Random Rants

I'm haveing a bit of a mare at the moment so i wanted to start a Thread where anyone can just post a rant about life, the universe and everything. The rules are:-
1) No names
2) No rants about fellow members

Being as it's my thread i'll start.

:rant:
Why the hell did i not pay more attention when i did my ebay listings. I've had one item listed for the past couple of weeks when it looks like i've already accidentally sent it out to someone by mistake so i've lost money. Then when i did my listings i didn't pay attention to my P&P costings and have cocked up on most of them (usually overcharging people) which fortunately i've managed to correct in the invoices but still it's a pain. I know that this is nobodies fault but my own but i just wanted to vent.

:rant:

Thats better. I feel cleansed.

OOOh this looks like fun!!!

I hate my landlord... well, I hate the sh177y plumber they used... A pipe birst and soaked a load of my collectibles.

Not so bothered about the Star Wars CCG stuff, as that was mostly worthless, but the Big Box Daggerfall and Frontier on the Amiga... now that was a reall p1553r!!!

Ahh, f**k the old plumber.... where the bleedin' 'ell is the fixture to repair it all.

What was worse was that it was hot water, and that steam got into all my stuff.

I will be glad when this year is over!

That's a pretty sh1t day. I feel for your frontier.

How long before someone has a Rant about people having Rants?

I forgot to mention that today i was supposed to be having a power shower connected up by an electrician. *:30 he should have come. 10:00 he said he would be there at 11:30 at latest. 13:00 hours he turned up. Said it was because he went to Spain yesterday, came back in early hours of morning then his washing machine busted and he spent all morning trying to fix that. When he did turn up all he did was connect some wiring to the fuse box and said he'll come back Saturday. He stayed for 1 and a half hours. If he'd have turned up when he said he would he'd have had the damn thing done today and still have had time to do his washing machine.
Tradesmen. Shoot the bloody lot!!!!!!!!!!!! (unless they are members of this site, then they have good taste and are obviousely good at their job and worth every penny.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Buleste

Then when i did my listings i didn't pay attention to my P&P costings and have cocked up on most of them (usually overcharging people) which fortunately i've managed to correct in the invoices but still it's a pain.

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If someone has already bid on the item and you clearly had the post and packing price listed on the auction, then they would have agreed to the price and you don't have to correct or refund anything.

Many ebayers over charge on the postage to cover what they really want for the item they are selling, as a lower price on the actual item invites more people into the bidding.

Unfortunatly i'm honest about my P&P charges and have been known to give a refund of difference when i get the prices wrong without the customer asking for one. I'm proud of my 100% feedback and want to keep it. I allways put the starting price at the moinimum i want for my items, If they go for more then bonus. Either way i'm not ranting so this is inappropriate for this thread.

They do agree to the prices, but sometimes, the seller is just generous. I had someone refund me £5 on the postage once due to him not being sure of the exact cost. Nothing wrong with refunding and making your buyers happy if you want to.

My rant for today is why to my teachers at college keep getting ill? Pat was ill last week so we ended up getting friday afternoon off, Keith was off yesterday so we got to go early, and John is off today so we got the entire day off, except for the hour that it took to get to college and back (It's end of term now, and college closes at 12:30, so there is no friday afternoon).

Welcome to the joys of further education Steve! It has been like that ever since I was first at college.

Unlike in a school where they have a duty to teach you, so they have to provide a stand in teacher, in college and other further education the philosophy is that you are now an adult and the tutors are only there to guide you, not to enforce what you are doing. If you don't get on with the work, then you are the only one you are hurting. Therefore when a tutor is off ill they won't normally provide cover as they expect you to just continue your studies on your own.

The only thing that they bother taking into account is the end of term/semester scores. Don't hit the required level and you have to retake to continue. Other than that life as a student is good. It can however take some time to adjust to that way of thinking and working after the restrictive way schools work. But they have to as I can't imagine most teens left to their own devices would get on and do any work.

here is one: fem_ _ _ _

:unsure: :lol:

Ah, Christmas the time for breaking up. Usually on Boxing day, that way shes had her present off you.

Lol, oh the jolly season! Na we didnt break up, just had a bit of a fight. Fun either way :blink:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Submeg

Lol, oh the jolly season! Na we didnt break up, just had a bit of a fight. Fun either way :blink:

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Make up sex. That's the only time men and women can get along.;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stephen Coates

They do agree to the prices, but sometimes, the seller is just generous. I had someone refund me £5 on the postage once due to him not being sure of the exact cost. Nothing wrong with refunding and making your buyers happy if you want to.

My rant for today is why to my teachers at college keep getting ill? Pat was ill last week so we ended up getting friday afternoon off, Keith was off yesterday so we got to go early, and John is off today so we got the entire day off, except for the hour that it took to get to college and back (It's end of term now, and college closes at 12:30, so there is no friday afternoon).

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Xmas shopping and boozing?

What's with all these weak snivelling gits wishing us "Happy Holdiays"?
Spineless twits (Misspelt that last word)

It's Happy Christmas or nothing you bar stewards.

What are we on holiday for?
XMAS, you politically correct toadying scum.

(Thanks Buleste)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TiredOfLife

What's with all these weak snivelling gits wishing us "Happy Holdiays"?
Spineless twits (Misspelt that last word)

It's Happy Christmas or nothing you bar stewards.

What are we on holiday for?
XMAS, you toadying scum.

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Politically correct toadying scum would be more appropriate but hear, hear.

Is there anyone else sick of companies sticking "i" at the start of their products. Obviously it started whith the iMac which is fine and you can understand why Apple use it for their products but now you have the "iSnake" which is a surgical robot, the iPlayer from the BBC and shitloads more. I'm sure there'll be the iCondom or iVibrator, then the iHatealltechnologyandonlybuildinwood or the iThinkyouareastupidgit. It's just gone too far and shows that there is a lack of creativity when it comes to naming products.

iHate to say it, but iThink it will be around for a while. until the next fad comes along and companies all say "Why didn't we do that?"

It happened in the 70's, when ALL adult movies were rated as XXX, no matter how lame they were. Not that iWould know anything about adult moves. iDon't do that kind of stuff!!!

iFind the iProducts annoying.

OK for a few apple things, and maybe a few more, but then it just gets boring.

Didn't iMention this in another topic just recently?

iCan't remember. Wonder if theres an iToilet? Theres certainly some spoofs on it. Goto iToilet.

lol

iKnow there is (was) an iWipe, which was a Macintosh SE or similar, which dispensed toilet roll through the floppy drive hole, and iThink there was a similar one which used an iMac.

There are toilets which flush automatically, and do other strange stuff, so it proably won't be long before someone does make one called an iToilet.

That iToilet is great. The sad thing is that I could actually see the iFanatics buying one and defending it's design flaws is features!

Whoever said i products should be practicle?

True. I've not yet seen anything from Apple that could be considered practical.

This is the rants thread so I do need to rant a bit about the iPod for a moment.

All the clueless youth of today are buying into the iPod like it is the greatest thing since sliced bread and the "must have" device of the moment. These people are just dicks in my view. Buying something to look like they are in with everyone else. Pointless and completely pretentious!

People are also raving about the iPod and comparing it to the Sony Walkman, and how it changed the way we listened to music in the 80's.

Except... Sony designed something that revolutionised and did change the way we listen to music. Sony invented the universal control icon system now used worldwide. And Sony invented the portable tape player.

In contrast Apple didn't invent the mp3 format or the first portable mp3 player! They just jumped on the idea and repackaged it. Just as they have for everything they have ever produced. The Mac OS was stolen from Xerox and repackaged, then Apple had the audacity to start suing any other OS maker who tried to use a WIMP like system. And as the Mac progressed, it's unique hardware designs slowly evolved to use more and more PC hardware, until today we now just have a PC running Mac OSX and locked into the hard to expand or upgrade nature of the Apple product design.

And the iPod has huge flaws. Fixed rechargeable battery, so when the battery goes wrong in an iPod you have to junk it or pay a lot for it to be sent back for a new one. And another big flaw is called iTunes. Why should people have to access a device through a proprietary piece of software? Every other manufacturer of mp3 players is, or has, moved to plug and play, drag and drop file management. You connect the device and it appears as a drive, you drag the files to it and can then access and play them on the player. What is wrong with that way of working?

And has anyone actually tried to use iTunes??? It has to be one of the least intuitive pieces of software I've ever tried to use. Simple tasks like renaming a song or album are impossible to work out. Moving or changing song/album ID tags is a mystery, and maintaining a music library is made as difficult as possible. And this coming from Apple, a company that it's iFanatics rave about how usability and intuitiveness are key factors. All I have to say to that is CRAP!

Goes to show what is popular is not necessarily the best and good design is subjective. Something may look good but be totally useless. Many exaples can be found under the WAG catagory (although most of them don't look good).

So there is nothing wrong with me continuing to use my tape Walkman then? Excelent. :)

I do by the way, have a Sony CD Walkman now as well. My mum gave it to me after she got her iPod nano.

There isn't really anything wrong with having these odd ways of doing things, like MacOS and iTunes. They are just different and some people prefer them. Alternatives exist for those that don't like it.

I know Apple weren't the first ones to make MP3s, but as far as I'm aware, it was one of the first popular MP3 players.

I have used iTunes version 1, and have also used versions 3, and also some newer ones. I can't say I like the latest one much.

Fo organising all my music and photos which are on the computer, I just seperate them into folders in Windows Explorer (and Finder, for files which are on the Macintosh).

It is quite possible that some people arn't all that bothered about how the device that they have works, as long as it does what they want it to do, which several devices might do.

Now to change the topic slightly, my rant for today is music.

Why do some idiots have to play music out of their mobiles telephone/MP3 player's loudspeaker on the back of the bus? I got on the 287 to go to Meadowhall the other day and on the top deck where I sat there were some poeple at the back playing loud music. (Meadowhall shopping centre was very busy BTW. I must never go there again at this time of year). I then went on the Supertram going to Sheffield from Meadowhall, which was quiet, excpet that someone sat opposite me was talking on his mobile phone in a foriegn language.

I then got on the 287 to come home. The journey from Sheffield to Meadowhall was nice and peaceful, until it got to meadowhall. Some people got on and started playing loud music. I then had a noisy journey all the way home.

This isn't the first time I have had problems with loud music. It tends to happen quite a lot on the bus, and sometimes in the corridor at college/school, and in the street. These people really should get headphones. They can have it even louder then, but without it annoying the rest of us.

And people really need to stop using music tracks as their telephone's ringtone.

A good argument to learn to drive!

It is, but I still don't want to.

BTW, regarding walkmans, I do have a really old one from the 1980s/ early 90s. It is big and a goldy colour. Still works fine.

I've still got a Sanyo one from 1985, which I remember getting for Christmas and that also still works perfectly, although I don't use it. Very big and chunky and heavy. And also minimal controls. Play, Stop, Rewind, Fast Forward and volume control. It's when they start adding lots of functions to such things that they break easily.

I use the Imperial March from Star Wars as my ringtone for Family.

What winds me up is that all th ein ear headphones that many people have are supposed to be quieter to everyone else as the volume doesn't need to be high for someone too hear the sound as they're in ear yet people still have them at full volume.

Oh well. It will end up with you winning as they will all go deaf, then you can live in peace, while they all live in silence.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Buleste

I use the Imperial March from Star Wars as my ringtone for Family.

What winds me up is that all th ein ear headphones that many people have are supposed to be quieter to everyone else as the volume doesn't need to be high for someone too hear the sound as they're in ear yet people still have them at full volume.

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That's to drown out the noise of all the gits Ste was talking about.
Why do these people always have no taste in music?

It's either that or empty headed school girls talking at top note into their mobile phone to someone on the same bloody bus.

If they absolutely have to do it, could they at least use their brains when speaking to each other.
Might have something interesting to say then.

"We interrupt your regular program with a news bulletin. In southern England, a group of 15 year old girls with brains have been discovered. It is the biggest breakthough since the invention of the wheel. Who knows what kind of useful information they may have to share with us."

Somehow, I think not :dry:

It does seem impossible to go out for just one day and NOT see at least one person using a mobile phone. I think it's quite annoying when you are sat near someone who is talking on a mobile phone on the bus.

It is also surprising, the amount of new phones that you see. I rarely see anyone talking on an old mobile phone.

Today my local council have posted the news that in the last 6 months recycling rates in the Staffordshire moorlands have rocketed and that fornightly collections are a resounding sucess. This is the biggest load of bollocks ever.
The reason recycling rates have gone up in our area is purely due to the fact that in September we were allowed to recycle plastics and cardboard (most of modern food packaging) so the numbers were bound to increase. As for fortnightly collections being a sucess it's only because the weather has been so crap there's been no heat to make the bins reach full ripeness even though when it's getting close to collection time they do pen a bit. The worst part is because hosehold waste gets collected one week and recycling the next the bastards tried to claim that this wasn't fortnightly collections as the binmen come round every week. This is just another piece of Spin. Whats worse is the policy of fortnightly collections was started by a Labour controlled council and opposed by the Tories but then implimented by a Tory controlled council and spun in such a way you'd think that it was there own bright idea.
I hate all politicians. Someone needs to create a vaccination programme to irradicate the disease of politicians and spin doctors.
Come the day when i rule the world the first thing i'll do is build a very long wall with a lot of stakes in front and order some extra ammunition for the bastards.
I'm going to lie down for a bit now.

It annoyed me when this collection scheme was introduced down here too. We sometimes struggle to find room for the rubbish by the second week, and you still can't recycle a lot of things that I would like to see going into the recycle bin, as opposed to having to put it into the normal black bin, which I know ends up in a land fill.

And that is another thing that really annoys me. Land Fills. We don't and shouldn't need them. Pretty much all rubbish thrown away should be recyclable and government set targets years into the future is out of order in my view. We should be forcing packaging companies to use completely recyclable packaging, and for most food stuffs we should be going back to the old way of loose food that is put into brown paper bags, thus eliminating the need for packaging altogether.

Also fast food companies are responsible for a lot of this packaging, although they are now getting better with a lot of it being cardboard.

We never have a problem with not enough space in the wheelie bin. It is never full.

Anything recyclable stuff which the council don't collect, we take to the tip.

We have 3 bins. One for garden waste, cardboard and food waste. One for metal,glass and plastics and then theres the Non recyclable waste. On top of that we then have a Non recyclable bag for paper and one one for clothing. A lot of the plastics go abroad (mostly to China) for recycling.
What annoys me is that if my council for instance had some brains they could build a large recycling centre and an incinerator and whilst recycling or incinerating our waste they could sell their services to other councils and make money but also generate electricity from the incinerators and sell that to the national grid and make more money and then invest that money into improving the area. But of course that would meen councilors going without their "fact finding" trips to hot and sunny climes for a few years so that could never happen.

That is exactly the solution we need. The amount of rubbish we produce as a nation would surely provide enough fuel for electrical production, unless it actually takes more energy to destroy compared to the amount it produces, in which case it would be a bit pointless.

But if it did work, with the air scrubbers now in existence to remove pollutants from the smoke/gases released it would surely be cleaner than building more coal based power stations.

Plus when the NIMBY rebellion starts you just tell them that if they allow this then council tax will fall, services will improve and house prices will rise due to the improved services. Then if i had my way take the scrubbers off and let them choke when it's all gone through.:lol:

Brand new rant today.
Yesterday i decided to update my driver for my graphics card. I always do this with great trepedation as in the past ATI graphics drivers have tended to kill my computer. This time rather than killing my computer it killed NAV a very neat trick if you want to be a hacker especially as if you unistall, you can't reinstall. If you use the Norton Remover programme you still can't reinstall. After several hours of trying i found that all the problems were due to the ATI install installing a version of Visual C++ 2005 redistributable. After uninstalling this and the using the M$ uninstall tool as well as the thing just wouldn't go away i was eventually able to install NAV again. Unfortunatly whilst the driver appears to work fine it didn't fix an annoying system error and in fact added another. So my rant is why are AMD/ATI so crap at software???? They have billions of dollars so you'd have thought they could afford to hire some good programmers. When i upgrade my PC i am not going anywhere near any AMD/ATI products at all.

I've used ATI cards for a long time in some of my systems and have never had any problems with their graphics drivers. At the moment I have two systems running 9800 Pro's and another with a 9600. All of these systems have been reinstalled over time, drivers updated etc... and never any issues.

I would recommend using the free Driver Cleaner tool however to completely clean the system of existing graphics drivers before installing a newer version just to make sure there is nothing on the system HD that might confuse things.

However my current main system has been running an nVidia 7800 GT for about 2 years now and it has been a great card without any real issues. Plus the graphics drivers do seem easier to install and setup compared to ATI offerings. And it has made me want to upgrade to another nVidia card instead of ATI when the time comes.

Damn kids and their idiot driving! The dead-end street where I live has a really narrow part. Two cars can pass eachother there if they both drive near the edge, but normally the car that gets to it last waits until the first passes. Getting home from work just now, I start on this narrow section. Some car is busy turning in the middle of the street further down where the road widens, wasn't a car I know and by the hurried manner it does this I guess this is some guy who took a wrong turn. This happens. But when he has turned, he floors it into this narrow section that I'm in the middle of, and does not edge over to the side to give us both enough space. So, in order to let him pass I literally have to take my car halfway off the road, where of course I hit a rock and the tire blows! And I see the kid as he passes and just keeps speeding on, having this typical stressed out look on his face, completely oblivious to what he just did!

So now my car is standing outside with a ruined tire, and most likely the rim is bent as well! And that wheel was less than a year old! I'm so pissed off right now, that kid should really be glad he didn't stop! Right now I feel like I could've killed him! :mad:

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I've used ATI cards for a long time in some of my systems and have never had any problems with their graphics drivers. At the moment I have two systems running 9800 Pro's and another with a 9600. All of these systems have been reinstalled over time, drivers updated etc... and never any issues.

I would recommend using the free Driver Cleaner tool however to completely clean the system of existing graphics drivers before installing a newer version just to make sure there is nothing on the system HD that might confuse things.

However my current main system has been running an nVidia 7800 GT for about 2 years now and it has been a great card without any real issues. Plus the graphics drivers do seem easier to install and setup compared to ATI offerings. And it has made me want to upgrade to another nVidia card instead of ATI when the time comes.

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The issues i've had with the drivers are well known. Several time after uninstalling old drivers and installing new drivers i kept getting BSODS until eventually ATI came up with a stable driver which then continually brings up a ati2mtag error in the event log to which ATI's response is it is a known problem and if you don't want the error go back and try 6.10 version of the driver. The other annoying thing is I cannot use the full resolution that my monitor is capable of because of ATI's drivers. The general response on the net is that ATI are crap at writing drivers and as software is easier than building hardware i don't hold out much hope for them.

Maybe you shouldn't have swerved, then he would have your car and his to pay repair bills for! Although I know I personally would rather wreck a wheel than my actual car so I would have done the same as you.

Always seems easy to find rants about public transport despite the fact that it is often good.

Last thrusday morning at 8:20, on the number 4 bus, it broke down in Dalton, with loads of smoke/steam coming out of the back. So we all ended up walking to the end of the road to get the X78 into town. Good job it was early in the morning and (should it have been later) on the day of the teachers strike. Meaning yet another day off.

This morning, the 4 bus took the wrong exit at the roundabout and went up the wrong road. Luckily he realised immediately and went onto the correct road using another route, missing out one bus stop. This wasn't a problem, but I thought, what if he didn't realise, or he thought he was driving the number 15, and went all the way up the wrong road?

And on the way back today on the 4, I sat at the back next to some people who were going home from school and they started wacking each other with bits of screwed up metro newspaper. Really not sure I understand that. These do make me wonder what will happen in the future.

And when will people stop coming round to my house and putting leaflets through my letterbox?! I have thought about putting a big sign over the letterbox saying 'Do not post leaflets through this letterbox if you wish to remain alive', but I havn't got round to it yet.

There seems to be a lot of censorship around these days.
Am I talking about the internet in China or perhaps who is allowed to vote in Zimbabwe?
No, I am talking about power mad Admins on miggy sites.

There seems to be far too much ego around to fit comfortably onto sites these days.

For instance, I had a posting on a well known Amiga site today.
After posting, I read it again just to make sure I hadn't made too many typos.
(Didn't find any but that doesn't mean much.)
All looked correct.

Imagine my surprise later on when the posting just magically vanished.
Now some of the more cynically minded of you may think this was because the main admin on the site had mad a mistake, and I had kindly out of the goodness of my heart pointed this out.
(I might have taken the micky just a tiny, tiny, tiny amount:D)

Surely that can't be the reason?

Anyone any ideas what action I should take?

The post box on Markfield Drive which I posted my letter in the other day appears to have been severly damaged.

I went past it on the bus earlier and it was at an angle to the ground and was burnt and had tape round it saying out of servies. I assumed someone might have tried to blow it up, but according to the Sheffield Telegraph:

Crash blaze
A CAR burst into flames after running out of control and smashing into a post box. The Fiat Panda was being driven along Markfield Drive, Wickersley, when the accident occurred. The driver escaped unhurt before the car began burning.

Not sure when it was as I didn't go out yesterday, but my letter should have gone with the first collection yesterday. I hope it did.

I would expect that the durability of these post boxes would mean that the contents of it wouldn't have caught fire, since it was the car burning and that just caused the side of the post box to burn.

What the hell was someone doing driving a Fiat PAnda??? They're James May mobiles. Inconsiderate bastards.;)

It often amazes where people manage to crash a car. I mean, look at the size of a Fiat Panda, and then the size of a post box. The likelihood of hitting it is very small. Disgruntled ex-postman maybe? :lol:

Regarding stupid places for accidents. A guy in his 20s was killed in a car crash last year in Chichester. If you look at the piece of road where it occurred you just can't work out how. It is a 40 mile an hour quiet road that slightly curves to the right. It's also a very wide road where you could easily overtake something with enough room if a car were coming the other way. He apparently crashed on a nearly straight section of road and died from his injuries, and no other cars were involved. How? Is a mystery to me!

What is the cuase of all the sh1t that is happening in society today?

Early last year, in March, my daughter's great aunt was murdered in Southampton, and Monday night, somebody decided it would be a 'lark' to set fire to the block of flats I live in.

NOw, I always imagined that I would be real sensible in a situation like that, but, you can never be certain until it happens. Fortunately the fire service were able rescue me and my daughter (who stays with me on a Monday night) without too much trouble, but the whole event, I fear, has had a bad effect on me.

We, myself and the other tennants, have got so used to the fire alarm getting set off by drunks and youngsters who think it is a laugh that we tend to ignore it. However, this Monday there was a noticable difference, namely the people shouting.

My first thought was to grab my little girl and head down the stairs and get out as soon as possible. The stairway was relatively clkear of smoke, but sudfdently it just filled with black acrid fiumes, and all visbility was gone.

I managed to make it to one of the landings, and closed the fire door, but that meant that myself, my daughter and three others were trapped on the landing. The worst part was the fire service could not get ladders to the windows because of all the scaffolding. I managed to pass my girl out and was able to make good my escape about five minutes later, after they had smashed a glass canopy to position a ladder.

Now, my daughter has been given the all-clear, and seems to be free of any after effects, but it, for the moment, has messed up my head.

I guess that is why I am writing this is so that it's good therapy for me, and that it can be a interesting point of discussion on how to deal with these sudden shocks.

Stupid thing is, and the problem with today's nanny state, is that whoever did it will claim it's because 'they're bored'. Sure, with all the modern forms of intertainment (computers, consoles, movies, internet, sports) kids get more enjoyment hanging around corners, doing nothing?!?

GIve me a break. My suggestion is that whoever gets caught for this, gets automatically volunteered into assisting the Fire Service with their drills (with real fire and smoke) and see just how BORED they get then.

What is it with the generation of parents who bring these kids up, so when they reach 11 upwards, aboslutely nothing seems to interest them. Whatever happened to 'family'? My guess is that the mums are halfway into a bottle of Newcastle Brown and the men are fiddling with their cars. At least, in POrtsmouth anyway.

There ya go, rant over.

Do I feel better? NO, BUt either way, I will smile for my daughter, at least.

ON a lighter note, she was very brave and showed a trace of her mum's personality, she seemed to enjoy all the attention of lots of big men in uniforms!!!

Glad to hear both you and your daughter are both physically unharmed.

I'm surpised mothers around Pompy are drinking Dog. Around my way it's Wife Beater (Stella) all the way.

I agree with the sending of arsonists to one of the training courses with the Fire Service. The Firemen/women wearing breathing apperatus and the arse-onist without. It might just scare them into some sense.

:o Holy.. I'm glad you both made it out ok. Things like that can go real nasty. Can only offer my sympathies at this point as I'm allready a little pissed at the darker side of society and the fact that people seem to be doing very little about it.