Spent over £2k on fire and surround.  Limestone surround has crumbled on the edge of the hearth, resulting in 3 large chips and more on the base of the hearth.  No after sales care at all - company will not come out and assess the chips and have offered no explanation to what might be the cause. 

Well, Guinness is 250 year's old this year.

To celebrate this they have issue a special 250 year brew, which I tried in "The Onley Ale House"just outside Washington DC.

Well it was shite, it was for all purposes the stout that my Grandfather used to drink out of the bottle, at least that had a taste, this had nothing.

So if you are offered this or see it in a bar resist the temptation, dish water would have more taste and character.

On the other hand, I enjoyed a few ordinary Guinness both in Washington and New York, and they were as good as here.

They still can't bake! They boast an instore bakery, but I don't, for one minute, believe a proper Baker would produce the product below and try to sell it on to an unwitting consumer at full price. I bought a pack of two Pain au Raisons, brewed a fresh cup of coffee and bit into one. It was dry and didn't taste right. Turning it over explained why, as you can see from the picture below on the right. The blackened, charred bottom is clearly visible. I paid full price for this, or actually, I should say I was overcharged for this, and thereby, unwittingly, contributed to Tesco's £3bn profit as I didn't return to Tesco to complain and ask for a refund.

Link to image:

I'm waiting for a  pheasant plucker not the pheasant pluckers son, I'm only plucking pheasants til the pleasant pheasant plucker comes . 

Ok done with the game now on to the subject of fish ... loch fyne by name loch not so fyne by nature.

Having waited in anticipation for a meal for 3 we went for the much advertised daily specials .Daily left overs more like.After an acceptable starter of fishcakes and  calamari,the childrens meal didn't arrive as promised.

Eventually after prompting a goujon of fish (more like a stumpy thumb) with pre salted chips arrived.SaLTY but still prepared to give the benefit of the doubt.Maybe an enthusiatic chef with a heart condition trying to get rid of all the spare salt by hiding it in childrens chips. 

......Forgot to mention .! It was waitress changeover time as we were informed , so maybe that excuses our problems.

Then having emptied the bread basket,woo hoo a surf and turf !A  medium steak (i.e no blood) arrived loking like it had done an olympic opening ceremony and got stuck in the flame with a few overdone soggy nasty shrimps  in shells.(£18)

Then a lovely (or so you might think) lemon sole .I think they had mis spelt the menu and it was really a melon sloe with extra spiky bones and a few nasty bruises on his way to the oven.(£18)

Luckily our manager Sarah ...(aka yts trainee) was prepared  to give us some useful antidotes to our problem,so we wouldn't feel scared to visit again.

The options;

.....Coffee on the house

...Desserts ,

or money back.

I ask you dear readers ,

Which one do you think we chose! 

In a seafood salad purchased from Tesco I found the diminutive monster circled below clung to the side of a prawn, perhaps feeding. Like I'm going to eat it now! How annoying!

Under the microscope I thought the creature bore a a slight resemblance to Tesco CEO, Sir Terry Leahy, but it may have been a trick of the light. Gosh, I hope he's not doing anything despicable on the food.

Watch out guys, if you have been adding Activia to your shopping basket you could be accused of being a gay or a girl. This yogurt is as feminine as tampons and panty liners. This was lost on me until I saw the current TV advert for the product which alienates male consumers by using the words "every female" instead of "everyone" in the sentence "I have every female in my family eating it".

The message is simple. It's a girls product. Guys don't eat it. I am a guy, I shouldn't eat Activia yogurt. I wrote to Danone for clarity. A spokeswoman from the UK Danone Careline responded to my email saying it was "fine for men as well". Rather than being assured, the reply made me more apprehensive as it read more like "you shouldn't have any side effects you freak".

I have dropped Activia from my shopping list since seeing the advert. The email did not attempt to get it back on there. I guess men eating Activia is something they can't be seen to condone. If you are male and eat Activia consult a specialist, you need help.

The response from Danone:

Good afternoon

Thank you for your e-mail. Activia is fine for men as well as women.

The core target audience for Activia is women aged 30-45+. This is why we advertise with women only, around this age. We are aware that men also consume Activia, but understand this is low compared to the number of female consumers; hence our advertising is targeted at women. We have not ruled out men in advertising and this is something we may do in the future.

I'm an Orange mobile customer for over ten years. In that time I have had one phone upgrade, and a lot of very expensive bills. The phone upgrade didn't last long. It was an Ericsson T28s which didn't allow you to speak. You'd dial a number and could hear the person on the other end answer hello before hanging up. I remember walking into an Orange Retail Shop on Oxford Street only to be told they couldn't help as the Orange shops were seperate. Great Service!

If you don't upgrade your phones you're meant to get a discount. I've never had one. Occassionally my monthly bills top a £100. Am I on the right plan? Who knows, all this marketing gibberish about Dolphins, Racoons and Panthers is just too confusing.

In any case, the issue is international calls which are normally out of plan and where the Mobile companies rake it in.

If I'm away in Cork it's 38pence a minute to make a call, 19pence a minute to receive a call and 25pence to send a text message. From the UK I call Irish mobiles and at the end of every month I am left with unused minutes and unused texts which only roll over a month. Orange keep the rest.

The good news, I found a way to do it for free. All I get charged is a local rate call which gets swallowed up in the unused minutes I lose every month. Mobiles in all the countries listed below can be called for free...

Ireland, USA, Autralia, South Africa, Canada, Belgium, China, France, Spain, Argentina, Austria, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Romania, Slovnia, Skovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK

The company doing this are called Rebtel. With a name like this they should come from Cork, but they don't. They're based in Stockholm, and it's easy to get started.

Next thing I need to find is how to make free or very low costs txts, anyone out there in Neverland know the answer?

Many of us, if not all of us, now carry a mobile phone. We all have different methods of paying for the usage of these phones from "Pay as you go " or "Pay Monthly", I have been a pay monthly customer of Vodafone for a long time.

I decided to carry out a little analysis of my bills to see if I was getting the best value for money from the tarriff that I was on. When I was reviewing the data that I could get my hands on from Vodafones website I noticed that I was calling and continue to call 1890 numbers.

1890 numbers are shown on many advertisements and documentation to be low cost numbers, well they are not if you use your mobile.

My tarriff gives me a monthly allowance of 200 minutes of calls to any network and landlines in Ireland, and I find it hard to meet this on a monthly basis, and usually have minutes carried foward to the next month, yet I still get charged for calls that I have made to 1890 numbers at 25c per minute, which does'nt meet my defination of cheap or low cost.

When I called Vodafone to ask why this is the case, "Its always been like that" was the response, I asked could it be ascertained why 1890 numbers are not part of my monthly commitment? "I'll need to find out and get back to you" I'm still waiting, and have a feeling will be waiting for sometime to come.

Another thing I noticed that Companies and Government Agencies, such as the Revenue Commissioners, print these numbers so that you can contact them cheaply, but they never print an alternative number ie an ordinary landline number, which I can assure you is part of your monthly flat charge and you won't be charged extra.

One would have thought that 1890 would be part of "any network" but it would appear to be apart of "some other network".

Tescos have been heavily criticised for reducing the price of its whole chickens to £1.99.

Critics of this move include the National Union of Farmers, who have said that the move is "extremely ill-judged and short sighted." Apparently Tesco are "..sucking value out of the supply chain." All together now, ahhhhhh, poor farmers.

In the current financial climate Tescos should be applauded. OK, they are probably the country's biggest retail capitalists but, in February 2008, any discount on a basic food commodity will no doubt be welcomed by a majority of customers.

An RSPCA spokeswoman was quoted as saying, "The consumer has the clout to change supermarket policy and we strongly encourage shoppers to buy higher welfare chicken and not be tempted by the discount."

Indeed, supply and demand is undoubtedly a wonderful thing. But the fact is that the average consumer cares more about how they are going to feed their family on, in reality, a ever reducing budget, than whether chickens are lied to about what time of day it is. As Tescos put it, "No-one should feel guilty buying a chicken just because it is good value."

A vast majority of the population cannot afford the luxury of fair trade coffee or free range foods. For those that can, great. I hope that you and Marks & Spencer are very happy.

www.charlesletterman.com

32 dead horses were discovered in Amersham, Bucks at the weekend. Three other animals were in such poor condition they had to be put down, while the remaining stock of eighty were being taken to sanctuaries rather than the meat hooks they were destined for. Conditions at the site were described as "utterly horrific" with horses being tied up in small pens and standing in their own excrement.

So what's the problem? They're animals! There are plenty of starving people in Africa who'd be happy to eat them! This probably isn't a response you'd expect, but would it be more acceptable if I was talking about chickens?

They live for thirty nine days, never see natural light, constantly feed to make their commercial weight, are overcrowded, get painful lesions on their legs from sitting in their own faeces ("hock burns"), and are starved for eight hours on their last day to have a clean gut before ending up on our shelves in Tesco at two for a fiver.

This is the story Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been describing on Channel 4 this week as he tried to convert  Axminster into Britain's first free range town. His experimental chicken farm contrasted differences in welfare, and in taste, between factory reared and free range. The free range chickens, he said, are "out here in the grass, doing what chickens want to do."

I would like to think, and I'm probably in the majority,  the surviving horses in Amersham would have a similar fate and were free to run around a field, but when it comes to chickens people just don't seem to feel the same. They're chickens, they'll buy two for a fiver.

The packaging boasts "it is like food you might cook yourself". This is true if you like to cook plates of jellied meat. Did I say meat? A closer look at the packaging reveals the meat is actually only 4%, so if you are planning a dinner party with a main course of jellied meat be sure to spend time on your marketing, so you can really give the dish a positive spin when you unveil it to your guests. What's the other 96%? Who cares, if anyone asks distract them with a cute kitten. It's an old marketing trick, works every time.

The Mountfield HP470 hand propelled petrol mower with its Briggs & Stratton engine is a dud. Since writing about its slow start last year things have only got worse. The wheels continue to fall off and the push bars have now buckled. At first I thought it might be trying to transform, chitty chitty bang bang style, into some kind of super, hovering mower. But no, the mower, which is under two years old and has been used less than twenty times, looks as if its been in service since the last century. I don't think it will make another cut and looks destined for the scrap heap.

Mattesons Fridge Raiders are a self styled "bag of meat" snack which claims to be "an ideal healthier snacking alternative to crisps". Made with 100% chicken...actually it's made with 91% chicken, but that 91% is 100% chicken....

Having been saturated with the TV advert I stopped in front of them in Tesco only to be perplexed as to why there is a bag of chicken which  tastes like Chinese spare ribs. Are Mattesson set to expand the range into the rest of the crisp flavours so that we can eat chicken that tastes like beef or prawn or bacon?

What happened to eating an apple or dunking a digestive?

God, I am really pi*sed off with Dublin airport facilities.

This morning I had the good fortune to collect a colleague from a flight from Franfurt so I arrived at the airport with about 30minutes to spare. The intention being 'have a coffee and a sandwich'. More like have a brew of insipid Latte and a semi frozen semi soggy concockion of rubber textured smoked ham, wilted lettuce, some slices of tomato that a Parma Ham carver would have been proud of they were so thin and what was suppose to be butter on the bread.

Well for starters, I do understand that food must be kept in a refridgerator so yes it should be cold, but this sandwich was so cold there was no give in the bread, it had the consistency of soggy cardboard (probably attempted to butter the bread straight from the freezer ?) and tased as tasteless also, not that I'm given to eat cardboard (soggy or otherwise) on a regular basis that I should be able to make a comparisson, but I do know these things. I opened one side of the sandwich No Butter or even spread or mayo on board. Then I looked at the wilted lettuce the rubber ham and the practically non existant tomato. I hesitantly took a bite - well I was hungry !!!!.

As my body tried to digest the offering , I tried another bite to see if it got any better NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. So there was €4.95 into the bin. I learned a long time ago no point complaining to the girls working in the coffee shop in DA, they tell you the sandwichs are bought in ready prepared and packed and then their english isn't quiet good enough to carry on a heated argument and you get more frustrated and the old blood pressure rises. So back to the counter I goes, I'll have a scone and some butter and jam. Hhhmmmmmmmmmmmm. The scone could be bounced off the wall it was that hard. Whats the f**king point, your better off starving.

Ok I said the coffee was insipid latte, I probably should stick to the black coffee like Blacksheep is doing, but hell a nice hot latte is nice every now and again.

So here we go again, DAA, please get the resturants to do something about the quality of their produce.

As I said they tried it, they attempted to take the 2 Direct Debits totaling €279.42. My new bill arrived today with a balancing statement showing the following,

1. Previous Balance €147.34, the second invoice that I received, To be fair to me I did call them to ask which bill I was to pay, the response "Vivaldi".

After that there is no point in detailing the finer points as it only contains shite

So to summise never have your bills paid by Direct Debit....

Still no news on my invoice for all the calls that I made during the Dec. so when they pay me I'll pay them, with a bit of luck they'll sue me, as I have all my bits, somehow I d'ont think they have.

Why is that when you order a simple black coffee in Starbucks you are left to feel meek. I had occasion to visit a Starbucks last week whilst I was in Dublin, and when I asked for a "Black Coffee" the girl asked "is that all you want?. I thought to myself why the silly question. Then to further increase my frustration I had to queue up to pay another person for my coffee and I was safely waiting 3 minutes before being handed my "Black Coffee".

When I was putting sugar into my coffee I noticed a lot of well dressed people lounging about in Starbucks chairs reading newspapers or working on laptops. I began to muse does anybody work in offices anymore, or has it come to pass that Starbucks is now the preferred office workspace in the world?. Another thing struck me why is the coffee in Starbucks 80c more expensive that all other convience stores, you dont get served any quicker, and the coffee does'nt taste any different, well I only drink black coffee, so I dont know about the sexy coffees, but feel free to have your say.

This to me is marketing gone mad, we are systematically being homogenised by these companies, Apple with their "I mac, I'm PC" campaign to if you want to be sexy you'd better buy this coffee. Well I for one will never go into Starbucks again I am happy to go into an ordinary shop and fill my own cup with coffee, walk to the checkout, say good morning to the shop assistant, pay for my coffee, and leave, I have a life to live.............................

Detergent Bottles is a very general term for what these really are. They are not all detergents in the way we consider detergent (i.e washing powder). These are the PET Botttles with Trigger Spray guns on them for cleaning the counter top, cleaning the shower, spray on a stain on a shirt, oven cleaners, disinfectant, etc. You all know the type.

Now if like me (and before someone suggests it I am NOT a Green Nut), I am concerned for our environment and alos the future of my childrena nd grandchildren and their children and so on.

Whne the wife an I go shopping to one of the above named stores we invaribly return with at least 1 of these bottles if not 2. and both with spray triggers. What have the empty ones got More f**king triggers!. What do I put in my recycle bin ?. I rinse out teh bottle and put it in, the trigger I'm afraid goes in the land fill waste bin because it is not acceptable recycleable rubbish.

Why of Why cant the manufacturers offer 'Refills'- An Eco Friendly Solution for thier product. We can reuse our existing trigger, and when the spring is eventually worn out we can buy a new bottle with a trigger on it. Think what else, we could save ourselves a few cent on expenditure - probably not a lot. I would prefer to pay the current price and have the savings passed on into researching more biodegradeable containers for the detergents.

Dunno if anyone has seen the new Budweiser ad on tv lately! It has to be the worst ad in the history of mankind! It should be banned...

One fella stands outside a pub and screams in a high pitched tone for 1 minute to attract his buddies to the pub. What is it about? Occasionally I drink budweiser, but from now on I will never touch the stuff. This ad is utterly stupid, I hate it! hate it hate it hate it!

Todays Observer issued a free CD "Artists taking action on Climate Change" I have listened to it and its not bad, at least its not Chris de Burgh which helps. I began to wonder if people who d'ont like the music will they do with the CD?. The answer is on the back of the CD, you can return it Friends of the Earth at 26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ.

I live in Ireland so if I was to return this CD I presume that it would have to travel by air to London so that it would be "recycled", would'nt the fact of returning it add to climate change? Why could'nt Friends of the Earth put the music on a website to be downloaded for free, with a password given in the newspaper, that way those who wanted it would get it ,and those who did'nt want it would'nt. And why are they advocating the use of transport, and increasing carbon emmissions?.

Come on lads "outside the box" its 2007 we all have the internet

Tesco are off again to capture more of your money, and they are'nt going to do this by providing fresh produce on their shelves, or employing helpful staff, no they are going to sell you mobile phone minutes along with your bread,milk,credit card,loans,cheap apartments and life assurance. They have just entered into an agreement with O2 to buy minutes on a wholesale basis and sell them onto you while you complete your weekly shop.

I suppose on the plus side this will open more competiton in the telecommunication sector, which hopefully will lead to the lowering of costs to the consumer, but as with all silver linings there needs to be a cloud. By indulging in this new initiative I can't help but think that resources will be diverted from the core business of providing us with food and a clean environment in which to do your weekly shop. I have a feeling that Marks Vanilla Cornet experience will become more frequent in the future.

As I move on through life would'nt it be nice to have the following,

• Supermarkets that sell you good fresh food as a fair price.
• Electricity companies that sell only electricity.
• Gas companies that sell only Gas.
• Airlines that actually fly you some where and treat you with respect.

I know I sound like a "grumpy old man " thats because these companies are over-complicating my life, and its my money that they want, and all I want in return is value and quality.

I wonder if this service will be free from bugs unlike Tescos petrol? I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

I suppose to amend Tesco's catch phrase "Every little piece of shite that we can sell, helps our bottom line, and increases our chances of world domination"

Well despite being taken over by UPC for a figure in excess of €250 million, Ntl is still issuing shite. As most of you know we blogged these moron's in November and December of 2006 when I along with thousand others were unable to get to a customer service agent on the telephone.

Now one would expect that when a company has new owners, the new owners would cut out the shite,and the management that allowed for this shite to be issued in the first place, but to no avail, the shite is part of the culture.

I received a letter from Ntl telling me "While carrying out an audit on your( I felt very important) account it has come to our attention that you have not received a bill since November 2006", but I did receive shite service. To cut to the chase, they explained to me that they would issue me with a catch up bill in the near future, fine I said I'm not paying it anyway,as I spent €58 on mobile calls and being left on hold for hours on end, and I have sent them a bill, so send away I mused.

Last Friday March 2nd recieved a bill dated the 21st Feb for all the bits and pieces and this came to €132.08, and this would be taken from my bank on the 7th of March, Today I received another bill,dated 28th of Feb, for €147.34 for the same period and this will be taken from my bank on the 14th of March. Now I d'ont care as I cancelled my direct debit anyway and will pay at the end on the month for what I received. The next question is what bill do I pay?. I think about that in bed tonight.

I wonder what would happen if I had'nt cancelled my direct debit? there is a good chance that the two amounts would have left my bank account, actually I'm almost certain that this would have happened. So as I suggested in Dec 06 cancel your direct debits, by the sounds of it, it will be sometime in 2008 before these feckin eejits work whats going on, and more to the point if they cancel everyone they'll have no customers.

Additionally I read in the weekends papers that they are entering the telecom fixed landline market, as if we d'ont already have a shite service provider in the shape of Eircom, no ntl are going to compete on the level of total shite they can heap on customers and then bill them twice. As a contingency you will issued with one carton of messaging pigeons, so that they can physically shite on you as well. The technology that will employed will be sent to your house and will have two plastic cups with a lenght of string to connect them, all for €9.99 per month. The delux option will contain gloves to keep your hands warm, for a mere 15.99 per month.

So have a ntl (nothing to lose) moment and send these fools a message.

When the Big Idea was on Sky One I was'nt a fan. However if life teaches you one thing is always expect the unexpected. During the programme there were many featured "inventions" that were trying to win the first prize of £100,000. Needless to say some of the ideas were naff and some of the ideas were very naff. One "invention" was the Splash Proof Keyboard, which I must admit, I thought very naff, but true to form I found a market for it.

My daughter is ill at the moment with a "tummy bug" accompanied with all the usual explostions that accompany this ailment. As she is out of school and bored she was spending time online playing games on www.CBBC.co.uk. I was elsewhere doing something when the cry came "Daddy I'm being sick, again", and being a good girl she was'nt lying. When I arrived at the study door, there it was the keyboard immersed in "sick".I have attempted to clean it but it just does'nt look or smell the same, luckily I had a spare.

The lesson for all of us here is that if you see an invention that you feel is a little naff and uncommercial, bear in mind that sometime in the future you may be confronted with a situation when you recall a product/service that you wished you had now.

I wonder if that lad went into production with his idea, I might buy a few for spares if I can find him.

Returning late from work I stopped into Tesco and couldn't resist buying a vanilla creme coronet from the bakery to cheer myself up. I had to take a picture of it because I can't yet find the words to describe the trauma of finding a center filled with green mould (see picture below). The best before date was today. Is there any scientist out there who can explain how you can get green mould inside a pastry "fresh from the baker" at Tesco?

Tesco, the WalMart of grocery shopping in the UK and Ireland, has announced that its going to build homes for its staff to combat the dearth of affordable houses in many of the major cities, in which it operates. In Britian its to build 250 flats alongside its Streatham store in London, which it will allocate 100 will be in the "affordable category" and 13 will be allocated to staff. Tesco has also lodged a planning application to Dublin City Council to build a similar scheme in Sandymount, Dublin 4. Its unclear at the moment if any of these units will be allocated to staff.

All this looks very nice from the outside, especially if you are one of those who finds getting onto the property ladder almost impossible. But really what would such a move mean?. Yes, on the plus side people will have a place which they could call home, but would living over your place of work be a healthy style of working?. I have a image of a young couple both working in Tesco's being lucky to be allocated one of these flats, working, buying,and borrowing, from Tesco. I suppose they could be named the "Tescoites" and live in a similar way those who lived in Stalins "gualag's". Consider what kind of "work life balance" would be afforded to the "Tescoites", there you are lying in bed at 3am and a message comes over the "Tesco" intercom, "we are low on bread, get up a fill the shelves", this would be really annoying if at 3am you were indulging in other activites in bed.

What happens if you leave your employment, do you also leave your flat?. Will there be some clause in your purchase contract that due to the fact that the flat was sold to you below market price,if you will leave you must sell it back to Tesco at a price below the "market value"?.

I suppose the days of Grocers selling groceries are lost for-ever but the march into "Property Development" just seems a step to far.It would be far better for Tesco to ensure that the shelves in its stores are full when one goes and does their shopping.

Perhaps George Orwell was'nt to far from the mark after all.....