Thursday, August 07, 2008
Parking fun
Started the day by tasting the delights of the Lambeth residents' parking scheme whereby residents can buy books of tickets to enable their guests to park somewhere near their houses. Perfectly sensible scheme but a pain that one needs such things. We have less sophisticated versions in Epsom but fortunately they have not crept out as far as us yet. I can still park outside my house! Must be worth a few thou.
Then onto the congestion charge which I have not had occasion to tackle before. Not being very familiar with the congestion charge area, I managed to enter it around Blackfriars Bridge without knowing and to drive through the area without getting any wiser. If I had not proceeded to check later, what would have happened? Would I eventually got a letter inviting me to pay £50 or else? Perhaps the authorities answer would be that if I am so dozy that I did not see the 'you are now entering a controlled zone' signs that I have no business to be on the road at all.
Having, I was sufficiently on the ball to check and proceeded to the congestion charge web site. Don't know whether I can ask it whether I owe it any money, but it did know all about the make of my car when I finally got my number plate right. Which was a good thing in the sense that I was then confident that I had put the right number in; a bad thing in the sense that all this information about my car is flying around the ether. Then proceeded to give it some money, with the helpful HSBC pulling me through some rigmarole to tighten up the security on my card. Maybe I have now actually registered my date of birth, and when I phone up their friendly computer and spend 10 minutes keying in this and that, it will not now inform me that your card is not registered for this service and please wait while you are connected to an operator. And now, the following morning, I am in receipt of an emailed receipt. Nowhere near as quick as Amazon, with whom these things seem to turn up in seconds, but it is there.
I would give the computer system which collected my money good marks. Nice, uncluttered, simple to follow windows. But I remain of the view that the principal beneficiary of this scheme is the computer services company which built and operates the thing - although it may be that a few folk in Transport for London have been entertained in style or have acquired some discrete assets. This last perhaps unlikely. In my time in the public service, despite the motive being sometimes present, I never so much as had a whiff of such a thing.
Two factlets on the culinary front. First, BH tells me that the mixing charectaristics of Cheam bread when making bread pudding are quite differant from those obtained when using bread from Mr S. The former achieving the desired consistancy more quickly. I must ask my friendly neighbourhood bread technologist why this might be. Second, there is a dearth of leaf green tea in both Epsom and Cheam so, temporarily been pushed into the use of tea bags from Jackson. Taste fine, but overall experience degraded by not being able to inspect the tea leaves, by not having tea leaves stuck in the spout and what have you.
Then onto the congestion charge which I have not had occasion to tackle before. Not being very familiar with the congestion charge area, I managed to enter it around Blackfriars Bridge without knowing and to drive through the area without getting any wiser. If I had not proceeded to check later, what would have happened? Would I eventually got a letter inviting me to pay £50 or else? Perhaps the authorities answer would be that if I am so dozy that I did not see the 'you are now entering a controlled zone' signs that I have no business to be on the road at all.
Having, I was sufficiently on the ball to check and proceeded to the congestion charge web site. Don't know whether I can ask it whether I owe it any money, but it did know all about the make of my car when I finally got my number plate right. Which was a good thing in the sense that I was then confident that I had put the right number in; a bad thing in the sense that all this information about my car is flying around the ether. Then proceeded to give it some money, with the helpful HSBC pulling me through some rigmarole to tighten up the security on my card. Maybe I have now actually registered my date of birth, and when I phone up their friendly computer and spend 10 minutes keying in this and that, it will not now inform me that your card is not registered for this service and please wait while you are connected to an operator. And now, the following morning, I am in receipt of an emailed receipt. Nowhere near as quick as Amazon, with whom these things seem to turn up in seconds, but it is there.
I would give the computer system which collected my money good marks. Nice, uncluttered, simple to follow windows. But I remain of the view that the principal beneficiary of this scheme is the computer services company which built and operates the thing - although it may be that a few folk in Transport for London have been entertained in style or have acquired some discrete assets. This last perhaps unlikely. In my time in the public service, despite the motive being sometimes present, I never so much as had a whiff of such a thing.
Two factlets on the culinary front. First, BH tells me that the mixing charectaristics of Cheam bread when making bread pudding are quite differant from those obtained when using bread from Mr S. The former achieving the desired consistancy more quickly. I must ask my friendly neighbourhood bread technologist why this might be. Second, there is a dearth of leaf green tea in both Epsom and Cheam so, temporarily been pushed into the use of tea bags from Jackson. Taste fine, but overall experience degraded by not being able to inspect the tea leaves, by not having tea leaves stuck in the spout and what have you.
# posted by Jim @ 1:20 AM 
