Remember, Remember, the 5th of November!

5th November is England’s only real historical festival. Unlike most countries we don’t seem to have anything much that is just ours, full of archaic tradition that hasn’t just become a way for corporations to sell us more stuff. Bonfire Night is the closest we come, and done right it’s my favourite night of the year.

Tonight, we should all be out on the streets with bangers, letting rockets off in crowded areas and nearly setting fire to ourselves with sparklers. The council should have spent months building a mountain of old pallets, hay, cardboard and lots and lots of tyres to create a monstrous, acrid inferno that boils puddles at 10 paces.

I LOVE bonfire night. I think it should be a national holiday. I have perfect childhood memories of cold nights, thick socks under wellies and freezing faces peering out from under bobble hats*.

The thing is, we don’t seem to do it properly anymore. I’m excluding the Lewes celebrations here, since they do it right. But the town is too small for the whole of Sussex to join them – let’s face it, every town should be doing something along those lines. There should be no reason why the people of Brighton have to crowd into Lewes’s narrow streets every year.

The sky should be alive with fireworks. The smell of wood fires should drift across the breeze to all corners of the country. A car journey should pass countless houses all holding their own mini displays with fires in little braziers or piles of wood and leaves burning slightly out of control, dangerously close to the trees and the conservatory. From any vantage point, you should see rockets flashing in all directions. The telly should be full of scary Firework Code safety messages and Blue Peter should feature maimed children who swallowed roman candles last year.

What does Brighton do? Bugger all. There is an (I’m told excellent) firework display at the cricket ground but these things really should not be happening behind a pay barrier, inside an arena. They should be open, public, municipal events on the beach or at Preston Park, with a fire and treacle toffee. I’m sorry, but paying £10 for corporate explosions doesn’t cut it for me. They don’t even have a fire. There’s a clue in the name, Brighton – bonFIRE night.

We’ve got another year to think this through and do it properly next time.

* – autumn was colder back then. And it was the north.

Thermae Bath Spa – 2000 years of spa tradition?

I’ve just spent a wonderful anniversary weekend in Bath. We’ve both visited Bath many times before, but neither of us had been inside the new, multi-million pound spa centre and so we booked to spend all afternoon there on the day of our anniversary.

First, the good. The steam rooms are wonderful – four large glass cylinders, with a central rainfall shower which allows several people to shower at once. Each of the cylindrical steam rooms is scented differently, for example Eucalyptus in one or Lavendar in another. Though we could only really smell anything in the Eucalyptus and Mint one. The ends of the room feature a series of foot baths, circular sinks you can sit in and fill with spa water to your liking then switch on the air streams for a bubbly foot treat. It is the nicest and best designed area of the spa.

There are also two sets of showers – hot and cold – weirdly identified with laminated pieces of A4 that are starting to decay in the heat and humidity. This air of not quite being as 5-star as they’d claim continues with the globules of mould growing on the sealant between the panels of glass that form the steam rooms.

On the roof is another triumph, the open air pool with wonderful views across to the Abbey. The pool is deep enough to swim if you feel energetic. We didn’t, and bobbed around the bubble jets and massage fountain. We returned to the roof for sunset, where the biggest problem of the spa presented itself – the water is simply not hot enough.

The rooftop pool is barely above 28ºC by my rough guess, which is pleasant enough during the day but far too cold as the sun sets on an Autumnal afternoon. You don’t get the billowing steam rising off the water as you do in the Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik! We were glad to get out.

In the lower ground floor of the spa is the other pool, the Minerva bath. This is a bland, pale white area from the textbook of inoffensive architecture. It’s a real missed opportunity to create some sort of aethestic or emotional link to the Roman spa a dozen metres away. Instead, they’ve created something not dissimilar to a distinctly average hotel. How wonderful would it have been to step into a modern take on the Roman baths, with a nod to the past reminding you you’re doing exactly what has been done here for 2000 years?

The water in the Minerva bath is a bit on the chilly side too.

Unlike any other spa in Europe, there are no hot pools or hot jacuzzis. Usually there is choice of small pools at 25º, 30º and 35ºC to relax in, with a large, cooler swimming pool to swim in. At the Thermae Bath Spa there are just the two tepid swimming pools.

The building itself is also too cold. You should be able to get out of the pool and be comfortable in the ambient temperature. But even in our robes we were shivering as we moved between floors.

The spring beneath the city pumps out 1,000,000 litres of water a day, at a temperature of 47ºC. So there’s really no excuse for the air and the water to be too cold. It can’t be a safety issue, as the foot baths allow you to scald yourself with hot water should you so wish.

There are also no saunas, which the Romans wouldn’t have contemplated by the modern designers obviously felt superfluous.

We booked an aromatherapy massage, which was nice enough. But the design of the treatment area was also disappointing – cold, white and a little clinical, where it should’ve been warm, cosy, sumptuous and inviting.

Whilst it’s worth a visit for the fabulous steam rooms and the magnificent (if a little small) rooftop pool, it’s hard to call it a world-class spa and I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed. The bog-standard municipal spas in Hungary and Iceland are much cheaper and much better, thanks to the hot water and convival, social atmosphere. The five-star spa attached to our hotel in Budapest was magnificent.

Perhaps we’ve just lost the spa tradition in this country. But it doesn’t help when we’re inexplicably denied proper hot spring water.

There’s the distinct feeling that the designers did the minimum they had to, to fix the strange anomaly of there being no spa in Bath. But it’s a missed opportunity. In the end, the UK’s only natural hot spa is a pale imitation of what the Roman’s had a couple of centuries ago and can’t compete with anything the rest of the world has to offer.

Thomson(fly) Finally Pay Up

Thomsonfly have finally paid up for ruining our honeymoon flights, by squeezing us into the back of cattle class even though we’d paid for extra legroom.

It took 11 months, 4 letters to Thomson, 4 letters to the Air Transport Users Council and ultimately some legal threats for them to finally send us a cheque for £100.

They fought hard and clearly would rather spent time and money rebuffing complaints than actually trying to make amends or keep customers happy.

I can only say this:
Thomson are the worst airline I’ve flown with and have the worst customer service of any company I’ve ever dealt with. Do not ever fly with them. They deserve to go to the wall.

Kill All Tube Staff

I’m not an unreasonable man. I advocate killing only the tube staff who can’t adequately answer the following questions:

1. Every night at around 6pm at Holborn, you have to lock passengers out of the station because the platforms are dangerously packed. Given it happens daily, you must have a plan, what is it?

(Anyone who talks of future investment in new trains/tracks etc sees their pet die first, before I pull the trigger. I want tomorrows journey to be bareable.)

2. Passengers arriving at the southbound Victoria line at Oxford Circus after 5.50pm have to fight for platform space and will be unable to board the first train that comes in. This is replicated across the network, day after day. If you’re unlucky it starts at 5.30pm. What’s the plan here?

3. At rush hour, when train frequency drops below 1 train every 2 minutes, platforms get dangerously busy and it takes 4 or 5 trains before passengers can squeeze on. What’s your plan in getting trains every two minutes, every day without fail?

(Anyone who says “we’re installing new signalling” gets to choose a family member to die with them – this isn’t a good answer, because I KNOW it’s possible to run them every two minutes with existing equipment. I’ve seen it happen.)

4. Why can’t I have money back for you insulting me with your service 3 days out of 5, for which I pay hundreds of pounds and rising?

I admit these questions are a mere formality before the trigger is pulled, as none of the dickheads running the system have single fucking clue.

God Is Great

I just saw the following tweet on the Twitter trends feed:

“Major Breakthrough in cancer research is trending topics! If cancer was to be eradicated, that would be the greatest gift from our God!”

Now, call me a heathen, but what kind of God would visit cancer upon us in all it’s myriad forms, only to gift us the cure a couple of millenia later?!

Rail Enquiries, Rip-Offs and Belligerence

UPDATE: Since this post has been getting a trickle of hits every week since I wrote it back in April, here’s a little update.

Crosscountry Rail, one of the rail companies, have just launched their own iPhone app. It has a full journey planner, timetables, station arrivals and departures with platforms, local maps and everything else you might need. It’s also location-aware so you can find your nearest station.

It’s also completely FREE, thus proving that National Rail Enquiries are a bunch of monopoly-abusing rip-off merchants. Search in the iTunes App Store for Train Search.

As a pleasing aside, the Office of the Rail Regulator are looking into the many, many complaints about the NRE application, their legal threats to competitors and whether they abused their monopoly position.

Now, the original post….

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Dear National Rail Enquiries,

I think it’s absolutely disgusting that you’re charging £5 for your iPhone app, having shut down the competition.

The MyRail Lite app was fast and accurate and a joy to use, but most of all FREE. The information provided is free on your website, where I will get it in future (on my iPhone), why make us pay for a front-end to that same information.

Why are you ripping us off? I suppose as a UK rail company you simply have no concept of service – it really is all about money and profit and screw the long-suffering travelling public.

Labouring the Point

The Labour Party conference is in town.

That means a ‘ring of steel’ preventing us using our own seafront. The helicopter has been hovering for the past two days and in the run-up police have been swooping on cars driving into the city. There was even a news report that everyone living within a mile of the conference centre was getting a visit from Mr Plod. Just to check they’re not Osama Bin Laden, or something.

Of course, the Labour Party aren’t paying for all this. Us local taxpayers are – and we get locked out of our own city as a thank you.

It’s claimed that they bring in money to the local economy, so shall I expect to see Harman and Brown shopping for quirky gifts in the North Laine? Maybe they’ll pop to BomBanes for a plate of sausages at a magic table? Or will they be spotted doing karaoke in Lucky Voice? Perhaps we’ll see Mandelsohn staggering out of the Bulldog, and Prescott balls-deep in some skank round the back of Kulture?

More likely, being the party of the working man, they’ll stay behind their security cordon for a few days, before being chauffeur-driven back to Whitehall.

Unsurprisingly, there’s not a huge number of protests planned. I would join one of them if there was. But what would we protest about?

Iraq? Over and forgotten about, despite a great number of the attendees being war criminals.

The NHS? Privatisation continues apace. They won’t listen.

Cuts to public services? Taxes for the rich and redistribution of wealth after Labour have overseen the widening of the rich-poor divide? How about a curb on bankers’ bonuses? Constant infringement of our civil liberties in the name of a vague threat? HA!

Not only would the protests go un-noticed, since we’d be kept safely behind barries under threat of anti-terror legislation, and this shower of shite will be kicked out of power in a few months anyway.

So, what’s the point?

A few years ago, I was walking back from Sainsbury’s, past St Peter’s Church. There were half a dozen police outside but I didn’t stop to watch. I found out later that it was Blair, in town for the conference and popping into a church service. I wish I’d known – I had half a dozen eggs in my bag that could’ve been flung his way.

Can you imagine the utter futility of egging Brown?!

Twitterquette and Sharing Stuff

What’s the correct, well-mannered and easiest way to share stuff online?

I’m now communicating with more people in more ways than ever before, via email, Twitter, Facebook, and this blog. So what’s the best way to share stuff?

Email is easy enough, if there’s a link I think one person in particular would enjoy.

But the others have me puzzling. I use Twitterfeed to push blog posts, things I add to Delicious and things I share on Google Reader out to my Twitter feed. And all three get picked up and posted into Facebook.

But since a lot of links might come in via someone on Twitter, the correct Twitter etiquette is to re-tweet including their name. Which means to share it widely, I’d have to retweet on Twitter and add it manually to Facebook. A pain in the arse, if not impossible, if I’m on my iPhone.

I’m sure that’s not the interconnected Web2.0 way of doing things.

I also have an issue with delicious: when it’s feed is picked up by Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else, my comments aren’t included. Google Reader’s share includes notes but you can’t change or amend the link title (annoying if it’s “NewsWeb | World News | China | Man With Two Heads Found Living In Yoghurt Pot” or something – a whole tweet gone!)

So:
1. Does anyone know a better way to autoshare links between Facebook and Twitter, that will include my comments in both? And also that has a Safari iPhone bookmarklet?

2. Is it really awful of me to automatically feed Twitter with a link instead of retweeting? Coz it’s much easier… (hmm, maybe I could include the original name in my comments if I get number 1 answered)

Puffin Ridiculous

The new ‘Puffin’ pedestrian crossings are rubbish.

They’ve replaced the old style (push a button on the post, look across the road to the signal) with a combined push button and signal unit on the post at the side of the pavement. The Department of Transport expained to me that:

1. The signal is positioned so you look in the direction of the on-coming traffic.

2. The new unit incorporates ‘pedestrian scanning’ so it knows how many people are crossing and how quickly they’re going. It also knows if there’s no-one there and cancels the button-push.

3. The signals no longer have a flashing green man and flashing amber light.

Apparently the flashing green man and amber light is the biggie: it was, I’m told, ‘confusing’ despite having been in use for about 50 years. Now, the signal can turn red even while people are cross in order to stop more people from stepping out, but at the same time it holds the cars on red until the people already on the road are safely to the other side. The reason the signal has been moved to the pavement is so that people can’t see it while they cross – so they don’t panic when it turns red when they’re only halfway. The crossing is intelligent and will only release the green signal for cars when everyone is safely across.

This is all well and good, except for several problems. Firstly, if there is one other person standing close to the signal box, others can’t see it.

Secondly, the position of the signal encourages you to look to your right for traffic, yet halfway across you’ll meet traffic coming from the left. On the old crossings, you looked across the road and were taught to look both ways.

The flashing signals were ‘confusing’ yet the DfT also told me that any teething problems with the new crossings were because of the change and people not being used to them. In other words, people are confused by them! Given that there are thousands of older crossings with flashing signals, people still need to be taught about what the signals mean. But people also need to be taught how the new signals work – in fact, Brighton Council have put up a large instructional sign at the North St – St. James St – Old Steine crossings to explain them!

I make that TWO educational campaigns needed, plus the cost of the new signals rather than one road safety campaign to tell idiots what a flashing light means.

Finally, the placement of the new signal boxes is incredibly confusing at multiple crossings. Take a look at the photo. As you walk up the street, there’s a crossing box straight in front of you (the one to the left of the picture), next to a crossing point.

If that signal is green, can you keep walking straight ahead to cross the road?

I had to stop and think about it for a minute, looking round at the four different crossing points and what each of the signals related to. After a minute or two, I worked it out. The answer is NO. If the signal straight ahead is green, you cannot cross the road. In fact, it’s the signal round the corner on the right of the photo that related to that crossing.

The one straight ahead is for the crossing to the left, if you were turning to cross the road you were walking along. However, the button and the signal are marooned on that corner, with no clear indication as to what it’s for. Imagine if someone was standing between you and the signal box on the right. The only signal you’d see is the one in front of you, which might be showing green.

Clearly, these new crossings have been designed by committee. Probably a committee of people who drive everywhere.

Never Use Airport Angel

I got Airport Angel membership with my bank last year. They give you access to airport lounges (for a fee) which seems like a good deal.

However, they’re one of the most irritating and incompetent companies I’ve ever had to deal with.

This month, my good friends MattandDebz left to go travelling with the plan to end up living in Australia. As a send off, a group of us got together to buy them Airport Angel membership. They’re both flash gits, so we thought they’d enjoy relaxing in lounges and not mixing with the proles.

Two weeks before they left, I spoke to a senior person at Airport Angel to ensure that a single membership would cover them both, to work out how we could go about booking them into lounges without them knowing and to iron out a few details. She even went in to change the email address after I signed up so that my friends wouldn’t get emails that would give the game away.

The biggest problem was getting the membership card to them – they were leaving in 13 days. The lady promised me she would personally intercept the card from manufacturing and post it out within a week or so.

It didn’t happen. My friends had enough to worry about, and didn’t realise until they got to the airport to fly out to Singapore and tried to get into the lounge. However, they did have a window of 10 days in Singapore in which we could DHL a card to them.

I contacted Airport Angel this morning, and a helpful chap said he’d get a new card made today and post it to me. I could then DHL it to my friends. He also said they’d refund the passes that they couldn’t use, so I could book a couple more for them on the next leg of their trip.

Then I got a phone call.

No, actually. They can’t send the card to someone else. Data Protection, innit.

I asked could they send it to Debs at my address?

No. Data Protection, innit.

I said I’d log in as Debs and change the address details.

No. It can only go to the original address.

The lady said that Debs needed to authorise them to do anything. I pointed out that I could get any woman in the world to phone them, give all the same details that I’ve got and they wouldn’t know whether it was Debs or not. I pointed out that they only knew I wasn’t Debs because I’m a bloke.

She said I was on very dodgy ground even discussing that. Data Protection, innit.

I pointed out that they could do whatever the hell they liked to keep two customers happy. That in these circumstances, clearly the spirit of the Data Protection Act wasn’t being breached because I’d set the account up and paid for it in the first place, that I had all the account details and to all intents and purposes as far as they’re concerned I was the account holder, even though my name isn’t Debs. It was even under my email address until they changed it for me! I also pointed out that no-one would even know about this incredibly minor breach to the Data Protection Act, since it’s what the account holder wanted.

The lady said she was very sorry. Though, of course, not actually sorry enough to help.

Then came the killer blow. Because I’d signed up for an account in someone else’s name, I’d ticked a box accepting Terms and Conditions in their name too. And that’s illegal!

I pointed out that a senior person at Airport Angel knew full well what I was doing, as I’d had two or three detailed conversations with her to discuss it.

I told them that I didn’t know when my friends would next be on email to contact them and that even if I got the authorisation in 24 hours, it’d still mean I probably wouldn’t get the card until Friday, meaning I wouldn’t be able to arrange DHL in time.

So I asked could I cancel the whole thing.

Nope. Apparently I couldn’t. Data Protection, innit.

As it’s not my account, I need authorisation from the account holder to cancel. Even though it’s my credit card!

Shower of jobsworth wankers.

PS – I tried to use my own membership in Cancun last year. The people on the lounge had heard of Airport Angel, but been told by management not to let anyone in as the agreements weren’t in place. I can only speculate that Airport Angel were advertising lounges that they hadn’t go fully on-board. Though at the time, Airport Angel denied this but couldn’t explain why I’d been refused entry.