UK:

Atlas brought to his knees

6

atlas shrugged Atlas brought to his knees I haven’t written a whole lot of articles recently, owing primarily to the fact that I am putting together a new design for Asifism.com and completing an accounting and small business series of articles for the new section that goes with the new design.

However, I miss publicizing how pathetic the world we live in has become, hoping invain that maybe those of us who can afford to will take a step to curb the pitiable existence or retreat from the disaster that has become society.

I have previously been very critical of Britain. Cost of living, bad customer service, miserable people, etc. etc. But what has frustrated me most about this country, especially in the city of London, is the widespread level of incompetence and plain evil in the acts of the millions of people who inhabit the streets of London.

For those of you who are familiar with Ayn Rand, her philosophy of objectivism, and her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged, you may agree with me when I say that it is highly likely that Ayn Rand is looking down upon those of us who have an IQ of more than 50 with a cynical smile over her face suggesting, if not saying,”I told you so.” Her depiction of the world, and in specific New York City in Atlas Shrugged, so accurately depicts the current state of affairs in present day London (and possibly the rest of the world) that it is sadly fascinating.

What finally prompted me to write this article is the incident in London where an incompetent London Borough Council and its single digit IQ employees gave away a 7 bedroom GBP 12,000 per month house to a single Afghan mother with seven children with a net compensation of GBP 170,000 per year. To top all this off, the mother of 7 equated this waste of hard earned taxpayer money to winning the lottery and declaring it her right to have this house, with her probably shame of a son stating they had to turn down other houses because he needed room to park his car. Worst yet, this is a house that the Council should have been paying GBP 4,000 per month for, but because of their plain stupidity (the low IQ comes to mind here), they ended up paying some landlord GBP 12k per month.

In all fairness, in a society and city where people have some form integrity, the council employees should be dragged out to make an example of, the Afghan family should moved into a 1 or 2 bed council flat (with the sons put to work) and the landlord should be made to pay the GBP 8,000+ rent plus interest back to the council for extortion. But of course, all that would happen in a society where integrity and morality were important. In London, and in the UK, apparently, they are important no more.

Parliament is voting on whether parents should be allowed to slap their children. What a world! The police in this country is afraid of dealing with the children, the teachers in schools are petrified of children, and now, even the parents are not allowed to discipline them. Does anyone else see a problem here? This is supposed to be a first world country that others are supposed to look up to, yet the young and future of this country seems to lie in peril, crime, racism, and incompetence.

It is true, as was seen in Atlas Shrugged, that weight of the world, or the weight of any one society, is carried by the few in that society who really know what they are doing. 99% of the people are simply coasting along, mooching off of others, fighting, stealing, simply living. It is the 1% that strive to make a difference, and it is that 1% that makes the world go round and makes sure that the economy keeps ticking and 99% of the slack is able to eat three meals a day.

Today, the world has come to the point where politicians make meaningless statements in fancy language without saying anything of substance or dealing with any of the issues at hand. Take the presidential debate in the USA; it was a mere mudslinging content, and although Barrack Obama from time to time gave out some substance, ultimately, none of the important questions were dealt with. It has come to the point where politicians and people alike thing that throwing money and grandeur at a certain problem will resolve it. Pumping GBP 500 billion into the British economy will help save the banks; pumping US $ 700 billion into the US economy will help save the banks, but Ealing Council’s overspending to get someone a 7 bedroom, GBP 1.2 million is absolutely fine.

It is this mockery by government, this misuse of power, the pathetic attempts by futile minds to divert the attention of the simply minded population from the issues at hand (like possible corruption at councils, etc.), that so accurately resembles Rand’s depiction of the government in Atlas Shrugged. People who were absolutely incompetent were put in positions of power and paid massive amounts of money to basically talk shit and waste taxpayer money, running the country into the ground. That’s what Ealing Council here has done. The result, in a decent society, would be that the resident’s of that particular council stop paying all Council Tax. A government that misuses the power and money given to it should be stripped of all power and money. What ultimately happens is that the people who are paying the most amount of tax withdraw themselves from that society, thereby crippling the council or government. Of course, that happens where people have shame, morality and integrity. In Ealing, apparently, they don’t. I presume there are thousands of people paying massive amounts of rent in Ealing who cannot afford to have a car, when some stupid kid has the ordacity to refuse free housing because he cannot park his car.

To top it all off, these are supposed to be Muslims. Lashes then, is what such people who steal from others would deserve under Islamic Law. Maybe I haven’t gotten to the stage of withdrawal yet, but when I do, there may be nothing more entertaining than watching a society of incompetence and character flaws that struggles to survive when you can just sit back and watch. Disaster, for even something on such a small scale, if it continues to evolve, is inevitable.

I’m still not sure why Council Tax makes sense in the UK. The culture of something for nothing is what has killed this country, and it seems like nobody really cares about the country. Not the government, not the citizens, not the residents. Everybody is here to make a quick buck and nobody cares about the land that feeds them. Alas, this behavior will bring Atlas to his knees, even if he was simply shrugging in Rand’s depiction of the 60s.

I’m not even going to get into more details about how the financial rescue plan will or will not help the economy. At the rate of incompetence and corruption that’s currently rampant in this society and among others worldwide, I’m not sure if those who make up the Atlas in today’s world will put up with the weight of the world for too long. The lights may go out when Atlas Shrugs, but who knows what will happen when Atlas is brought to his knees.


Continue Reading

O2 Simplicity : Made Extremely Complex

2

Picking a mobile phone carrier in London has been difficult. None of them have good reviews, and apparently, all of them provide the same service.

I finally decided last week that I was going to make the move to O2. I had seen their simplicity package advertised, where you could simply buy a SIM for free, and pay GBP 30 per month for 1200 anytime minutes, 500 or 1000 texts (if ordered instore or online), and a free additonal bolt on, which in my case, is the Unlimited Web Bolt On. I decided to go for this because I do not want a new phone. I’m happy with Sony Ericsson p990; the firmware upgrade has made the phone much more stable, and it almost every feature you’ll need: Web, GPRS, 3G, WiFi, Browser, Email Client, Media, etc. etc.

O2s mobile phone service has been good. I don’t get any unusual signal outage, and the internet speed on the phone is also pretty good. But their Customer Service is nothing short of horrid!

Since the day I got my SIM from O2, I cannot view my bill or allowance online. Over the last week, I’ve had luck with viewing my billing/allowance only once on the web site. I have exchanged about 5 emails with customer service, and oh my, they are as incompetent as they come. I thought HP (hewlett packard) had everyone beat when it came to bad customer service, but O2 is quickly surpassing HP to new, unknown levels of incompetence and customer dissatisfaction.

When I try to view my bill, I get an EBPP_1102 error. When I try to view my allowance, I get the same EBPP error code with a different number. Now I’m not sure what kind of a programming glitch their web development team has made, but their customer service has absolutely no idea about what’s going on. They’ve come up with the wildest suggestions, like deleting my temporary internet files, having a corrupt cookie, having an old browser that doesn’t support 128-bit SSL encryption, or having an ISP that needs to be contacted because the problem is at their end. They should really try telling that to Virgin & BT, and I’d want to see how either of them reacted to that. I’d want to see the size of the hole in O2s tushi when BT is done responding to that (not that BT is a blessing in any way either).

First rule of thumb, train your god damn customer service representatives, and please, train them to be honest. If they don’t know what’s going on or have NO idea about what the problem is, they DO NOT need to make incorrect suggestions or accusations about our PCs, cookies, or ISPs. They should say that they don’t know what’s wrong, and that they will try to find out.

Second, why the fuck does every person who responds to my email an Indian, who has no fucking idea about how O2 works, secure socket layers or web browsers work, or how ISPs work? I’m going to assume that O2 is being cheap over here, and they’re outsourcing customer service to India. I’m sorry, is there any shortages of Indians in the UK? There are lots of competent ones here, please hire them. They’re educated (in real, for the most part, not by University of Kerala which prints PHDs only), and they’re less prone to lying and giving ludacris suggestions.

And your web development team? Are you outsourcing this to Pakistan or India too? And exactly how much money is O2 saving on it is unfathomable. The website is pathetic. They’ve tried to use AJAX without getting the basic functionality right. Does O2 really think I’m impressed with AJAX when I get an error every time I try to access my billing or allowance? Here’s a hot tip for O2: NO! I want it work, and I DO NOT want to speak to low IQ, incompetent, customer service who doesn’t the difference between a client side and server side error and tries to talk IT.

Here’s a little tip for O2 Tech Support: The error is server side. You’re running a script that’s trying to access my bill & related details from a database (I hope & not a text file), but it fails to do so, either because it cannot connect to your server or because their’s a coding error. Either way, I CANNOT fix it at my end. You need to do it. Browse the internet and see how many other people have the same problem. What are you, stupid?

If you can’t get the service right, don’t offer it.

To top it all off, I get a call from O2 Customer Service today saying they don’t have the right billing address? Well now, who in the hell changed it. Not only was the woman who called UNABLE to communicate properly in English, but she told ME to call customer service and get my address updated because she could NOT take down the address. I mean what the fuck is this, a fish market? And how in the hell did my address get changed on the web site? Why does customer service fidget with our account information when they don’t need to? And, WHY the hell does the update my details feature NOT work on the web site?!

I’m this close to writing to the head office and asking them if they need help with their web site and customer service training, because clearly, a monkey could do a better job than O2 is doing right now!


Continue Reading


Follow Us

  • Twitter
  • RSS

Categories

Archive