A little less conversation...
Sorry there wasn't a blog yesterday afternoon. I had to rush home straight after the programme to let the phone engineer in.
After three days without TV, phone or Internet it was a bit of a personal priority. It's amazing how you miss these things. Chez Curry, we had to talk to each other after dinner rather than slump in front of the box as usual. There's a reason they call conversation the lost art.
The appointment was for one of those time-slots that spanned the entire afternoon. I don't know if this annoys you, but it irritates me slightly. Around 28 million of us now have some sort of regular work - that's more people in work than any other period in our history. The idea that someone will always be at home during the day is from a bygone age.
Yet all manner of company - from phone engineers to parcel deliveries - have delivery schedules based on this out-dated assumption that someone's at home, or we can skip work to be at their beck and call. One of my colleagues is complaining this morning that he can't get concert tickets that he's already paid for because they insist on a home delivery between 9am and 5pm - the entire working day. Why on earth can these things not be done in the evening, like online supermarket deliveries? Or in narrower time slots that don't devour a whole day? Use the comments to share your views.
Speaking of jobs - the unemployment figures were released this morning, and more people have joined the dole queue. The TUC and others fear it could get even worse. Rachel will talk us through the numbers.
One interesting line that's emerged during the morning - at least one major department store group has told us it will hire fewer casual workers to deal with the Christmas rush. This seasonal work is of huge importance to students as they pay their way through college. So we'll ask the man from the National Union of Students what he makes of it.
He was coming in anyway to talk about student budgeting - Naga is going to spend the next few months helping some students in Leeds to manage their money better. We'll see the first of her reports today.
Naga is light of step and lilting of voice today after a fat bouquet of flowers arrived for her. See the photo of her pretending to ignore them.
It wasn't because of our item yesterday about men being most romantic at the age of 53, though you have responded to that too. Dean says he's looking forward to turning 53 so he can treat his wife to a romantic trip. I'll not say where in case she's reading. Rob wonders if all this wooing is a sign of romance or desperation. Carol asks if the men are buying for their wives and partners, or their younger replacements. "The devil is usually in the detail", she notes.
And thank you Michekeith for your kind words about the programme in the comments. We had more good news today, showing many more people are tuning in to watch. We know you have a lot of choice on the box (when it's working ...) so thank you for selecting us.
See you at 1.30pm.
Ooh la la! Almost forgot to tell you - PY Gerbeau is here too. He's the man who came over to rescue the Dome, and liked the company so much he tried to buy it ...
Comment number 1.
At 15th Oct 2008, dennisjunior1 wrote:Declan:
Sorry for the loss of the television!
And, you can always have a nice chat!
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Comment number 2.
At 15th Oct 2008, lordBeddGelert wrote:Declan, Read Tom Hodgkinson, he will be able to persuade you of the joys of a TV-free life and the benefits of less addiction to internet.
He will also convince you that the way forward is to work less so that there WILL always be someone in the house.. - Go on, admit it, our hugely long working hours and 'enterprise culture' simply isn't looking all that 'smart' at the moment, now is it ??
As some of the out-of-work advertising gurus might say, "There's a better way, so why make life complicated ?"
Why not change the programme title to 'A proper idle lunch away from the grindstone' ?
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Comment number 3.
At 17th Oct 2008, F wrote:Declan...like you I am immensely frustrated with home deliveries and engineer calls where little flexibility in appointment times is offered. What makes it worse is that my fiancee works for a company who offer only minimal holiday allowance and unless she takes official holiday leave, any business her accounts place when she is absent are not credit to her. I work 25 miles away for a small father and son firm and rely on public transport to commute.
I don't see why companies can't call you approx 1hr from their expected arrival time. I would then have sufficient time to get home and be there. I can't afford to spend a whole day or even half a day hanging around at home awaiting the delivery of a fridge/freezer which may well take no more than 5 minutes.
Any to cap it all, lots of these firms refuse to offer weekend appointments!
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Comment number 4.
At 19th Oct 2008, taxkillingme wrote:Declan, this is (or should be) right up your street. But first is that Tom my Brother, we carry the same surname. Anyway ---
I retired 10 years ago and spent all our savings (£100,000) refurbishing an old building into 5 office units. 2 years in the doing with me on site most days and 2 more years before we had 2 tenants who defaulted - we got nothing. Now one year on up to today we have finally got all units let with our only income £50,000 shared with my wife.
Here is the crunch. Up to a few months ago we had to pay 50% business rates and in the early days paying this for sometimes way beyond the few months council non-payment was a killer taking a large part of whatever rents we had. Now the news is that we will be expected to pay full rates if and when we lose any tenants.
In the pending bad times who knows how many tenants we could lose but more to the point with what does the government expect us to pay the tax with - WE WILL HAVE NO INCOME TO PAY IT - What are we expected to do sell our home to pay it ??
IS THIS BRITISH JUSTICE ? IS SO I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO SELL UP AND SELL MY HARD EARNED INCOME FOR WAY DOWN ON THE CORRECT PRICE. AND I WILL LEAVE THIS LOVELY COUNTRY BLIGHTED BY THE WORST GOVERNMENT IN MODERN TIMES.
How many small commercial landlords are faced with the same problem.
TAXKILLINGME
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Comment number 5.
At 19th Nov 2008, cade12 wrote:I have been in business now for over fifteen years and three years ago I started a new website called www.thediscdirectory.co.uk dedicated to getting rid of rogue traders and have found it to be truely inspiring in the comments left on companies, we just remove them or report to our local trading standards.
What I want ot know is what is happening to the CORGI standard is it going to get easier or harder to know if an engineer is coming to my house is CORGI registered or not.
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