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News May 2013

Published on 30 May 2013  | Download | back to previous

I am always accused by family and friends of doing a pretty good impersonation of Steve Wright's Mr Angry.

I think I have many good reasons to feel this way.

The UK is sometimes a great place to live but other times it beggars belief what our elected officials are responsible for.
There are many contentious issues that I could and do disagree with but in these PC times making comments on these issues immediately makes you guilty of the same offence as the accused and or in court for libel. I wonder if we have lost the right of free speech because of social media?
You do not have to be guilty anymore to have your life ruined, just get mentioned in a tweet.
Anyway here are three things that are causing my blood to boil this week:

Issue 1
The UK Tax people, Her Majesties Revenue and Customs
TCRM is a typical small business, it pays PAYE, NI Contributions, VAT, we need to issue P45's P60's etc. HMRC recently changed the system to force us to send the information electronically (which we have done for some time) so the software needed to be updated. We duly attempted the update and it failed. No problem, we know what we are doing so tried it on another machine, still failed, tried a full deinstall / reinstall and it still failed. Time for the helpdesk, logged a call and that is where the story has stopped. We have had an open call with HMRC for over three weeks. They have even said over the phone that we do not need to worry about paying our TAX until the software is installed. HMRC have not even contacted us to look at the problem so effectively nil progress.

Issue 2
The Police.
This story is true, I heard the lawyer describing the story on the Jeremy Vine show.

"A lawyer has told how he was forced to turn detective to track down a suspected iPad thief in another county - after police repeatedly refused to investigate.
Commercial litigation partner Dean Parnell, 45, was enjoying a night out at the busy Bacchus Bar in Birmingham city centre when someone swiped the hand-held computer on Friday.
Within an hour the quick-thinking solicitor had traced the iPad to four possible addresses in Water Orton some 10 miles away in north Warwickshire, thanks to an Apple tracking device.
But when he raced to nearby Steelhouse Lane Police station to urge officers to act on his information, he says he was told no-one was available until the following day."

Full story is here, http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/west-midlands-police-refused-help-3915518.

This leads me on to something I mentioned on Facebook this week
Issue 3
Police and Crime Commissioner.
Did you know the police and crime commissioner in South Wales now has a staff of 12 and two deputies?
If we ever have the bad luck to be burgled, attacked etc at least we will have a few pen pushers to collate the statistics and tell us how things are improving.
Why do we put up with more and more bureaucracy, is this country out of control or is it me?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22624096

I am now going to go and lie down for a while.

Have a great month.