Jessops Gift Vouchers – A New Form Of Highway Robbery


I’ll bet many of you have heard this around Christmas and Birthday time ………

“You are so difficult to buy presents for. I never know what to get you”

Being a fisherman I had always said just buy me hooks, swivels, lures and so forth. Not fancy or expensive but so necessary as those are the consumable items that every fisherman is always having to replace. Anyway a couple of years ago I had a sudden rush of blood to the head and suggested that my family buy me gift vouchers.

Not just any gift vouchers but, as I am an amateur photographer, “Jessops” gift vouchers.

Why ? Because, I thought, I would let my family contribute towards  a large expensive lense for my camera. Big mistake.

When it was too late I discovered that these gift vouchers have an expiry clause. Perhaps I shouldn’t call them vouchers as the old paper vouchers did not have an expiry date or clause. However, Jessops have entered the modern, digital age. They now have gift cards. They look a bit like a credit card. The important thing to note is Clause 4 of the T & Cs printed on the back of the Jessops Gift Card and I quote.

The card will expire 24 months after the last time it was used to make a purchase or top up the balance. Any remaining balance will be automatically deducted.

However, as the recipient of the gift card, you cannot determine the trigger date. i.e the date on which the card was activated. At least not without going to a Jessops store to make a purchase. You cannot go to their web site and enter the card number to determine the validity of the card or the balance remaining.

I have over the last couple of years been given 4 of these cards. At no time was I informed of the amount on the cards until my son-in-law informed me that when he and my daughter purchased the latest card they asked and were told that there was indeed an expiry date. As a result I went to Jessops to find out what balances I had on the cards and to perhaps make a purchase. I was informed that the older 3 cards had expired.

The staff in the store rang through to another store to see if there was anything that could be done and were told that I would have to contact customer services but since they dind’t work at weekends, this being Saturday, I would have to come back to the store on Monday. Which I duly did.

I stood around while the manager made a call and was duly informed that nothing could be done and that I should contact head office and the customer liaison. On my return home I called these folks and was given the party line.

“The card states 24 months inactivity and the card will expire”

“No we cannot transfer the value of the expired cards to your current and valid card”

“We are really sorry that your grandchildren are being ripped off but there really is nothing we can do”

I am now in the process of contacting Jessops through their various e-mail links but will be writing to the CEO.

In the meantime I am writing this as a warning to anyone who might already have a Jessops Gift Card or maybe considering purchasing one of them for a friend or family member.

JESSOPS GIFT CARDS DO EXPIRE AND JESSOPS WILL KEEP YOUR MONEY

View From The Conservatory


Wild and Wet

Yes it’s certainly wild out there today. The wind is buffeting the trees around. One moment they are virtually still and upright. The next they are,  without warning, bent rapidly towards the North East. This then followed by wild swirling about as if they are inside a huge food mixer. The conservatory roof is also joining in with the excitement.

Whenever the trees suddenly move, the roof pumps like a diaphragm, creaking and groaning. It gives the illusion of being on a sailing ship but with out the yawing and the rolling.

And wet it is too. It has been raining continuously since the small hours when I first awoke. Varying in intensity from drizzle thru to torrential and back again. All within a couple of minutes and without stopping.

Where do the birds go in this weather ? I haven’t seen a single feathered friend today. Not even a Wood Pigeon and they are usually sat up in the trees, looking like vultures,  waiting for some kind of food opportunity.

The squirls are probably tucked up in their nest too, riding out the storm. It must be dangerous for them. Can you imaging making a leap from one tree to the next just as a gust of wind shifts that branch you were planning to land on.

And as for the other regular visitors ? Well I’m guessing that next doors two black avengers, the cats, are tucked up nice and warm inside. I know they are not bothered by the wind but they do not like the wet.

Like them I am glad to be inside …..

Warm and Dry

Lets Legalise Assisted Suicide


It is reported today that Assisted Suicide is being introduced by stealth.

The reason for this suggestion is that nobody has been prosecuted in recent times for helping someone to die. In the last eighteen months,out of forty-four suspects, for thirty-one the decision has been made not to prosecute under rules introduced by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Well I say brilliant, that’s good news. Bring it on.

It’s time that this government got its act together and took the next step. Lets formally introduced legislation to allow, in this country, the type of services that are provided by the Dignitas clinic in Zurich. There would have to be safe guards, that is obvious but lets remove the suggestion of criminality.

We are a nation of animal lovers and do not let our pets and farm animals suffer. We “put them down”. As a nation we are outraged when our animals are mistreated in any way.

Yet we do not, are not permitted to offer the same compassion to the “human animal”.

Instead we watch the terminally ill suffer, we prolong their misery with our drugs and our machines. I have seen this with my own eyes, experienced this with members of my own family. We tend to think of animals as dumb, that they do not know any better, do not understand and therefore it is better to let them die.

But think on. Because humans are the thinking being isn’t the enforced prolonging of life through the process of dying just a form of torture.

As a terminal illness progresses the patient quite often loses the ability to move, they can go through increasing levels of hypersensitivity and pain and more often than not they go through a total loss of ability to communicate.

The single act of “kindness” we offer is that the doctor or nurse can jack up the amount of morphine to a level where the patient is in a state of oblivion.

We like to spout off about preserving personal dignity. Where is the dignity in being taken to a drug induced vegetative state.

Legalise Assisted Suicide – Legalise Euthanasia

 

The press in this country are despicable.


The press in this country are despicable.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what your past is. As soon as you look like you are doing well for yourself, riding high, the press search long and hard to find the dirt. They delight in bringing you down.

Nathan Hageman committed a criminal act, went to court and was sentenced nearly 5 years ago. He’s done his time. Yet the Mail seems to think that his sentence wasn’t enough and that he should continue to pay for the crime for the rest of his life.

Yes it is awful what he did to another human being, regardless of whether that person was male of female. That doesn’t mean that he should be hounded and penalised for the rest of his life.

Maybe the press that we have in this country reflect the British psyche but I for one am sick of them.

My message to the press is

“Get off your fat arses, go out and do some real investigative journalism”

Red or Black liar could lose his £1m prize money: Real victim was his girlfriend | Mail Online.

Nick Helm’s password joke is Edinburgh Fringe funniest


Well I liked too so I thought it was worth repeating here

Nick won for the joke:

“I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

BBC News – Nick Helm’s password joke is Edinburgh Fringe funniest.

Time For A Smile


English is a Difficult Language to Learn

There is no egg in the eggplant,
No ham in the hamburger,
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.

English muffins were not invented in England,
and French fries were not invented in France.

We sometimes take English for granted.
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that:

  • Quicksand takes you down slowly;
  • Boxing rings are square;
  • The guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And what about the noun roots of verbs?

  • If writers write, how come fingers don’t fing?
  • If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of phone booth be phone beeth?
  • If the teacher taught, why didn’t the preacher praught?
  • If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat!?
  • Why do people recite at a play, yet play at a recital?
  • Or park on driveways and drive on parkways?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language:

  • Where a house can burn up… as it burns down
  • In which you fill in a form… by filling it out
  • Where an alarm is only heard once it goes off!

English was created by people, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (Which, of course, isn’t a race at all).

That is why when the stars are out they are visible…
But when the lights are out… they are invisible.

But I still can’t figure out why it is that when I wind up my watch, it starts… But when I wind up this discussion…It ends.

For more stuff like this try http://myhumor.org/default.asp

UK has its coolest summer since 1993 – Climate Change, Environment


So thats what they mean by “Global Warming” – Our summers get cooler and wetter !!!

UK has its coolest summer since 1993 – Climate Change, Environment – The Independent.

Waterlooville man caught with knife in Southsea


Only 180 Hours free work ?

Strikes me he got off lightly.

I got caught down in Portsmouth with nothing more than a set of mole grips and a stillson wrench and I have been made to do months and months of unpaid work.

Working on my daughters kitchen and bathrooms seem to be rather like painting the Forth Road Bridge….. never-ending.

Waterlooville man caught with knife in Southsea – East Hampshire – The News.

When did I move to Seattle ?


I have been watching the TV crime series “The Killing” and I think that it has been raining or just plain damp in every episode. Since it is predominantly damp here and has been for the last few days I was beginning to think I had been transported………to Seattle.

Mind you, they must have very soft rain. In some of the shots, typically Richmond’s campaign office, the rain is streaming down the glass ceiling and windows.

When that amount of rain falls on my conservatory I can’t hear myself think.