What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Here's two situations that have arisen in our family over the course of the last few weeks.

Firstly, both my stepson and daughter had expensive holidays booked and paid for prior to the crisis developing. In both cases we are talking about thousands of pounds - in the latter in the region of five thousand. Both have had their holidays cancelled and neither have had a refund .......indeed in my stepdaughters case she hasn't even been able to contact the company she booked with. Yet unbelievably, flight companies and holiday booking firms are still taking bookings as though there is no problems to be considered at all. (More crazily, people are still making them as well!)

My son in law ordered two sun-loungers from a company on-line and was pleased when they arrived - only to discover that instead of said loungers he had been sent a garden swing-seat. Phoning the company to request that the item they had delivered was collected and the correct ones supplied, he was told that the company had no availability on the products he had paid for. To add insult to injury, they told him that because of the crisis they were not allowed to take collection of the item that had been supplied (either in deliberate replacement or by error - my son in law was unable to establish this) and that further, he would not be receiving a refund on the products he had paid for, but had failed to receive.

Has it really come to this? That because of this damn bug all the consumer laws and rights that have ever been have been swept out of the window? That companies the length and breadth of the country - damnit, the world - can fleece and rob people of their hard earned money, can simply make up new rules as they go along, with no-one so much as saying nay to them? Is this the face of the "new normal" that we may expect from this day forward?

[Sorus]

Terrible customer service at best, illegal at worst. I understand why they can't take the wrong items back, but they should be obligated to make it right.

Many companies are struggling to survive. It'd be nice to think that the ones that treat their customers (and employees!) badly will be subjected to scrutiny and sanctions and all that when the dust settles. Social media and whatnot can have a huge effect on PR, and nobody wants to be under that spotlight. That doesn't mean they will make smart choices.

[Skyweir]

Sorus is dead right ... they definitely wont relish bad PR ... he should provide his feedback AND his story via social media and shame them into action.

Absolutely illegal ... its not the product he paid for .. he should be compensated for THEIR error AND the incapability and incompetence.

Id be spreading that news.

No they cannot hide behind the virus for their lack.

And no this is not something to be accepted as a new norm. THIS is NOT what its come to Pete, not at all.

I think your point about ... fatigue plays in here. Dont ACCEPT this shit. When we all throw our hands up and surrender our future to a system of abuse and exploitation we all lose.

Dont do it. Dont surrender. Dont be defeated by shit like this.

We have a consumer watch dog that you can report shit like this to ... you MUST have something similar.

A consumer affairs department or a consumer protection ombudsman ... report it to them. Here they would contact the supplier and make them do something ... reimburse, etc.

[Kizza]

The karma wheel turns. Those buggers stuffing you around will have to eat their own shit sandwich.
I agree with the consumer affairs avenue. Do that. If you do not then they win. Let them know you plan to do it first and ask who owns the place as well. So they get a last shot to make it right.

Couple of weeks and I will be back in the office I hope. These Zoom meetings with a Siamese cat talking its head off in the background is a little unprofessional.

Hey Av, sorry about your cat mate.

[Kizza]

Sitting in this tin can has become so passe.
The traffic is returning to the major capitals here. I was reminded that I used to hate having to drive home through traffic.
Well a drive in some traffic, with all the milestones reminding me of being "almost home" would be very welcome right now.
Working from home, the lines are completely blurred in terms of when to start and when to stop. I think I am doing as many hours as I ever have!!

[peter]

Oh - have no fear! My lot are very clued up in respect of the use of social media as a platform for exerting pressure in cases like this. They will leave no stone unturned in their attempts to get these things sorted - but in the case of holiday reimbursement, companies that are on the verge of throwing in the towel have probably gone beyond the point where adverse publicity in going to effect them. Still, we live in hope!

What happened to your cat Av? Sounds ominous - here's hoping it isn't anything too bad?

[Avatar]

Hey Av, sorry about your cat mate.

No worries man, they think it'll end up all right, albeit with a hefty price tag.

@Pete if you read the "how do you feel" thread, (as Kizza obviously does, despite only posting in here ) you'd know.

Long story short, she got her leg mangled somehow, and is in for surgery, (hopefully today) to fix it up, poor little thing. Can't even visit her because of lockdown.

--A

[peter]

Point taken Av! I tend to come straight in from email links and then go straight back out the same way. It's only when there's a dearth of responses to deal with that I foray out into general browsing - it's a time thing more than anything I guess.

But "Ouch" in respect of the cat. Have no fear however: I've seen injuries that you would not believe sort themselves out given time and conditions to do so. The medical phrase for such a process is for the tissue to 'organise'. At worst I went to a farm where a similar accident had happened to a feral cat and it had healed after a fashion on it's own without treatment and to the cat's minimal future detriment. (Harsh story, but alas the rural farming community in South West England is not noted for its sympathetic disposition and I suppose that the farmer would have had a devils own job of capturing the cat; enough in his eyes that he was putting pails of milk down for the colony.)

On another occasion in our practice, we had a cat brought in who had been pulled under a car along a road, and the 'planing' effect of the road surface had been sufficient to shave the leg in half, lengthways, such that the cat presented with a limb that looked for all the world like it had been sectioned lengthways - bone and all - in order to photograph it for a histological textbook! The owners would not stand to see the leg removed and so the cat was treated for shock and pain, given antibiotics and placed in a cage with a light dressing over the leg. Three months later the leg had organised into a perfectly sound limb to return to the owners with. I would never have believed it possible if I had not seen it with my own eyes. Trust me; your cat will be fine. It's your wallet that will need the caring for!

[Avatar]

Yeah, they're resilient little buggers.

Surgery went well and they were able to repair the ligament, and close a lot of the soft tissue wounding, but they had to mount a couple pins and a frame to support and immobilise the joint while everything heals. The de-gloved areas are going to be treated as open wounds for now, but the doc was confident everything was looking good I'm glad to say.

The wallet indeed will suffer, but worth every cent to see her right.

(I never bother with "subscribing" or email alerts or anything...I just arrive, skim which topics have been updated and reply as interest dictates. )

--A

[peter]

How much degloving? The areas will 'granulate' over - but that's a lengthy process.

[Kizza]

I think people are finding it tougher than I had anticipated.
The drivers in traffic who seem to be off in another world, ranging from wandering distraction to serious rage, are not mixing very well with each other.
Keep your arms inside the car people!

[peter]

Dr Arnold of Rugby School fame was clearly labouring under a high level of expectations on him from an early age. At three years old as reward for "proficiency in his studies" (as related by Lyton Strachey in Eminent Victorians) his parents gave him a full twenty four volume set of Smollett's History of England.

[Skyweir]

Wow thats rather extraordinary

Today follows a day of standing up for a fellow humans dignity against a member of my local community. An awkward situation to be in ... but one I knew was on the cards.

But right is right and fairs fair.

Now I await the inevitable fall out

[Avatar]

How much degloving? The areas will 'granulate' over - but that's a lengthy process.

Eh, not sure to be honest. Initially indicated it was relatively extensive, (for the site), but later said he'd been able to close up more than he thought he would.

(Degloving is a very scary thing for people who climb...the reason you shouldn't climb while wearing rings, or use fixed bolts as finger-holds. I have seen some ugly examples of injury from it...)

--A

[peter]

Absolutely! Knew a girl who slipped off a step ladder and hooked her wedding ring on a hook as she fell. It stripped her finger and it had subsequently to be amputated. The surgeon did a fantastic job of removing a V shaped wedge from her hand and pulling the sides together. It was, as can be imagined, very traumatic for her.

Ah yes skin - the vets in the practice had a saying when dealing with it. "It'll stretch a mile before it'll tear an inch!"

[peter]

Read article in The Guardian earlier suggesting that Johnson's popularity with his heartland support base may be beginning to fray and could conceivably evaporate, as did Jim Callahan's, with remarkable rapidity if he isn't seen to be 'getting a grip' fairly soon. Ordinarily I would put this down to hope on the part of an anti-Johnson newspaper but without much substance behind it, but for the following thing.

Yesterday I went out with my wife for a walk. We walked around the edges of a closed National Trust property whose beautiful gardens have spread beyond its boarders to line a woodland walk that we were taking. On our perambulation, we encountered a lady 'of a certain age' in her tweed skirt and brogues, who stopped at a distance to pass the time of day. She pontificated about "when is it all going to end?" and then followed up by saying that she had voted for Johnson in the election, but thought that since his illness he seemed to have "lost it".

In my experience, we humans tend to act and think in herds. I'm betting that what this lady was expressing as a single point of view, is, as the Guardian suggests, being thought in living rooms and kitchens up and down the land.

[Avatar]

Well, you know the saying: What one person says aloud, ten whisper and a hundred think...

Cat is home and as well as can be. Back to the vet today for bandage changes. She's off her food though and fighting like hell on the anti-biotics. Built a holding pen in my cupboard for her. Liveliest she's been yet is when trying to break out of it. Bloody cats.

--A

[Kizza]

BLOODY CATS.
One of the siamese - Hades - is deaf. I am sure of it anyway.
My wife thinks I am wrong and I could be but too many signs show he is not hearing anything well enough.
One bad trait is that he goes into the tiled bathroom and sits in the bathtub and howlmeows his head off (I reckon he is trying to hear himself) ..
The sound is a vibrating scream. I dunno if I should laugh or shout.

Foxes dont like chilli garlic spray. It worked!
They have up and "Runnoft"!!

[Skyweir]

Bloody cats lol

Well its good shes feeling better.

[peter]

When Covid-19 first hit the world it was touted for its egalitarian principles, its non-discrimatory nature, prepared as it was to strike any and all, paying no regard to race or colour, religion or creed, wealth or social status. Of course it turns out not to be as simple as that. As the months have passed, evidence has accumulated, first that people of the BAME community seemed to be disproportionately being hit, and since then other groups such as people from low income households, smokers, the overweight and the diabetic have been added to the elderly as more likely to succumb if infected. In fact, all round the disease seems typically adept at singling out 'the usual suspects' upon which to lavish its attention - and now when you look at it, it seems that the Government is prepared to throw its weight in behind the virus, heaping insult on top of injury, when it comes to the manner in which the lockdown is to be eased.

Nonsense you might say, and I'm sure you're right - but if it were trying to pull off that kind of stunt it could hardly have planned it better. Let's take sports as an example. In the UK certain sports have been given a tentative okay for resumption and they are (wait for it) golf, tennis and fishing. Still very much off the cards are football, darts and any other team games that the working class tend to follow. On other leisure activities, walking in National Trust parks, back on, going to the pub, a definite no-no.
And take the work part of the easing; here we see the 'thinking' jobs - those that are pursued in front of a screen (not exactly your hands on working mans jobs) being encouraged to sit the thing out at home while the lower skilled and trade jobs are encouraged to 'get back to work' often via transport systems where they must take their chances in respect of the possibility of social distancing or in working places where it is frankly impossible. Even the reopening of the schools has a class division aspect to it; it is absolutely the case that it will be the children of the lower end of the demographic that will be forced into the experimental testing ground of resuming education, while for those of the middle and upper classes, where the parents are either working from home or where the better means exist for their young to persue alternative means of education, be it via better on-line availability or by better access to safe conditions at the higher end schools, the risk will be proportionately lower.

So it would seem that Covid-19, like many diseases before it, knows exactly where to brandish the shit end of the stick when it comes to spreading its charms and the Government, while no doubt being sorry that the thing is abroad at all, can be at least somewhat heartened that its own share of the electorate can perhaps be spared the worst.