February 2012
4 posts
The most traumatic phone calls of my life.
Liverpudlian UCAS lady: Hello, how may I help?
Me: Hi! I'd like to change my replies to my university offers, please.
UCAS: Alright then. What's your personal ID, please?
(I give them my ID and details)
UCAS: Okay, so what d'you want to change?
Me: I want to decline Sheffield and make Cardiff my firm choice, please.
UCAS: Alright, please wait.
(I casually jam out to some on-hold music for a few minutes)
UCAS: Hello, Miss Jones.
Me: He-
(UCAS hangs up on me)
Me: wat
Second try.
Scottish UCAS lady: Hello, how may I help?
Me: Hi! I just phoned earlier, but something happened and you randomly hung up on me.
UCAS: Oh.
(UCAS hangs up on me)
Me: why
Third try:
(By now, I am close to weeping because I absolutely detest phoning people and I am starting to shake uncontrollably)
UCAS man: Hello, how may I help?
Me: (hysterically) OH GOD, PLEASE LET ME CHANGE MY REPLIES. I DON'T WANT TO GO TO SHEFFIELD.
(pause)
Would you like my ID?
UCAS: Yes, please.
(I give them my ID and details)
UCAS: Hello, Miss Jones. I'm afraid that we can't change your replies.
Me: What?! But I thought I was allowed to change them within seven days!
UCAS: Nope. Twenty-four hours.
Me: But it says on your website that I have seven days, and it's only been four!
UCAS: Please hold.
(I smash my head into the wall while pleasant elevator music is played from the speakers)
UCAS: Hello again, Miss Jones. Sorry about that - turns out you were right.
Me: (dropping the scissors I was about to stab into my chest) I was? Yay!
UCAS: So, what d'you want to change?
Me: I'd like to decline Sheffield and put Cardiff as my firm.
UCAS: Alright, just a moment.
(I skip around the kitchen, dancing happily to the pleasant elevator music)
UCAS: Hello again! Right, so we've changed your firm to Sheffield and declined Cardiff.
Me: Ye- wait, what?
UCAS: Is that right?
Me: Well, no. I want to decline Sheffield and put Cardiff as my firm.
(pause)
UCAS: Oh. Um, please wait.
(UCAS forgets to put me on hold)
UCAS: SHIT, SARAH, I'VE FUCKED THIS UP.
(Pleasant elevator music resumes while I stare at the phone in horror)
UCAS: Ahem, sorry. I've changed it to Cardiff. Is that right?
Me: (shaking from my emotions) Y-yes. Cardiff is my firm now?
UCAS: Yes.
(pause)
UCAS: Sorry.
Me: It's okay.
UCAS: I don't know what happened.
Me: Neither do I.
UCAS: Good luck with your exams.
Me: Thank you.
UCAS: ...You heard me swear, didn't you?
Me: Yep.
UCAS: Bollocks.
(UCAS hangs up)
“If you take a life when a life has been taken, that’s revenge, not...”
– Desmond Tutu
January 2012
26 posts
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love...”
– Charles Bukowski (via girlwithoutwings
)
“Be sure to put every letter of the alphabet in the URL. I want my site to come...”
– (via clientsfromhell
)
“The world is changing. Music is changing. Drugs are changing. Even men and women...”
– Mark Renton in Trainspotting (via stickers-symbol-flag
)
Iain Duncan Smith - The British Secretary of State...
Nick Robinson: What [taxpayers] don't like hearing about is the many, many thousands of people now who - because of cuts to disability benefit and cuts to employment and support allowance and cuts to housing benefit - are now really suffering.
IDS: But they're not suffering. The point about this is that what makes you suffer is the state that plunges you into dependency on the state. It does two things, it means bigger bills for taxpayers and it means your life and your children's lives will be blighted by being dependent on me, the secretary of state, to give you the money to live.
------------
MY THOUGHTS: If the left wing media was more cut throat and more like the utter neo-fascist right wing media then that's the headline you'd be seeing everywhere tomorrow. He is a failure (as are many component pieces of the Coalition, I'm not stupid) so fuck the benefit cap that has no true detail or thought. OH, except for the fact that the Murdoch's of the World with political backing like to try to paint 'anyone you don't know' as the Boogeyman, even when all people found guilty of benefit fraud/abusing the system ON PURPOSE and such are such a slim percentage (see: less than 5% at worst) that it shouldn't even come into question.
This x1000
I'm yet to see a solid argument in support for this cap that goes beyond "why should I pay for someone out of work more than what i earn? £26,000 is more than enough/it should be lower than that!" thus tarring all benefit claimants with the same brush, ignoring private rent problems where landlords can fuck about with raising thresholds, ignores the lack of social housing and amount of disused buildings about, not contemplating that wages might be low and also acting as though it's fine to make people homeless. I guess I have some slight empathy for their stance given the amount of 'work is the route to success' stuff we get told but it's such a face value argument, it assumes that people are going to want to keep up this lifestyle for the rest of their lives or that it makes them happy just because they have a car or a laptop.
December 2011
7 posts
animalbiterate:
Suede - The Wild Ones (Dog Man...
“The marginalisation of women, as with the marginalisation of any other group,...”
– Kira Cochrane - Why is British public life dominated by men? (via favouritestations
)
Ta da, spreadsheet: http://fuckyeahmirandahart.tumblr.com/post/10242437447
Includes Would I Lie To You?, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Shooting Stars too.
“It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted in a fundamentally sick...”
– Krishnamurti
November 2011
53 posts
Guillemots - “Through The Windowpane”...