Coffee n Birmingham UK

Here's something that really pisses me off.
Kings Heath has an abundance of decent coffee bars (excluding Costa). Each one of them charge approx £1.85-£1.90 for a watery cup of coffee. You're expected to queue up for you coffee, (& sometimes take it to your table) sit at a dirty, uncleared table & then the staff have the temerity to have a container on the counter for tips!! What service have they provided to warrant a tip?! Why can't we be like they are on the Continent? Staff take your order & bring you your coffee etc..
A cup of coffee out should be a period of time to relax & savor the moment. The whole experience here is unpleasant. They won't get a tip from me I tell you that much! (apart from advice not to eat yellow snow)

That chair....

You will recall perhaps that the other day I gave vent to my spleen over the delay in me taking delivery of my £660 chair from Cousins. I reckoned that the chair was now in the possession of some Somali warlord.
Well now people, I am happy to say that I took a phone call this evening from a charming lady at Cousins furniture store telling me that the aforementioned chair will arrive on next Tuesday. When on Tuesday she wasn't able to tell me, rather she asked for me to stay in all day as its down for an "all day delivery". WTF?
I know one shouldn't look a gift horse/chair in the  mouth & all that, but do they really expect a person to hang around the house ALL DAY while they swan around the environs of Birmingham before they eventually decide ...."Oh we're near enough to Kings Heath, lets drop that miserable bastard Woolley's chair off..?"  No problem guys...I spend the day doing a bit of light dusting, grooming Charlie Coal the cat, I'll mop the kitchen, & maybe arrange all my CD's into generic classification.
I am secretly grateful though.
 I 'm grateful  to the Somalian Warlord, who took the time to order his lads to take my chair to Mogadishu docks & reload it on the next ferry bound for the UK . Fair play.

But seriously. The moral of this story is twofold.
1: Complaining & not 'standing for the 3 card trick' (as my deceased Irish Grandfather used to say that Englishmen usually did/do)
2: Heed my advise...don't shop at Cousins...I won't again. The gobshites.

The lads in Mogadishu taking my chair to the container ship give a cheery wave!

How much?????

It pays to be on the ball you know.....to keep a tag on your expenditure especially when you go out shopping at the local supermarket.
At least in down-town Wolverhampton England.

The story goes that a guy went into his local Asda supermarket, did his weekly grocery shop & paid for it with his bank debit card. No problem then.
The following month however he received his bank statement thru the post & noticed that on that shop he'd been charged £450 for one thick sliced wholemeal loaf of bread!!
Fortunately he was successful in obtaining a refund...but he'd eaten the loaf!

Two rants....God I'm angry!!!

Ok here goes.... On January 8th 2014 I splashed out in a moment of sinful extravagance £660 for a lovely leather chair. Our motivation being that it would be a lovely chair to sit & read, listen to our music & relax by the blazing open fie. 1 chair. Not a 3 piece suite or some fancy space age chair that's powered by electric motors that do everything from making you a nice cup of tea, to bringing you to a height of sexual pleasure.
So have I enjoyed the aforementioned chair?? Have I bollocks!
I have to wait 5 months for the chair to arrive from somewhere over an ocean.
Never having been one to put up with shoddy service especially when I've paid money & not received the goods, I emailed the shop, only to receive a shit for brains reply saying that they were unable to help. So my money is with Cousins furniture store gaining interest instead of being in my pocket.
Grrr......!!
I see it all now though... My chair has been made in China (where it seems bloody everything is made these days) &, en route to the UK the ship was hijacked by Somalian pirates.
I reckon that my chair now is the prized possession of a Somalian warlord who is lounging on it like jack the bleeding lad, with his Kalashnikov resting jauntily across his lap, whilst he chews a mouthful of khat.
The morale of this sorry tale???
1: Don't spend a fortune on a bloody chair. & 2: Do not by ant furniture from Cousins Furniture Store cos they don't give a flying feck about their customers as long as they take your money.

And for my next rant people:  Passwords.  Yes Password. Everyone & everything has a bloody array of password & PIN  numbers to remember. Password for your online bank, your email account, to access your bills online, your work emails, your work computer system(s), the bloody list goes on & bloody on.
Stop for a while & just count exactly how many you have to remember... & it doesn't end there....alot of sites insist that you change them every month or so.
It does my head in. As I advance in years I find that I'm unable to quickly recall all my passwords. Oh & then you're asked the answer to a security question that you may have answered about 3 years ago. WTF!!!
Give us a break you bastards!!!

Russia/Crimea-the lessons of history??

In a rigged undemocratic referendum in a Ukrainian province  Russia quietly annexed Crimea. President Putin of Russia asserts that the majority of the population are ethnic Russians & voted to return to the mother land of Russia-the same motherland that 'gave' Crimea to Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Of course the area is of important strategic importance to Russia as they base their Black Sea fleet there & the West have an interest too as that area as it borders the Aegean & Mediterranean Seas.
Now though Putin has walked in to the Crimea & the West has mealy waved some pieces of paper at Russia. Not at Putin No, but at the population of Russia. Men, women & children-Putin won't be affected by the sanctions proposed by Obama, Cameron et al.
Heard it all before??
Google Austria March 1938-' Anschluss'-Herr Hitler 'connected' with the German peoples of that country-sounds similar? Again Google the Munich Crisis September 1938- the same Herr Hitler annexed (rather was given) by the West the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia-with a 'piece of paper'. Weeks later he marched into the whole of Czechoslovakia.
It is said that he who does not heed the lessons of history is destined to repeat them. How long will it be before the whole of Ukraine will cease to exist in its present form.
I realise that the West is limited in its responses to Russian expansionism, & I'm not sure what we can do to respond to their action(s). But I think that waving bits of paper that will only affect the populace of Russia is neither right nor proper. Surely a more dynamic response directed at Russian diplomats would be more appropriate?

Putin & the Ukraine.

Russian leader Putin is a despot. He's mad-you only have to look at the man He was visible upset & angry  at the Russian ice hockey team losing to Sweden in the recent winter Olympic he probably had the entire team either shot or sent to a bloody gulag!
Now he's sent his troops into Ukraine thereby bringing about the most dangerous crisis in Europe since his countries invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Putin's action today appears to me to have close similarities to the invasion of 1968 when the then Soviet Union acted aggressively to enforce its despotic Communist control over eastern Europe. Putin, despite being 'democratically elected' (sic), is an ex KGB operative who openly ignores human rights & is clearly ready & willing to stamp out any dissension to anything that he feels is a challenge to his rule.
Russian intervention into Ukraine has been justified by him with him saying that he is "protecting the rights & safety of ethnic Russian peoples living in Ukraine...."
Now where have I heard this before?? I remember....Didn't another psychopathic despot justify his invasions of Czechoslovakia & Poland by saying the same thing some 70 odd years ago??
Come off it Putin.... We know your game.
But I guess like in 1938 the West will do bugger all except verbally condemn Putin's action's & let him swamp & swallow up Ukraine & Herr Hitler did.