Little Things That Irk You IX

[wakka]

****ing hell, £190 each? That is daylight robbery. I'm assuming you're travelling from south England to somewhere in Scotland?

EDIT: Btw, depending on where you're going it might be worth looking at the Caledonian Sleeper. Might make the trip more fun/interesting at least. Probably cost about the same judging by these prices.

[Asura]

South to near Newcastle. Unfortunately you can't get the sleeper as it goes to the wrong side of the Pennines.

[Lebowski]

Reminds me of a few years back we went across to France with my parents they drove and took us across but we had to be back earlier than them for work so had to travel across quite a distance in France by rail to the ferry to the UK, it was easy on time and about 10% of the cost of the UK leg of the journey (despite being twice the distance).

When we got back into the UK Rail system we got back in earlier than expected and went to see if we could transfer our ticket to an earlier train. Nope this would have cost us Hundreds of pounds more, it wasn't as if we wanted to travel in rush hour, so their we where stuck for 6 hours forced to wait for a train we had booked in advance months ago.

[Anpanman]

Fun fact, by law they are completely unaccountable for loosing your parcel and have no legal responsibility to reimburse you. I don’t have the date they managed to get this passed but some MP clearly owned one of the big boys at one stage and got this little ditty passed into law.

That's very interesting, do you have anything to back it up, I've asked Mr Google but all that comes back is that you have consumer law on your side and a right to compo etc.
If that is now dead it's deffo a ****ty situation.
Unless you are talking about economy services....

Weird irk, but that National Express is the UK's only national coach service.

So you look up the trains, and despite us living in our Tory utopia of privatised trains run for the free market... There's a ticket price. Just a straight-up price. There aren't multiple providers, or multiple lines, or whatever. It just costs this much. But with the added benefit of being a ****ing mess to book because apparently there are different providers and I can't just buy a train ticket off National Rail.

Privatisation really did just line the pockets of a load of now-rich people, didn't it? Gimme a minute to go piss on Thatcher's grave.

Welcome to my world - in some ways, are there not any Advance tickets you can buy.

[Brad]

€134 for a return ticket from Paris to Antibes overnight sleeper. That's 917km

I paid more to go from Cheltenham to Paddington and back, off peak, a 1 hr 45 minute journey.

[charlesr]

Your London ticket is subsidising the France ticket. Because our governments are short term thinking cretins

[Anpanman]

...and subsidising tickets in Germany, plus I guestimate they are roughly 30% more expensive due to increases in the past for improvements.

Expect this to come to your water bills as well.

[fallenangle]

Don't get me onto water companies - my anger will ignite at those money grabbing, negligent, self-serving scum. They've been fleecing us since privatization making ever greater profits each year paying out shareholders and their own executives more and more.

They've done this by just trying to patch up our ageing, mostly Victorian water system whilst not increasing our water storage and sewage handling capacity despite a significant increase in the population during that time.

Now the chickens have come home to roost they actually expect the consumer to pay for their decades of neglect and their often criminal activity polluting our waterways and seas with raw sewage. They obfuscate by trying to blame everything on the unforeseen effects of climate change, treating us like cash cows, using that as the weaselly excuse for trying to get us to dip into our pockets even more just to keep them in business.

It beggars belief the general public are not more angry about this than they are and consequently these hikes in water bills are likely to happen no matter how much some of us complain.

[Asura]

En****tification. That's the term.

It refers to the mistaken belief that competition among the free market drives down cost, due to efficiency. In practice, companies undertake extensive analytics to find the break-even point where the service is bad, but people will still pay. One notch worse, they wouldn't pay. That's the point of maximum revenue.

[Blobcat]

My irk is arrangements for Christmas. Not Christmas itself, but the drama it brings every year and sets off my anxiety.

I used to love Christmas, I still do to an extent, but the stress is something I dread every year.

[charlesr]

My irk is arrangements for Christmas. Not Christmas itself, but the drama it brings every year and sets off my anxiety.

I used to love Christmas, I still do to an extent, but the stress is something I dread every year.

It's a juggling act. The fact you have to start planning it in October is also annoying.

[importaku]

Having to part with my twilight zone pinball, gotten off phone with andy who owns arcade club. He's agreed to buy it but i'm not gonna lie it stings a LOT having to part with it as it's my dream pin & it's in amazing condition but sadly i have no room to take it with me into the new place we have been given so i will have 5 grand extra to play with at least and it cost less than that when i bought it 16 years ago so not a total loss.

Gonna plug it in for the rest of the day & play a farewell session

[Zaki]

No way to make it fit in the new place cleverly? This thing is worth a lot more than 5K.

Having to part with my twilight zone pinball, gotten off phone with andy who owns arcade club. He's agreed to buy it but i'm not gonna lie it stings a LOT having to part with it as it's my dream pin & it's in amazing condition but sadly i have no room to take it with me into the new place we have been given so i will have 5 grand extra to play with at least and it cost less than that when i bought it 16 years ago so not a total loss.

Gonna plug it in for the rest of the day & play a farewell session

[importaku]

No way to make it fit in the new place cleverly? This thing is worth a lot more than 5K.

Unfortunately the doors are not wide enough at my new place no matter what way i rotate it the pin wouldn't go through even if the backbox was removed,

[Brad]

Take the door frame out.