Wednesday, June 18, 2008

SAINSBURY’S THUG LIKE BEHAVIOUR

I recently visited Sainsbury’s in a Sussex market town on a Sunday to return some boys shorts bought the previous day which had been incorrectly labeled and were, therefore, the wrong size.



I had done a major shop the previous day and didn’t need to purchase anything else other than about £5 of milk etc.



When I paid the cashier I asked her to ‘swipe’ my car park entry card in order to allow me out of the car park because I had probably been in the store for very slightly more than the half hour allowed for ‘free’ parking.



Without swiping the card I would have incurred a parking fee of £10 for the privilege of being forced to return a faulty product and make a minor purchase.



The cashier made the assumption that because I had bought such a small number of items I must have been in the store less than half an hour. When I told her I had also spend a considerable time dealing with my exchange of shorts she held on to her mindset of me being within the half hour.



She refused to swipe the card, saying she ‘couldn’t’ swipe it if I had been less than half an hour and ‘couldn’t’ swipe it if I had been more than half an hour because I had only spent about £5 and not the minimum of ten pounds.



Never the less, I asked her to swipe the card because should I have been in the store for just slightly more than half an hour I would be refused exit without paying a ten pound fee, and I would have blocked the exit to the car park for all the other exiting shoppers while I either paid the fee or had the unpleasant experience of arguing the matter with the intransigent Sainsbury’s staff.



Although this discussion was ludicrous, there was no personal difficulty or rancour in the discussion other than the cashier explaining to me her wish to obey her management instructions not to swipe cards in my sort of circumstances.



The cashier then hailed a passing ‘supervisor’ and asked her to take the card to the customer service point to have it swiped. An amicably reasonable solution to the utter lack of initiative the Sainsbury’s management deprive cashiers of using.



I would stress that despite my slightly acid description of events, there had been no unpleasant exchanges between the cashier and me. I recognised she was following the management instructions to her and our exchange was perfectly polite and civilised in every way.



I merely told her I insisted the card must be swiped as I did not want to block the car park exit. And It seemed complete lunacy to gamble on whether I had been in the store 29 minutes and would be freed, or 31 minutes and would be trapped causing every other exiting shopper to also be trapped behind my blocked car.



There had been no disruption or ‘argument’. It was a perfectly normal exchange, with a perfectly amicable solution as the cashier instructed the supervisor who gaily tripped off to swipe the card without further ado.



Unfortunately, just as the supervisor walked off with the card, a hatchet faced woman with a Sainsbury’s uniform and with a filthy expression of intense anger on her face shrieked at the top of her voice to me ‘You’ve been barred from the store.’



At the same time she slammed her hand on a ‘panic’ button to set off a loud alarm and shouted for security staff to forcibly remove me from the store.



Amazed and utterly nonplussed, I replied to her that I had not been banned. The supervisor taking my card to be swiped turned around and handed the card back to the cashier who then handed it to me, unswiped. I handed it back to the supervisor in a dazed state as the screaming harpy was continuing to shriek loudly at me that I was banned and shouldn’t be shopping at the store at all.



This was news to me as I have been shopping at the store every few days for five years uninterrupted by any ‘banning orders’ imposed by screaming harpies shouting abuse at me at the top of their voices.



The supervisor with my card walked with me to the customer service point where the card was swiped by her without comment.



Meanwhile, a burly security guard appeared who told me I couldn’t leave the store. He kept shuffling up to within a very few inches of my face every time I tried to keep a reasonably normal distance from him, breathing his foetid breath straight into my nostrils as he followed his training instructions to intimidate people by ‘invading their personal space’ in an overtly threatening manner by standing abnormally close to them.





I was a prisoner of Sainsbury’s, not allowed to leave the premises by this threatening security guard.



I was completely stunned at being screamed at for absolutely no reason at all by this maniac of a hatchet faced harpy woman employed by Sainsbury’s, and then kept prisoner and prevented from leaving by a threatening ’security guard’ who clearly implied he would use violence to prevent me going about my lawful business.

Meanwhile, my nine year old son appeared to be in a state of increasing terror at what was happening to his Father.

A duty manager, then appeared and asked the security guard what was going on. The guard replied he had no idea other than the shrieking Sainsbury employee has said I was banned from the store and had asked him to throw me out.



A slightly unnecessary procedure as, armed with my now swiped card, and having paid for my shopping, I was more than anxious to remove myself from this screaming madhouse where the Sainsbury employee’s continued shrieking had attracted a wide audience of at least a hundred people looking to see what the fracas was all about.



The manager did not speak to me, indeed refused to do so as he asked the security guard what the fuss was about. I was insolently and rudely told to be quiet by the manager when I greeted him as a possible saviour from this growing insanity and attempted to start explaining to him what had taken place. I imagined that, naturally, the manager would wish to speak to the polite and diffident customer being kept prisoner and prevented from leaving the store by a security guard.

Not so. When the security guard had finished telling the Duty Manager he had no idea what was going on, the manager simply refused to speak to me and told me brusquely to leave. I replied that was what I was being prevented from doing.



The manager’s response was to behave in an extremely confrontational and aggressive way, and also following his training on how to deal with violence, proceeded to do the same as the security guard and shoved his face within inches of mine. Together the manager and the security guard ‘herded‘ me out of the store in a brutally uncivilised and unnecessary manner, not allowing me to leave normally and willingly as I was entirely intent on doing.



It occurred to me the pair of them must have been watching too many American Los Angeles Cop and Car chase type TV films and were completely confused about what was American television fantasy and what was real life in a quiet Sussex market town as a sixty year old, inoffensive, middle class resident went about the daily business of domestic shopping with his nine year old son.



I was followed into the car park by the security guard at a distance who waited to see which car I approached. He then wrote my car number in biro on his hand in a thoroughly dramatic manner, no doubt still living the fantasy and taking his cue from all those America Cop movies he watched when not harassing innocent shoppers in the local supermarket for a living.



SAINSBURY’S AND OTHER BIG BUSINESS CONNIVE IN DESTROYING SLEEPY MARKET TOWN



When, many years ago, my Father was a Councillor in this town and as Chairman of the Council was intimately involved in trying to prevent Sainsburys’ and other megalomaniac big businesses from wrecking the then pretty country market town with massively destructive ‘redevelopment’, he would have had absolutely no idea how nasty these big businesses like Sainsbury’s would become.

Since I knew the town as a boy, the Sun Life Insurance company and Sainsbury’s have together been instrumental in conniving to persuade the Town Council to raze down vast amounts of the then attractive centre of the town and browbeat the Local Council into agreeing to close off most roads into the centre of town and build an ugly motorway-like ‘inner ring road ‘bypass’ around the centre of sleepy little town, preventing any normal access to it.



Both these business organisations built monumental and modernistic ugly buildings over the centuries old town centre roads, killing of the historic town at a stroke. No doubt Sainsbury’ and Sun Life persuaded the Council it would be a good thing as they would be bringing lots of local jobs into the town.



But it has had the effect of preventing any of the local residents from getting at the town centre to do any shopping and empty shops now lie abandoned and boarded up forlornly as a result.



Shops and other traders still struggling to make ends meet as the Council extorts gigantic parking charges, hugely exceeding the costs of paying an average monthly mortgage for a house, never mind a bloody car parking space, can only watch grimly as turnover falls and they go out of business one by one.



Fewer and fewer residents bother to overcome the sheer trauma and hassle of being milked by unreasonable parking charges and endless threats of £90 parking tickets followed by bailiffs at the door adding hundred and hundreds of pounds to just one parking ticket, then threatening householders with the legalised theft of their house contents if they don’t pay up immediately.



Pedestrians are artfully provided with their own obstacle course to get into the town centre too. Nearly the entire local population has to brave an artificially contrived and utterly inappropriate and unnecessary urban motorway, carefully conceived by dimwitted ‘planners’ to make getting into the town centre on foot as unpleasant as possible for virtually everyone.



Hence, the town is dying on its feet; a slow strangulation that has already turned a really busy, attractive mediaeval market town into a nasty little empty urban desert in the middle of of what used to be some of the most stunningly beautiful landscape in the World.

It is now a noisy sprawl of ring roads and Orwellian building development designed to look as revolting as possible.



But Sun Life has fallen on hard times as more and more people realised the life insurer plundered their pockets and business has slumped. So the predatory business has now gone, having done its job of sucking the life out of the two like the parasite it is.



Sainsbury’s too is no longer in the centre of town, bringing the extra shoppers and vibrancy it had solemnly promised all those years ago.



It’s old low rise utilitarian shed like architecture is now a shoddy enclosed shopping centre, identical to any down at heel shopping mall anywhere. Completely without character and wildy unpleasant to visit, most shops offering standardised high street cloned tat.



Sainsbury’s supermarket itself, even more sophisticated in manipulating and dictating to local town councils all over the country, has purloined most of the one time garden of a fantastically elegant classic manor house in the one small remaining bit of the original town by the ancient Church that still remains.

The Manor House is no longer fantastically elegant as it was bought by the RSPCA for it’s headquarters, and then sold at a massive profit to developers who built bits on everywhere and turned it into a warren of poky little ‘town houses’ and awkward apartments in the once elegant original building.



The town is is now ugly and bereft of the soul it had. The centuries of hustle and bustle of a busy English country market town have gone. The old coaching inn, once the focal point, is boarded up and decaying listlessly. In the evenings and on the weekends, the town is dead and empty, except for a few loitering youths, often mindlessly drunk.



It is not the pleasant, friendly place it once was. Instead it is a place to hurry away from before a black cloud of depression descends about what modern life is like .

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Britain Now a Totalitarian State

We live in a country where at present a minority of gutless, ignorant and cruel individuals stand more unaccountable than ministers in our own government. An unaccountable minority making lives hell for thousands of families and their precious children each year.

An unaccountable minority who escape prosecution for their perjurous crimes committed against innocent families in unaccountable family courts wrapped in secrecy. Unaccountable legal representatives who pretend to care right at the start only to deceive and ignore nearing the end.

These are draconian laws, but made worse when twisted by local authority officials using a safety net of unaccountability. Abolish all secrecy in the Family Courts and let the daylight of open inquiry illuminate their work.” Fassit

Thursday, March 13, 2008

HELP ! MY 'PHONE LINE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY LUNATICS

The lunatics in question are an evil team consisting of BT (otherwise known as British Telecome) and Talk the Talk ( an utterly insanely named bunch of twits that make its
shareholders very rich by providing a truly lousy telephone service.

Today I started my working day only to discover my BT broadband connection had entirely vanished.

I discovered Talk Talk had somehow hijacked my telephone service so I could make calls, but not receive any, and there was no broadband connection at all.

Talk Talk had stolen my phone.

It's called 'slamming' in the language of the mentally retarded wierdos of the electronic sub-culture. It is illegal and a crime.

I spent a solid five hours and came close to having a heart attack at the immense difficulty of getting anything done about it and recovering my line from the thieves.

It meant I got absolutely no work done at all. I also feel like checking in to the nearest secure psychiatric hospital after spending the entire day in the hands of 'customer advisors’ and 'call centres' of various kinds with BT and Talk Talk, OfCOM and the frequent foray around the globe to Hindustani speakers in India, a continent or so distant from here.

If this sounds mad, that's because it is. More later.

Monday, March 10, 2008

UNTIDY GARDEN - SOCIAL SERVICES WILL TAKE YOUR CHILDREN AWAY

I have just heard a story that social services have told someone their garden is too untidy and therefore it is a reason why they are having their granddaughter adopted. Can you believe it ?

Friday, March 7, 2008

EVERY LITTLE EXTRA BIT HELPS

This is a true story.

There is an organisation called the Birmingham Mudshires Building Demolition Society. It is wholly owned by the Hellifax Building Demolition Society which advertises extensively on television telling everyone trusting enough to believe it that every little extra helps.

What they really mean is not that every little bit extra helps their customers - which is what people think they mean, but that every little bit extra of your money they can persuade you to give them will do very nicely thank you very much towards providing the Hellifax and the Mudshires Board of Directors with an even larger bonus this year and an even more extravagant Christmas lunch at your expense.

Oh, and let’s not forget the shareholders. I nearly forgot about them. They will do very nicely too from that little bit extra the hardworking and trusting customers can be conned into handing over to the safe keeping of these eminent financial institutions.

It’s a funny thing, but many of the shareholders seem to be Directors on the boards of other financial institutions. Mmmm. I wonder why ? There's a lot more to this story.

Let’s investigate a bit further shall we ?

Thursday, March 6, 2008

IS THE NHS A JOKE ?

AN EVERY DAY TRUE STORY OF GIVING BIRTH WITH THE NHS


‘On the Thursday I was seven days overdue with her. So, seven days late.

I was having really bad back pain, it was really uncomfortable. So I rang up the hospital and they said ‘Oh well come up and we will have a look at you.

This was on Thursday night. When I got there I was two centimetres. I was having contractions every three or four minutes.

Being two centimetres dilated is a clear indication of the start of labour. And ten centimetres is when it’s the start of when you’re about to have your baby.

I stayed in Redhill overnight on the Thursday because I was still having contractions and they gave me some painkillers - some codemol and it sent her to sleep. because they are quite strong painkillers she went off to sleep so it stopped my contractions.

So I Came home - this was on the Friday morning at eight O’clock . I was discharged from Redhill. They just said, well it’s going to happen you’ll just kind of have to go home until ....and see what happens. So I came home.

I went off to Harry’s school play and was wandering around in quite a lot of pain. About two o’clock I rang my friend who was taking me to hospital. It was all arranged that when I had to go to hospital I said I think I really need to back now. So okay we’ll go up there.

I got to Redhill about three o’clock Friday afternoon. They said oh right you’re four centimetres it’s definitely going to happen now. Stand up, get moving walk around because that will bring it on The more you do that the quicker it will be basically. So I’m there wandering all around the hospital i8n and out of the room Im in trying to get it all moving .

I was examined again at five o’clock and I was still four centimetres but I was having contractions every three minutes then and they could see on the trace that they were getting stronger So then I was like this is my third baby so it should be quite quick.

Then about seven o’clock the midwife said we are going to break your waters at seven thirty. Because when she did the internal examination of the baby she could feel the waters of the baby bulging out. They were ready to break anyway. Any moment they could have done it themselves. She said but at seven thirty we’ll come and do it for you then it will happen really quickly because I was in quite a lot of pain.

I said okay then. At then at quarter to eight - when they were supposed to come at half seven to break my waters - at quarter to eight another midwife came in and same I’m really sorry we can’t do that we’re too busy and you’re going to have to go home.

I was, like, you are joking. My friend was like what. By then I was quite emotional and just started crying I didn’t know what to do with myself I was having like full blown contractions every three minutes They were just like we’re too busy you’ll just have to go home.

And I said that I live in Horsham it will take me at least forty five minutes to get here in a rush kind of thing.

Oh no you’ll be fine like you’ll have loads of time when it happens even though the midwife who came in before had said once your waters break you’ll have your baby quickly because it’s your third baby it’ll be quicker. And because my labours with the other two have only been like a maximum of two hours from when my waters are breaking.

And I was like, really, I didn’t know what to do with myself I was crying I rang my Mum up was like I don’t know what to do my Mum was, just got a little bit angry not of me that was the hospital on their heads be it kind of thing if you come home and it happens they will be responsible for that. So I came home from Redhill my friend driving. Got all the way back to the Faygate roundabout at the end of the road and my waters broke and I was like oh no and my friend was like shall we just turn round and go back Thank goodness we didn’t because this was like probably at nine o’clock by then we were at Faygate roundabout when my waters broke, so I thought hang on, that’s about five or ten minutes from home.

We came back here and I rang up Redhill. As soon as my waters broke my contractions were like one after the other I wasn’t even getting a rest between them. They were like straight away. And I got out of the car and I had to crawl up the front path because I couln’t even walk it was so painful.

So I came in and rang up the delivery suite which I’d just left at Redhill and said look you’ve just discharged me and she went yea I know you’ve just left I was like well I’ve just got home my waters broke she could hear me on the phone like (moaning and crying) having like she was like.

She said don’t worry, don’t rush just get back up here in the next hour or so. I said to her I haven’t got an hour.

If it was your first baby maybe you might not know but it was my third and I knew I was never going to make it back to Redhill. So I said I was not going to make it. She was like you will don’t worry no need to panic you’ll be fine .

So I got off the phone and my Mum’s friend was here looking after the boys they were asleep in bed. She said you’re not going to make it are you I was like no asnd I don’t know what by something was just like ring an ambulance I’m not going to make it I think it was twenty to ten on Friday night when we rang the paramedic. We had arrived back at about quarter past nine.

About twenty to ten when we rang the paramedics. My friend rang them for me and she was like she’s in labour she having contractions literally a minute apart there was hardly any rest in between them. Obviously while they were on the phone they send the ambulance don’t they.

The lady on the phone was talking to her... saying take her trousers off sit her on the floor get her comfortable and everything The paramedics took eleven minutes from the time when they got the call to when they got here I think they were from Crawley They said they had sent a midwife at the same time.

They came in and said how is it and I said it’s really painful and they said it’s okay we’re going to take you back to Redhill. He sat down on the floor in front of me and I literally just pushed once and she was there and he was like well okay then we won’t be going back to Redhill. And the midwife was then another hour and forty minutes after they arrived for her to get here. It was all over and done by the time she got here.

She just checked the baby and weighed and stuff. It was all over and done with.

It was the fourteenth of December.

Common sense says a woman beginning dilations stays in hospital. I should never have been sent home.

Obviously when I ,was there in hospital and it was four centimetres and I had been for three or four hours . In those three or four hours I was having contractions every three minutes it wasn’t as if nothing was happening. The whole time I was there I was having contractions every three minutes. And they could see by the monitor ,they put on you and trace the baby’s heart beat and the contractions and they could see by the trace that everey time I was having contractions they were getting stronger and more intense.

So basically I was sent home in the middle of childbirth.

The staff were just really rude like I know that I’m only young I’m twenty two, nearly twenty three but it was my third baby I knew what I was doing it wasn’t like it was my first baby. I know some people are a bit dramatic and over the top with their first one but with my third baby I knew what my body was doing and I knew that I was in labour. They knew that I was in labour
and they had already said I was four centimetres dilated.

They were really rude and offhand you’ll be fine just go for a walk it’ll happen when it happens. Well obviously I know that but ... When she came in and said I think you’ve got to go home we’ve got no space for you we need the room and you’re just going to have to go home I was really upset then I was in a lot of pain and I was really crying.

I said I’m really worried that I’m not going to make it back I’m really scared that when I have my baby not in hospital that’s the scariest thing in the World. Oh you’ll be fine she said. She really brushed it off. And I was like that’s not really what I wanted to hear.

I never had a doctor the whole time was there it was all midwives. They just leave you alone with a buzzer and come in and check you every hour.

All my friends and people I have spoken to that have babies and that all don’t go to Redhill they go to Haywards Heath They think it is a much nicer hospital and they are much better there.

And I’ve had this like obviously my third baby I’ve never had any problems at Redhill. I’ve always said , you know what, they were amazing. You know what Harry was six weeks premature and they were absolutely amazing with him. they were like took him into special care they were absolutely brilliant I stayed in for five days after I had Harry and I would never have had a bad word to say about them.

With George I was induced which means you’re there for the whole day and a whole night kind of thing until you have your baby.

They were amazing then. This time they were just awful. I don’t know if it’s just because ... Oh and when the paramedics came the day they sent me home The paramedic said that was the day they had closed emergency services at Haywards Heath so everyone was going to Redhill.
So they obviously sent me home because they were so busy because Haywards Heath were accepting no more patients.

So I had to go home because they didn’t have space for me.

If I had turned the car around to go back to the hospital when my waters broke at the Faygate roundabout like my friend had wanted to I would have had my baby at the side of the road That night it was minus four. When the paramedics came out they said it was minus four.


And I would have had my baby on the side of the road just me and my friend . It was lucky I decided to go home rather than back to the hospital. Because I never would made it back there. I would have had her on the side of the road in the freezing cold on my own.

I don’t know if we would have been able to cope. We had no blankets or anything in the car. It was like minus four. It wasn’t like you were at home and could get towels and blankets and obviously if you’re in hospital they take the baby and put it straight under a heater.

If there had been any kind of complication it could have been seriously dangerous.

After I had George, my second child, the baby before her I had a haemorage and I had to have a blood transfusion so I’ve already had that complication with him and it could have happened again. And I would have been in my front room with the paramedics hoping they had some blood in their ambulance otherwise God knows what would have happened.

I can’t imagine how I would have coped if there had been injury to my baby; I’d be going mental. I would be doing everything I could not to let this happen to anyone else.

It’s bad enough that I had to have my baby on my own at home. Luckily I had people with me. What if I had just been at home completely on my own.

Luckily my two older children were asleep in bed. They slept through all of it. But they were here the whole time. How traumatised would they have been if they had walked in and watched me give birth on the floor.

My local midwife who goes through your pregnancy the whole way through wrote a letter of complaint to Redhill and so did my doctor.