and November 2015 there were six reported near misses in the UK near London airports alone. Leeds and Bradford airports have also had near misses, though this is less of a surprise when you consider the general mentality of people who live near those. There were another six incidents recorded in the 12 months up to July 2015. It’s anyone’s guess how many go unreported.
Drones have the potential to be great fun to play with – I have been tempted to get one myself – but the rules surrounding them are understandably restrictive. Apart from what they could do to a jet engine, there are also the documented effects of what they do to people if they hit them. Consequently, if your desire for fun knows no bounds then you have to break the Law. And that’s when you start to understand why Leeds, Bradford, and London have such a problem.
It’s ironic that for something which hasn’t yet been banned, you can’t fly them far away from you (where they might hit planes), you can’t fly them near large groups of people (where they might injure them), and obviously flying them close to you puts you and anyone near you in danger. So, pretty much anywhere – which significantly detracts from their “fun” value.
Drones are not toys. Unfortunately, apart from professional operators, the people who use them use them EXACTLY as toys. It’s what I’d do if I had one – I have no actual need for one – which is the precise reason why I haven’t bothered to get one.
This is an older article, and the lesson prices given are not current – though they were correct at the original time of writing. Current hourly rates (2022) are £31.
Another recent forum discussion referred to unreasonable demands for lesson refunds by pupils.
I mentioned in my recently updated article on becoming an ADI that there are some very strange people out there. Imagining slights where none exist is definitely one manifestation of their strangeness, and for some it’s only natural that this will stretch far enough for them to attempt to make money out of it. Such an approach is most likely when someone desperately wants to pass their test, but has issues with driving which mean that passing inside 12 months is optimistic. So, when they decide that they “don’t think they are making progress”, they automatically blame their instructor. It would appear that an unfortunate ADI has recently fallen foul of this type of comedian, with a pupil stopping lessons – and then demanding a refund, including the money for those already taken! Naturally, this was then followed with threats to “take it to the small claims court”, even though the instructor in question seems to have been readily prepared to refund all outstanding monies.
The first thing most other instructors do when they read this sort of nonsense is immediately run with the assumption that a small claims court would even entertain the matter. Let’s just be clear on something, here. Unless an instructor was refusing to refund for unused lessons, a pupil demanding money back for lessons they’ve already taken wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. They’d need to demonstrate conclusively that their instructor spent whole lessons disembowelling squirrels or something instead of teaching them to drive. Small claims courts are not going to start poking into whether or not driving lessons were up to an acceptable standard – only whether they were given or not.
Speaking personally, I want as quiet a life as possible so that I can concentrate of teaching people to drive. If someone triggers my late-cancellation clause, they get a lecture and one or two more chances. In the absence of any mitigating circumstances, if they do it again after that, they’re history. There’s no point trying to hold on to them, because once they’ve shown their true colours they’re just going to cost you more and more money. And if you actually try to claim the cost of the lesson the majority of them will just stick two fingers up at you and go elsewhere. I’m not prepared to give them the satisfaction, and I think I’ve claimed for missed lessons maybe six times since I became an ADI (that’s out of many thousands of hours). All of those occurred after agreeing to it with the bill payer (at least three times, at their insistence). In almost all cases it was because the pupil was hungover or comatose following a late night.
As unpleasant as it might be to hear it, many instructors get themselves into a mess over these issues because they’re either too desperate or too greedy (often both) to deal with it logically or professionally, and end up trying to claim for lessons where discretion is needed (pupils with learning or mental health issues, bereavements, and so on). That drives pupils away and sets up a refund situation, the amount of the refund being complicated by the “claimed” hours. Even more worrying is the fact that far too many ADIs these days take block booking payments, spend the money immediately (or it gets sucked into the black hole that passes as their bank balance), and then effectively go AWOL when the pupil tries to book those prepaid lessons. This happens because once the money is spent, they are effectively working for nothing, and they would rather give lessons to those who are paying on the day. Thus, they become un-contactable via phone, text, or email – or they become unreliable and cancel lessons so they can take on paying pupils.
If you take block bookings, it is essential that you put the money away and only dip into it as each lesson is taken. If you don’t, any refund will have to come out of your own pocket – and not being able to cover that is another reason why ADIs go AWOL when pupils attempt to contact them. The pupils’ money doesn’t belong to you until they’ve taken the lessons, and you’ve got to be able to refund it immediately if they request it.
Another mistake instructors make is rooted in their desire to maximise their income and minimise their perceived losses at all costs. A pupil who sees an offer for a 10x block of lessons costing £200 is automatically going to conclude that lessons cost £20 per hour, even if the instructor’s single hourly rate is clearly stated as £25. This holds true no matter what complex wording is hidden away in the Ts&Cs (“refunds are calculated based on φ > Ω, but only when ϕ is less than 3, and not otherwise”). The thing is, if you are offering block booking discounts of £5 per hour in the first place, you are already “losing” £50 against your single-lesson rate. You have to face the fact that your hourly rate is £20 – not £25 – for those who block book, and it’s no wonder that a pupil who takes two hours of lessons out of such a block booking, and who then asks for a refund, becomes angry when you return £150 instead of £160. They’ll immediately start telling everyone that they’re being “ripped-off” which, while not being absolutely true, is definitely an understandable comment.
I offer block booking discounts which drop my current single-hourly rate of £24 down to £21.81 (if they book 10 hours) or £20.87 (if they book 20). I do this by giving them a free hour when they pay for 10, or three hours if they pay for 20 – but I make it clear that the free hour(s) are a gift, have no monetary value, and are taken at the end of a block only after the paid lessons have been used up. Thus, if they need a refund, it is at the £24 rate – they only get the benefit of the discount if they take all ten (or 20) lessons plus the free ones. They all happily agree to that, and it has never been an issue. Quite frankly, if anyone ever turned it into one, it’d be me sticking two fingers up at them! I certainly wouldn’t be worried about any threats to “take it to small claims”.
As a bit of an aside, being able to take card payments has an unquantifiable but very positive effect on pupil satisfaction. Almost everyone – and especially those who have had lessons elsewhere – expresses surprise at the fact I can take such payments. This week alone, at least two of my regular pupils have said for the umpteenth time that “this device is incredible” when I’ve given them my card machine to slot their card into – or even zap it from their phone. The fact that they can have a receipt via email or SMS amazes them, as does the fact that those buying single hours can just wave their card at the machine and complete a contactless payment. All of this has a strange knock-on effect among those who can’t afford block bookings, and they seem much happier being able to pay without physical money changing hands. As I have said before, the amount I save by not going to the bank anymore to pay in cheques offsets the transaction fee somewhat, as does the fact that I have put my prices up by £1 and fuel prices have fallen by so much [this is an older article, remember]. And you can’t really really put a price on the convenience of it all.
Occasionally, you will get someone who wants to barter over price when they enquire about lessons. In those cases I simply point out that I am running a business and cannot cut my prices any lower, and that I already offer discounts. I also point out that anyone offering lower prices compared to me will be making less profit with similar overheads, and will therefore be looking for ways to reduce their expenditure – which usually means less driving and more lessons needed to reach test standard. And I also emphasise that I take card payments, so they don’t have to keep going to the cash machine to withdraw money. If they don’t call back after that I consider that I am well rid of them.
A good instructor should have to refund pupils to the extent that over a typical year the amount of income lost is negligible. I usually only need to do it if someone moves away, and I provide any refund immediately by bank transfer, PayPal, cash, or (as a last resort) postal orders since I don’t use personal cheques anymore. On the rare occasions when someone just isn’t happy – yes, it does happen, and the feeling is often mutual when it does – I don’t want them hanging around like a bad smell. Taking a small (and theoretical) financial hit to get rid of them is actually a sound investment.
I’ve noticed that the newspapers are increasingly relying on “selfie” photos when they’re reporting on various stories. It must save them a fortune being able to harvest pictures from social media pages operated by the people they’re writing about instead of having to send a reporter out and take an actual photograph.
What bugs me about selfies is that they always involve an identical pose by the immature and socially inept female being written about. It occurred to me that there might be a market for a selfie kit, consisting of some oversized plastic lips and a pair of clip-on doe eyes. The image above is a collection of the first photos which come up when you Google the word “selfies” (just out of interest, you have to scroll quite a way down to find any male selfies).
I don’t use Facebook much (or Twitter – and I don’t use any of the other social networking sites at all), but the fact that I have an account means that I get almost daily spam alerting to me to people “who I might know”. It’s quite spooky that a lot of the time I actually DO know them. And all of the females have their albums plastered with these bloody pictures – every single one of them conforming to the same contrived pose. And none of the ones I know look anything like they do in their selfies.
It was while I was looking for pictures of fake plastic lips pictures and clip-on doe eyes that I discovered someone got in there before me, albeit in a different way – and this might easily explain why so many of these pictures look the same. It turns out you can buy suction devices which are designed to make bigger pouts! One listing on eBay contains no fewer than 20 photos showing such a device, how to use it, and the results you apparently get – including a load of selfies.
It says that you might suffer bruising, which isn’t surprising. Basically, it’s the equivalent of a love bite (or hickey). And you look a complete prat while you’re using it.
It suddenly reminded me of something that happened when I was about six. You used to be able to buy a cough sweet called Zubes which, if my memory is correct, were strange grey-coloured lozenges with black centres (like a sugar pill which had then been sugar coated). I have mixed memories of them tasting bloody horrible, since they contained Aniseed (which I hate), but with an animated TV advert featuring a horse, I think, and the strap line “go suck a Zube”. It seems you can still get them, but they come in a bag now. But back in those days they came in a sturdy round metal tin. One day, and in typical six-year old fashion, I was playing with an empty tin and I remember putting it over my mouth and sucking so that it stuck to my face. Also in typical six-year old fashion, I kept it there for some time. When I eventually released the vacuum I almost shit myself when I saw that my lips were about four times bigger than before. They stayed like that for an hour or two, though I was firmly convinced I was going to look like Mick Jagger forever.
Back then, a selfie – if anyone had been inclined to waste the limited number of potential shots on their roll of film – would have required a trip to the chemists with a Kodak cartridge, and the certain knowledge that 80% of your pictures wouldn’t “come out” when you went to pick them up a week later, because the Instamatic you’d used could only focus on objects between 2 metres and ∞, and those that did would show pretty much everything except your face (blurred thumbs, trees, next door’s cat, and so on).
It’s also worth noting that the standard selfie is taken from a slightly elevated perspective in order to also take in an exaggerated cleavage. There are plenty of well-documented ways of enhancing that part of the body already, so we only need to focus on the lips and eyes part. I am convinced that many selfie poses have been Photoshopped to make the person’s eyes look bigger. It’s so easy to do.
And it’s even easier when you consider that there are dozens of apps out there which are specifically designed to enlarge the eyes in selfie images! Better still, there are apps to enlarge the lips, too. That was something else I discovered while I was writing this.
In a nutshell, it seems that the reason all those selfies look the same is that the idiots posting them actually HAVE taken steps to enlarge their lips and their eyes.
Be aware that there is a very convincing phishing scam doing the rounds at the moment. It takes the form of an email, which looks like this:
It has the Virgin logo and everything, and if you click on the link at the bottom it takes you to an exact copy of the usual Virgin Media log in page.
What made me suspicious was that my monthly bill was paid just last week. I checked my bank account.
I very nearly fell for it, but I became more suspicious when I realised that my log in details – which I secure using Last Pass – were not automatically filled in because the site’s security certificate is all wrong. And the alarm went off completely when Windows 10’s Smart Screen Filter popped up and warned me to be careful.
If you get anything like this, do what I did and log into your Virgin Media through the VM website – not from any links in emails you have received.
I’ve reported the site as a phishing site to Microsoft and various other parties. Couldn’t report it to VM, because they have made as sure as possible that customers cannot contact them directly.
Anyone who makes their own curry needs to be aware of this. TRS is recalling certain packs of its Cumin and Coriander powders because they contain salmonella. Batches affected:
TRS Dhania (Coriander) Powder Pack size: 100g Batch no: A481514 ‘Best before’ end: End December 2017
No other TRS products, packs, or batches are involved. You should not eat any affected pack, and return it to the store you purchased it from and get a refund.
TRS is a well-known brand and is one of the main suppliers of whole and ground spices in most specialty stores and even mainstream supermarkets.
There’s an update to this, with a new alert from the Food Standards Agency. A further batch of Cumin (Jeera) is involved, and TRS has now added a batch of Chilli Powder (Extra Hot):
Well done Michael, who passed last week with just 2 driver faults.
