You can’t get the staff these days! (by alaric)

We've got houseguests over, and we left them at home while we went for a walk in the countryside.

However, when I got home, I found they'd decided to go to Tesco many hours previously, and had gone off leaving:

• Jean's rabbit outside in his run
• The shed unlocked
• The front door of the house wide open

When asked why, they said "Oh, Barbara (the next door neighbour, my aunt) was around"...

Had it not occurred to them that Barbara might decide to go out herself, and is not supposed to be responsible for locking up our home? Or that Barbara might not actually take it upon herself to guard our open doors from passing opportunists, and sit watching, but might have her own things to do?

sigh

Last Day of Reception Class (by sarah)

Jean has had a busy week at school full of end of term activities and now it is the last day! It seems amazing that she is at school let alone finishing her first year!

We got her ready this morning with her thankyou cards for the teachers and some oreo cookies and jelly babies (they where going to have home made banoffe cupcakes but the power didn't come on until late yesterday so that was a no go!).

Then this afternoon was the end of year celebration assembly in the village hall - it was sweet watching the years sixes (about to leave and go to big school) go over the highlights of the year and it reminded me just what a lot of stuff they had packed in!

But then came the Prize Givings and the first person called for the Ray Tortenese Competition was Jean! So we now have a shiny trophy cup (for Class One) sitting on the bookshelf next to a citificate and she got lots of other goodies too like a gardening book with an inscription to her in and lots of run recyclables like purses made from old juice cartons!

Jean didn't realise what was supposed to happen though so had to be encouraged to go up on the stage! Then she is so small and the prizes relatively big to her that she looked a bit swamped until help came along in the form of one of the year sixes!

She didn't know what it was about until it was explained to her and she stood on stage looking all wide eyed and bewildered - however since it was explained she hasn't stopped talking about it and how she didn't know she was going to win!

So yes I'm being a gushy parent and probably too proud especially when I think she wont be five until the end of next month!

Choc a l’Orange on GMTV (by sarah)

This week (19th-22nd of July 2010) my friend is appearing on GMTV's Chiefs at Sea competition making her stunning desert! I've written a post on it on Salaric Cooking.

You can vote for the dish you like best!

Omnomnomnom!!!!

Adrian Brown and The Cheap Car Trade Centre (by alaric)

Earlier this year, Sarah and I spent my bonus pay on a second-hand car from The Cheap Car Trade Centre in Gloucester.

Sadly, they neglected to buy it a tax disc before I picked it up, so I couldn't drive it (other than the quick trip) home for a couple of weeks while the papers went through to make me the registered keeper. However, even on the trip home, the engine started to overheat, and the engine started to run badly; as the car had been stationary for a while, and had been almost entirely out of fuel, I was suspicious but it might have just been sludge from the fuel tank washing into the engine; I looked into the cooling system and found a syphon tube had become disconnected, so the engine could blow out excess coolant into the reservoir when the pressure was high, but could not suck coolant back in. Sure enough, although the reservoir was full, the cooling system was very low, so I flushed it out and filled it up after replacing the syphon hose.

All was well for a few days, but then it started overheating again. I was dropping Sarah off in Cheltenham at the time, so I stayed in the car park to let it cool down before heading home; however, it quickly overheated again, and again, and started to emit white smoke from the exhaust, and steam from under the bonnet. I pulled in another car park, and rang the RAC, who came and told me the head gasket was leaking badly.

So I rang the warranty company, who said that head gasket failure wasn't covered. So I rang The Cheap Car Trade Centre and explained the problem, but they disavowed any responsibility, so I informed them that the Sale of Goods Act made them responsible for the goods they sell being fit for the advertised purpose, which includes a reasonable life expectancy, even if they are second-hand; and this car was sold to me as "ready to drive". They told me I'd have to take them to court in that case.

So I sent them the required two warning letters, then tried to take them to court. This was hampered somewhat by them refusing to say who owned the business, which is an obligation under the Business Names Act, so I rang Gloucester Trading Standards, who pointed me at:

Office of Fair Trading Investigation into The Cheap Car Trade Centre

Which led to:

Formal Undertaking against Adrian Brown, Sole Director, Adrian Brown Limited

So Adrian Brown was the man behind the business, using his limited company, Adrian Brown Ltd, company number 04831719, which is registered as being at The Cheap Car Trade Centre's premises.

A look on the Companies House web site reveals:

REGISTERED OFFICE CHANGED ON 16/09/09 FROM: SUNNYLEA ASH LANE DOWN HATHERLEY GLOUCESTER GL2 9PS

...that's five days after his "formal undertaking" with the OFT. I suspect he changed it from his home address to his premises to divert unwanted attention at home. However, Companies House remembers all. I wonder if he still lives there. I would discourage my loyal readers from jumping to the conclusion that he does and inundating the address with junk mail or any other forms of harassment, in case he doesn't.

Anyway, knowing who to sue, I proceeded to activate the county court system.

They answered my claim with a defence (stating that it must have been me driving the car while overheating that broke the head gasket), so I was waiting for a date for the hearing when I received my last letter to them returned unopened, with "THE LTD CO THAT TRADED AS 'THE CHEAP CAR TRADE CTR' HAS CEASED TRADING AND IS INSOLVENT WITH NO ASSETS, AND HAS VACATED 333 BRISTOL RD GLOUCESTER".

I got back in touch with the Trading Standards folks, who said that they knew the company was closing, but that this action was suspended as there were county court cases in progress, so my case would probably still proceed, even though I might never be able to extract any money if the company was truly insolvent.

However, I'm still going to try. Limited companies protect their shareholders and directors by limiting their liability; the company is sued, not the people. But there's a limit to the limit. If a director can be shown to have acted fraudulently or incompetently, then they can be personally liable.

It looks like I won't get my money back, which will leave us carless until I get another bonus or something - but I'm hoping that, perhaps, the courts might find Adrian Brown personally liable. Given the involvement of the Office of Fair Trading and Trading Standards, it would appear that I'm not alone in having suffered from his business practices (the OFT judgement explicitly mentions him attempting to avoid the Sale of Goods and Business Names acts).

After all, I have little choice but to pursue this - I am scraping by with buses (which run once an hour, and don't run at all after about 5pm), being bankrupted by taxis, and begging lifts from people. This is seriously hampering my ability to live my life.

Society (by alaric)

It's easy to sit and complain that Society Is Going To The Dogs, and hardly any harder to come up with somebody to blame (these days, immigrants and politicians are popular), and still well within the mental capacity of the average Daily Mail reader to come up with some satisfying-sounding radical proposals for what to do about it.

However, a society is a very complex system, and every change you make has complex consequences; nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Further complicating the situation is that any attempt to make your system of laws or government institutions more complex further complicates the analysis of subsequent changes; and, perhaps most pertinently, a society is not some beaker full of bubbling chemicals - the components of a society are sentient, some of them are even intelligent, and they are highly incentivised to make the best of their situation. In other words, people will figure out how to exploit systems, rather than working happily within the spirit of them.

People who are familiar with my approach to engineering solutions to problems will not be surprised to find that I suggest:

1. Forgetting all the cruft and historical baggage, and sitting down and carefully enumerating what you actually want from the system

2. Making the system as simple as possible (but no simpler), to reduce the scope for unexpected consequences

3. Using self-reinforcing negative feedback loops to maintain stability, while injecting noise to prevent stagnation in local maximae

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