My Google-Fu
Does Work for you
I writes to my MP
I helps my community
Remember
TheyWorkForYou
And MySociety
Helping you to say what's wrong
Which is why I made up this song
To let the people know
About how and where to go
To set things straight
To fix things
B4 it's to late
When I sees things out of place
I writes it on MySpace,
Live Journal, Blogger, WordPress and twitter
Yes I'm a social media witter!
Citizen journo of the worst kind
Google and you will find
ME
Doing electronic rants
For my community
Yesterday I wrote a post about the foodcourt charging for tap water - I then put the link on twitter. Whilst there I thought I'd prod around my local tweets and found one of them retweeting a post by none other than the shopping center!
So I sent them the link with a comment that it was bad policy. I didn't expect it to work but within ten minutes I had a response saying they were going to look into it. Then a little later a message that as of now they are no longer going to charge for tap water!
Tis a little victory but I do feel quiet chuffed. However they are just one shopping center so now I am on a mission - I am going to do several things. Firstly I will be making lists of places I go that do and don't give me free tap water, secondly I am going to be writing to my MP and stuff.
Alaric also thinks that there is something about it under the Citizen's Charter but I have to confess that I didn't even know we had a Citizen's Charter and have so far failed to find a copy of it on line.
And just to add to my lame-ness I have also made up a little song/rap thingy about using google-fu which I will post in a few days!
But mainly I need to thank Eastgate Shopping Center for listening and getting on the ball 🙂
Being pregnant I am finding myself getting stupidly hungry and stuff and whilst out in Gloucester I decided to get a meal in the food court of Eastgate Shopping Center. My parents where buying drinks but I just wanted tap water - I often ask for tap water even when I am drinking another drink so was shocked to be told they were now charging for it! 30p a cup!
I was shocked and said I didn't think that was legal but ended up buying a bottle of water in the end. This was mineral water which a) often contains salts and things which I was told you should avoid during pregnancy and b) comes in a plastic bottle which is bad for the environment.
They said it was due to inflation that they where having to charge, but even if they gave it to me in a disposible cup with ice it not cost 30p!
Anyway I came home and looked it up and was sickened to find out that UK law doesn't insist on tap water being free but rather is put into clauses on specific places such as pubs and clubs. And that Defra have been promoting a free drinking water policy.
I live in a country were the tap water is not only safe to drink but of a high quality and the resturants are generally not on meters so they pay a base rate for the water - which they need to do all their cooking and washing up!
Now my main concern is - how is this not a law? When we have so many laws? And secondly is there some older law - which some people seem to believe there is, dating from the Temprance movement where free water is to be served?
I thought the law said that even if someone turned up on my doorstep I would have to provide them with free water to drink.
Oh and the most stupid thing about the meal I had? The little packets of salt that some places charge 5p for where free. So we had free salt but no free water?!? This seems incredibly insane to me.
Jean has been playing with Dino-Mountain pretty much everyday but one of the interesting things she has done is put the dinosaurs in family groupings. This is interesting as she has large and small of the same type of dinosaurs but they are in like different style and different colours!
Also depending on what she's been doing - the dino's have adventures such as getting excited about cattle country and going to birthday parties!
She also pretends she is god and saves the baby dino's from the volcano by having it snow on them.
The only iffy thing is that she has decided that stegosaurus is a carni as the toy she has has viscous looking teeth!
Jean keeps asking for stories from mine and Alaric's childhoods and in trying to drag something up I began a story about my friends party as a kid. Her grandfather was a magician and needed an assistant but instead of picking his grand daughter he picked me a) because I wouldn't say how the magic house worked and b) I was small and double jointed.
Jean asked me to explain how the trick worked and I said I couldn't because I had promised and from this the conversation got onto the Magic Circle. At this point Jean got upset because me and Al where saying we didn't know the things magician knew and that we couldn't becuase we weren't part of the Magic Circle.
She was really really irrate with us until we explained that Grandfather Lionel was part of the Magic Circle - this cheered her up and she decided she wanted to email him to ask.
So we sent the email off and she later had a skype call with Lionel (I think I wasn't there) and from this she has decided she wants to go to some magic school and learn tricks. She has also been making up her own magic tricks - which are sweet and slightly painful to watch and has led to some rib cracking moments when she hid a banana down her trousers. We couldn't stop laughing - she couldn't see the joke and got angry with the stupid adults!
Poems, Sci/Tech, Society | sarah | 
Wed 29th Sep 2010 11:38 am | 
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