HOME.
Change of IW council leader.
Councillor Jonathan Bacon (Independent) resigned last month as leader of the council over here.
I was sorry to hear it.
Back in 2015 I wrote to Councillor Bacon expressing my displeasure at the poor facilities afforded elderly citizens using the council's refuse tip in Forest Road on the Island. It was a carping old guy's letter of the sort a busy public representative must receive far too often and I figured it would end up tidily filed in a wastepaper basket.
Imagine my surprise when I received a polite and informative reply from the council leader.
I concluded that he was an all right person (even if his political group did appear to have no more grip on things than any of them ever do) and that he would certainly get my vote if the opportunity arose in the future.
His resignation (together with that of his deputy) came about because the government is squeezing the financial life out of county authorities nearly everywhere and, to add to the usual problems here, the Conservative group, rejected at the last local election, has consistently thrown its toys out of the political playpen.
Mr. Bacon has now been replaced as council leader by the Tory leader of the Conservative - Ukip alliance (God help us).
It will not be a change for the better.
ABROAD.
To Wales.
Swansea: where, if my elderly memory serves me aright, the DVLA resides.
I received a letter last week from one of those debt collection firms which every public body now seems to employ (at Christ knows what cost to the taxpayer) to chase up anybody who, for whatever reason, has ignored or overlooked making a payment to them.
It seems I had failed to cough up the road fund licence fee due on our little car last October. (Something which, throughout the close on sixty years I was issued with - and required to display - an annual disc, I never once failed to deal with.)
I phoned the debt collection agency and a pleasant voiced young woman informed me that I would be required to pay a fixed penalty of £80 to them and then get in touch with the Authority to pay the thirty-or-so quid licence fee due.
I there and then made arrangements for payment of the fixed penalty and left the rest to the More Intelligent Half (MIH) of our marriage who had been out when I opened the post.
The MIH rang the DVLA and, in more reasonable tones than I would ever have conjured up, pointed out that we have at no time received notice of our road fund fee being due.
But notice was sent, she was told, to the address on DVLA records (which was, it transpired, our address before we moved here).
But why, inquired my MIH patiently, was said notice sent to that address when the Agency has since been notified of our new one?
Because no such notification has been received by us, asserted the DVLA telephone spokesperson.
That's very strange, countered the MIH, when you consider that we each possess a driving licence bearing our new address.
The glib and clearly oft-repeated reply broached no further discourse.
"Oh, that's not the same department."
NOTE TO DVLA MANAGERS.
No matter how many £s billion your Agency deals in annually, if you are incapable of installing a computer system that concurrently amends the records held by all your departments, you are really no more than a bunch of technically inept twats, are you?
And on the clear understanding that the planks in parliament will never abandon the road fund licence in favour of 10p on every gallon of petrol, bring back the bloody tax disc!
Change of IW council leader.
I was sorry to hear it.
Back in 2015 I wrote to Councillor Bacon expressing my displeasure at the poor facilities afforded elderly citizens using the council's refuse tip in Forest Road on the Island. It was a carping old guy's letter of the sort a busy public representative must receive far too often and I figured it would end up tidily filed in a wastepaper basket.
Imagine my surprise when I received a polite and informative reply from the council leader.
I concluded that he was an all right person (even if his political group did appear to have no more grip on things than any of them ever do) and that he would certainly get my vote if the opportunity arose in the future.
His resignation (together with that of his deputy) came about because the government is squeezing the financial life out of county authorities nearly everywhere and, to add to the usual problems here, the Conservative group, rejected at the last local election, has consistently thrown its toys out of the political playpen.
Mr. Bacon has now been replaced as council leader by the Tory leader of the Conservative - Ukip alliance (God help us).
It will not be a change for the better.
ABROAD.
To Wales.
I received a letter last week from one of those debt collection firms which every public body now seems to employ (at Christ knows what cost to the taxpayer) to chase up anybody who, for whatever reason, has ignored or overlooked making a payment to them.
It seems I had failed to cough up the road fund licence fee due on our little car last October. (Something which, throughout the close on sixty years I was issued with - and required to display - an annual disc, I never once failed to deal with.)
I phoned the debt collection agency and a pleasant voiced young woman informed me that I would be required to pay a fixed penalty of £80 to them and then get in touch with the Authority to pay the thirty-or-so quid licence fee due.
I there and then made arrangements for payment of the fixed penalty and left the rest to the More Intelligent Half (MIH) of our marriage who had been out when I opened the post.
The MIH rang the DVLA and, in more reasonable tones than I would ever have conjured up, pointed out that we have at no time received notice of our road fund fee being due.
But notice was sent, she was told, to the address on DVLA records (which was, it transpired, our address before we moved here).
But why, inquired my MIH patiently, was said notice sent to that address when the Agency has since been notified of our new one?
Because no such notification has been received by us, asserted the DVLA telephone spokesperson.
That's very strange, countered the MIH, when you consider that we each possess a driving licence bearing our new address.
The glib and clearly oft-repeated reply broached no further discourse.
"Oh, that's not the same department."
NOTE TO DVLA MANAGERS.
No matter how many £s billion your Agency deals in annually, if you are incapable of installing a computer system that concurrently amends the records held by all your departments, you are really no more than a bunch of technically inept twats, are you?
And on the clear understanding that the planks in parliament will never abandon the road fund licence in favour of 10p on every gallon of petrol, bring back the bloody tax disc!
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