Musings of a Muppet

For crying out loud, there is a simple way to stop kids drinking alcohol at every chance they get – ban alcopops!

Yes it’s a draconian measure but let’s face it, when I was a kid I was allowed the odd glass of wine or beer but I didn’t like the taste! That’s why my generation and older used to start on cider (which gives you a gives you a stinking hangover) or something like Archers and lemonade or vodka and orange – which was expensive.

Look at the facts – when I was a teenager 15 odd years ago, I didn’t go and get rat-arsed every night (I only ever really drank at parties – and even then, only when I was in the 6th form). I didn’t even start to like beer or wine until my late teens when I was work, and I hated red wine until my early to mid twenties.

The fact is, that if there are cheap, sweet, alcoholic drinks available, teenagers will be more inclined to drink than if only wine, beer, cider and spirits were available.

Yes there will always be the kids who think it’s clever to drink a litre of Vodka in a few hours – they have always existed.

Long journeys start with small steps, so lets start by stopping the kids who only want to drink alcopops and wouldn’t touch ‘grown up’ alcohol. In fact, if you get rid of alcopops, you would probably get rid of a lot of the idiots who wander the streets completely off their faces on a Friday and Saturday night.

Don’t advise against kids drinking at home in a controlled environment. Kids who have responsible parents will then lose the chance of learning to drink responsibly.

Finally, setting another barrier or rule just gives kids more reason to rebel and break that rule – it may have the effect of encouraging even younger kids to drink. The age limit for drinking is 18 unless you are in your own home and that is how it should stay.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7855430.stm

Reports like this really wind me up – they make it sound like premium prices for going away in the school holidays is suddenly a new phenomenon. It has always been like this and if holidays are so important to you then maybe you shouldn’t have kids.

For christ’s sake – what’s wrong with going camping if holidays abroad and to Centre Parcs are too expensive.

I am fed up with parents who think that luxuries like this are a right – grow up and learn to enjoy being with your kids – something some parents never get the opportunity to do.

And so another panto has been performed and I can go back to worrying about my websites and forget all the words I learnt last week for the show!

I was suprised at my lack of nerves for Thursday and Friday nights, although a bug on Saturday which left me throwing up an hour before curtain up on the matinee was not fun! Still, I battled through – and battled was the word! I don’t think we’ve ever had a harder to please matinee audience. I never enjoy the matinee anyway, but the flying tummy and overpowering headache really didn’t help!

Still, once I got to the interval of the evening performance, I was well in the swing of things – having done a bit of onstage advertising for SpiderServe!

All in all, it was a good and well received panto – although a touch long at nearly 3 hours on Saturday night.

I’m off for a well earned rest now!

And I have completed another website!

This one is actually one I’m being paid for! Check out the new play scripts website for Janet Smith!

We had to take the shirt I bought James back to Next after Christmas – he won’t thank me for saying so, but we needed to exchange it for another size!

I was asked to pay £0.39 due to VAT allegedly having gone back up to 17.5%. I pointed out it was a straight swap so why should I have to pay extra, but apparently the computer never lies. So, I paid the offending 39p.

However, I did decide to complain – not least because VAT hadn’t gone back up to 17.5%.

I received a reply to my email in about 3 working days – they asked for a photocopy of the receipt, or the receipt number which I duly provided. I was told they would look into it and be in touch shortly. Approximately 1 week later I received a letter explaining what had happened and how it shouldn’t have…they also enclosed a £5.00 gift card.

I would like to say congratulations to Next on an excellent customer services department – speedy, no effort for me and they clearly recognise the importance of customer loyalty.

What a croc of shit UPS are… James was promised a parcel would be delivered today via Royal Mail – no probs with that as we can pick it up tomorrow from the Post Office.

Only, the parcel came via UPS. So, we call to find out what time they are open tomorrow – sorry but you have to pre-arrange it before 5pm on Friday. But we didn’t get the message until we arrived home at 6:30. Well we can try and re-deliver on Monday. But we work so no-one will be here. Well you can pick it up before 6:30pm during the week. No we can’t – we work and won’t get there in time.

Their solution was to suggest we wait until next Saturday.

This company is a joke and we cannot believe how bad their customer services are. I will NEVER use UPS as they cannot understand a simple concept that people work.

I have been a busy bee once again and have completed two new websites over the holiday! They are both directory websites – one is a general submission website and the other is a niche amateur theatre directory.

Have a look at free human edited website directory and free amateur theatre website directory.

If further proof were required to show how bad the AOL service is, just have a look at this.

AOL messes up a perfectly good online storage services

AOL as an ISP block perfectly valid email addresses that make it impossible for their friends to contact them. They took over Netscape and stopped developing it, and now they have taken over a well recognised and trused online storage service and ruined it.

Please people, understand that just because your PC comes with AOL as a default service does NOT mean you have to use it. There are much better alternatives out there – please use them and stop AOL from ruining your online experiences.

With all the fuss about childhood obesity, I worry a little that some kids will be targeted who don’t need to be.

I was a chunky kid – to the point that people wouldn’t know it was me in photos unless I told them. I ate healthily as my mum always made meals from scratch, and I wasn’t allowed loads of junk food. At the age of about 4 all the weight dropped off. These days, I would have been classified as obese and would be one of the kids the government is now targeting.

I see the solution as a fairly simple one – if you want kids, you have a duty as the parents to look after them properly. That means that for the formative years of their lives, you put them before yourself. So if making your kids a proper meal means you can’t do something you want to do for yourself, then that’s just tough.

However, I do think the government needs to step in and bring down the prices at council run leisure centres – it costs nearly a tenner to hire a badminton court for 45 minutes at Riverside and that is not an affordable amount for kids or adults.