At last - proper customer service!!

My wife and I have had both savings and a mortgage with Nationwide Building Society for over 25 years. Recently we had cause to complain about their customer service and made appropriate representations.

To our surprise we received a well written, thoughtful understanding of our concerns and an apology for treating long standing customers like us badly.

It's a shame that this is such a surprise, but in the modern era it is comforting to know that there are firms out there that understand the proper meaning of customer services.

Another obvious example, and a regular shop for us is John Lewis

The further insanity of the Home Office

Some recently revealed statistics ...

• Home office to spend a few years, and many millions of pounds building 8,000 more prison places
• Home office does not know how many prisoners are actually people with mental health problems who should not be in prison; but some estimate that it runs into 10's of thousands
• Home office admits to 10,000 prisoners (out of a population of 74,000 or so) are illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.

Go figure...

R.I.P. the crazy diamond

So Syd died yesterday.  Having seen Roger and David live quite recently some of his material, notably Arnold Layne, has been in my conscious rather than subconscious.  What surprised me was the attention it got in the media - headline at the 5 o'clock news on Radio 4, front page mention of the Telegraph.  As a fan of a band or artiste it can be quite difficult to get a perspective on the relative significance/importance of your idol; so it was pleasing to see that the rest of the world thought he was important.

I just fear the speed with which EMI will 're'-release your material, or someone cover a song of yours.

So Syd, so sorry to hear you died, but you'll not be forgotten.

Bikers

Believe me, I've nothing against bikers.  In fact if it were not for a back injury sustained at school I would probably be one.  But I wish they would do the 'do as you would be done by' school of driving.

Earlier this week we were on our way west, we ended up amongst a group of bikers.  To keep up with his mates, one overtook us, leaving about 1-2 feet between him & us, and a further 1-2 feet between him and the oncoming (60mph area) car.  He then pulled in in front of us, with only about 5-6 feet to spare in front; and then stayed there at 50mph when there was plenty of space ahead so he could have gone at 60 easily.  I hooted, he gave me the finger.  I later overtook him.

Now if I were to overtake a car with motor bike oncoming and give him 4-5 feet of road to work in (at 60mph), or overtake a bike and pull in nearly grazing their front wheel they would be justifiably angry with me.  So why the hell can't they drive to their own standards?  It's happening far too often these days, and one day there will be an accident, and some poor driver is going to feel guilty for being an innocent participant in the death or serious injury of a biker.