So much for Virgin superfast broadband! I've clocked mine at 192Kb. Superfast my arse!

Virgin Media. No broadband. No TV. The engineer was booked for between 8am and noon on Saturday. If I missed the slot Virgin were going to charge me a £10 penalty. For a bank holiday there were other things I would rather be doing but the frustration of being without, erm... really not good.

At 9:30am the phone rings. It's customer service, the engineer has called in sick. No one else is available. This is taking the piss. Called in sick on a bank holiday? Guess what he's been up to. I have no choice but to reschedule.

Given Virgin Media were going to charge me a tenner, shouldn't I be entitled to do the same as they missed their slot? Maybe this would provide an incentive for the company to start providing a proper level of customer service. What a prick of an engineer. What do you think I should do?

I'm actually in denial it's the new year.  It can't really have passed by that quickly. They've missed out on some of the months. They must have done. Was there an April? And what about October, I don't remember there being an October?

I do remember The Rise of the Silver Surfer, the disappearance of Madeline, demolishing the garden shed, and a few other things really got my goat during the year, but here's my top ten....

1. Gordon Brown
   Continuing to annoy me. He became Prime Minister, bottled an election, quietly signed the Lisbon treaty passing further powers away to the EU, promised a government of "all the talents" then lost the personal details of 25million people, had a party funding scandal, pledged an end to spin while in the same breath claiming to have reduced the rate of corporation tax (not quite, there was an increase for small companies - the so called backbone of the economy). The Tories say he's the wrong man, but of course they would, wouldn't they! 
2. Carbon footprint
   In 2007 our carbon footprints became big business. The Chancellor has been rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of being able to introduce new types of taxes, and companies have been dressing in floral prints designed by their marketers. This latest fashion of "social responsibility" is being paraded on the catwalk in front of us mug consumers. Meanwhile there seems to be a whole body of evidence accumulating to suggest man-made C02 plays only a minor, insignificant role in climate change. When trying to finds the facts on Google I found instead near Freudian hysteria and contributions from people who seem to think they're in a movie. The consequences of man-made climate change, wrote one budding actor, will be "worse, much much worse......eventual extinction".
3. Nobel Peace Prize
   In keeping with "the year of the footprint" this year the Nobel Prize for Peace was shared between an organisation and Al Gore. They each get half a prize " for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".  Why did Al Gore get a prize for his video? There's even doubts it was actually true, like, get down to the bookies - there may yet be a chance of Jeremy Clarkson winning in 2008 for his continued work on Top Gear.
4. Virgin Media
   Launched on February 14th, V-Day. Steve Burch, CEO of NTL, was quoted at the time as saying "Virgin Media will shake up the market by bringing the Virgin traditions of value-for-money, brilliant customer service and innovation to the world of entertainment and communications."  However, a bungled negotiation with BSkyB led to the loss of popular channels such as Sky 1, Sky News, Sky 2, Sky Travel, Sky 3.... 40,000 customers fled in the first three months, perhaps they knew the virgin traditions of "value for money, brilliant customer service and innovation" are a branding screen thrown up to hide a normal company. They don't mean anything. Did we see our TV charges reduce with less channels? No. Did we see phone charges increase? Yes Sir we did!
5. Windows Vista
   The biggest technological disappointment of 2007 despite an R&D bill of £10bn, Windows Vista, actually seems to be an operating system designed for teenagers to help organise their media files. It seems a ridiculous use of hardware to spend on unnecessarily indexing every file and on fancy graphics like transparency which don't add anything and, in fact,  hamper the experience.  First set of tasks to do if you're a consumer stuck with Vista and you can't return it - turn off windows sidebar, un-tick all files in Indexing options, change update settings, change control panel to classic view, change start menu to classic, and yes, download open office as you won't be able to use Excel. 
6. HMRC
   It doesn't look like we'll ever see a video podcast or a YouTube channel explaining the ongoing delays to VAT applications which continued throughout 2007. The HMRC website, now in 2008, still displays the same notice since 2006, "Please be aware we are currently experiencing processing delays with both paper and online applications".  Applications can take up to six months to process, clearly inconveniencing small business. No practical guidance is given by HMRC on what to do during this lengthy application period. They just don't care, they're opening premise - "everyone's a crook" - guides all policy.
7. Tesco
   What's Tesco becoming? On my last visit of 2007 to Tesco Express in Port Solent my conclusion was a village. It has it's own pharmacy, a Costa Coffee, a supermarket, what appears to be an Argos, a department store, a Krispy Kreme Doughnut, and an opticians. The trouble is the supermarket is a mess, boxes on the ground, empty shelves, off products and staff pushing cages everywhere. You have to literally dodge the cages because they can't see what's in front when they're pushing. And there are plans to add a dentist practice to this village. I'd actually prefer if they brought in another supermarket chain, a company that knows how to run a supermarket, because Tesco seem to have forgotten.
8. Celebrity Rehab
   Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Lyndsay Lohan et al, all seemingly gone off the rails. They go into rehab, they come out, they get drunk or spaced, get pictured without their underwear, get spaced, go into rehab, and it's all front page news. I'm just not intersted. Why can't they just get a grip?
9. Open Season on the Games
   The 2012 logo was launched on Monday the 4th of  June and was almost instantly and unanimously derided (including by me). The jagged, graffiti design was likened to Lisa Simpson performing a lewd sex act. Within three days almost 50,000 people signed an online petition calling for the logo to be scrapped, an animated version had to be pulled from broadcast over fears the effects cause epileptic seizure. It was open season on "the Games", all year in fact, the underlying theme being, it's being run by a bunch of incompetents who don't know what they're doing. It'll be wrong and over budget. Guffaw! How could they forget the VAT? See point six above on HMRC, who in the end decided they couldn't register.
10. Big Brother
    Following the celebrity Big Brother race row, the ugly bullying of Shilpa Shetty, and Carphone Warehouse withdrawing sponsorship for the programme, we quietly hoped 2007 would be the last year of Big Brother. But no, it's continued....

Happy New Year and God bless for 2008

The now familiar blank screen which has replaced all programming formerly delivered by NTL. Back in early March I though it was only Sky I had lost, now it seems to be everything. 

I will be visited by a technician on Monday morning but have been warned that if there is no one at home I will be charged £10. I think, well, I've been without a service for a week, don't you think it should be quits?

I still recall those smug comments I read on blogs and forums after the takeover and the lack of Sky programmes, about what a clever chap Richard Branson was, how he was sticking up for the little guys, and surely Virgin had something unbelievable up their pop sleeves. Is this it? A blank screen and a change to telephone charging, no longer billed by the second, you are now billed by the minute - rounded up. If you make a call lasting two minutes one second you will be charged for three minutes. Well done for sticking up for the little guy.

And by the way - can we please stick a zip on Uma Thurman. She is quickly becoming one of the most annoying people in the world as these irritating Virgin ads are replayed and replayed and replayed............

Rather than taking responsibility for a botched up negotiation, Virgin Media, who sucked up Telewest and NTL, are broadcasting a message on Sky One in which they blame Sky for the channel being unavailable. "Thanks to Sky", they say, "the Sky One channel is no longer available. They've picked up their ball and gone home.  Foul play? We think so." 

The viewer is then invited to visit their website, virginmedia.com/fairplay, in which they ask a clearly biased question "What do you think of Sky withdrawing its non-premium channels like Sky One, Sky News and Sky Sports News from Virgin Media's TV service?".

Here's another question. Isn't it about time that Virgin stopped acting like a teenager and grew up?  I can hardly believe reading a comment on one message board where someone says "well done for standing up to the big guys". 

Are you serious? The Virgin Group employs over 35,000 people in 200 companies worldwide and has a turnover in excess of over £4billion. They're hardly the little guy or the underdog they like to portray themselves as - if you think otherwise you've been seduced by the Marketeers. This is big business.

Virgin claims to put consumers first, well, what about all the viewers who are now paying the same price for a reduced service? I would say this is really annoying shit dot com.

You've got to pick a pocket or two