{"id":559,"date":"2005-11-28T20:55:15","date_gmt":"2005-11-28T20:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/bologs\/vng\/passage-of-shite\/"},"modified":"2005-11-28T20:55:15","modified_gmt":"2005-11-28T20:55:15","slug":"passage-of-shite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/passage-of-shite\/","title":{"rendered":"Passage of shite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BT got the ADSL back up up by half ten last night. Being a sad old git, I was tucked up in bed by then of course.  No-one could complain that it was fixed out of hours on a Sunday&#8230;unless it was broken in the first place, 14 hours earlier, by sheer stupidity. Anyway, here&#8217;s a great tip I picked up from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blagger.com\/db4\/company_id\/390\/companyname\/BT.html\" target=\"_new\">blagger.com<\/a>, you can guarantee talking to a human at BT by calling <i>020 7356 5000!<\/i> I was so excited when I heard this that I called on a sunday evening&#8230;and a HUMAN answered! Woohooo! Even though she told me to ring back the next day, it was almost cathartic after so many frustrating hours talking to robots.<\/p>\n<p>BTW &#8211; I&#8217;ve found an automated telephone service <i>even more annoying than BT&#8217;s:<\/i> Parcel Force! Not only is it arsingly irritating, it&#8217;s on an expensive 0870 number <i>and<\/i> it uses voice (un)recognition!<\/p>\n<p>As the DSL was Donald yesterday, I went over to Eltham to do some work. The bus ride was your typical South East London experience, right down to the 60+ year old pissing all over the top deck, much to the dismay and annoyance of an African bloke there who really couldn&#8217;t conceal his consternation.<\/p>\n<p>I also saw a lovely old Routemaster going in the other direction. What sort of lucky tourist party could get hold of one of those ancient bits of heritage? I wondered. As it got closer, the magic words &#8220;Railway Replacement&#8221; could be seen on the front and I too nearly wet myself. These 50 year old buses, apparently too old to be in service as buses, are now back in service to assist the wreckage of our once-proud, now privatised, rail system.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The papers and TV have been obsessed with the new extended opening hours. If you&#8217;ve ever wanted to see a better example of bad journalism then pick any channel, newspaper or news-site and look for the coverage. Hours of videos, pages of pictures and long lurid descriptions of the same thing: drunk people in town centres at 3am on a sunday morning getting their arses out whilst shouting &#8220;aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrghhhhhh&#8221;. Now, I live within 15 minutes walk of the Old Kent Road. People getting pissed and violent early in the morning is <i>not<\/i> new! The reason why I don&#8217;t go out on saturday nights is because it&#8217;s <i>full<\/i> of drunk arseholes, and has been forever. The relaxation of the laws can <i>only<\/i> have a beneficial effect&#8230;.but give it a chance. You can&#8217;t change culture overnight. Give it at least a year&#8230;please! Once people realise there&#8217;s no rush they will surely calm down. I hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BT got the ADSL back up up by half ten last night. Being a sad old git, I was tucked up in bed by then of course. No-one could complain that it was fixed out of hours on a Sunday&#8230;unless it was broken in the first place, 14 hours earlier, by sheer stupidity. Anyway, here&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}