Best Of

Why would anyone us Royal Mail????? target for first class now only 90pc and second class will turn up when they can fit it in...

Why would anyone use snail mail?

Emails are free and instantaneous.

I don't think I've posted any letters in years, only parcels.

To send a birthday card, Christmas cards, postcards etc. Lots of companies still use it for bills.

Plus of course Royal Mail also send parcels and are the only company with the network to cover even the most remote rural areas, even Amazon use Royal Mail for the final mile and the only company that provides the universal service obligation so it costs the same to post to a rural hamlet as an inner city

The first class delivery target is 93% next day, not 90%, not that they have been achieving it of late. To.have such a high chance of next day delivery from anywhere in the UK to anywhere else is still pretty impressive, and few people stop to consider what has to get done every evening and night to make this possible. Look around the world and we still have a pretty good postal service by comparison, even if the prices they charge have risen to ridiculous levels since privatisation.

Doesn't explain where my post was in the last week.

Have you checked your fence? That's where my post is.

Both physically, and for parcels sent by Evri.

A postal anecdote:

Many decades ago, my dad got a pre-Christmas call from the owner of a haulage company he used. "You haven't paid the money you owed," the man said, "and I need to pay the men their Christmas bonusses!"

My dad said he had sent a cheque; he phoned the bank, cancelled the old cheque, and drove up to the haulage company to drop off a new cheque. Then he thought nothing more of it.

Many months later he got another phone call from the owner of the haulage company. Laughing, he said that they had been widening the entrance to their depot and found another postbox in the wall. In it were a load of letters from when a relief postman had been on duty, and who had put letters in the wrong box. One of the letters included my dad's cheque.

...

"Gregg Wallace’s autism means he can’t wear underwear, say friends

Sources close to ex-MasterChef presenter claim he has ‘hypersensitivity’ to tight clothing and his condition is partly to blame for his inappropriate behaviour" (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/media/article/gregg-wallace-autism-hypersensitivity-claim-v72rmtmnv

Those are the friends you want. "He does the elephant ears thing with his trouser pockets and his todger becuse he has autism..."

"Your Honour, I only "copped a feel" because I am on the autistic spectrum ". Judge; " case dismissed". It works every time.

This seems to be getting quite lawyerly.

"Before the report’s publication, Wallace accused programme-makers of failing to act on their suspicions about his condition.

“Nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over twenty years,” he said. “That failure is now being quietly buried.”

My son was diagnosed at a very early age. His main symptom s turned out to be classic study case material including when learning to crawl, crawling backwards and a particular association with the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. More specifically the faces. There was an autistic learning tool called Transformers TV which used Thomas the Tank Engine illustrations as a model. There were loads of other things too. Bad behaviour was not specifically one of them.

Gregg Wallace was earning what? seven figures a year, and he is blaming the BBC for it's pastoral care of a middle aged man, because he, by several accusatory accounts was prone to inappropriate sexual behaviour. I am afraid that is ( quite appropriately) bollocks.

I'd be surprised if Gregg Wallace was on seven figures for Masterchef and that factories programme on BBC2. Six figures, probably, and maybe low six figures at that.

The autism stuff just seems like desperately throwing chaff into the air. His BBC career looks to be over, regardless of whether the bulk of these accusations are upheld or not in the forthcoming report (is it due out today?). Why take the risk?

What with all the MasterChef book deals, personal appearances etc. I suspect the MasterChef gig alone was a very healthy paycheck.

My problem with Gregg Wallace 's "autism" isn't what he labels himself ( I have an idea and it begins with "c") but the fact that he believes the label excuses outrageous and vile behaviour, saddens me. A particular autism related stereotypical outburst from me to counter Wallace, might be, autistic people in general find it incredibly difficult to find life partners whilst Wallace claims to have happily shagged his way through several wives and numerous girlfriends.

Genuinely autistic (my flawed definition) people have enough difficult bridges to cross without slightly odd or those who excuse their misbehaviour being conveniently labelled as autistic.

I am currently despairing that the out of control welfare bill is predominantly as a result of "sad" ( in an I feel sad sense) people being diagnosed with autism. Such labelling dismisses the limitations in lifestyle opportunities afforded to (what I as a non-clinician consider) genuinely diagnosed cases.

"Gregg Wallace’s autism means he can’t wear underwear, say friends

Sources close to ex-MasterChef presenter claim he has ‘hypersensitivity’ to tight clothing and his condition is partly to blame for his inappropriate behaviour" (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/media/article/gregg-wallace-autism-hypersensitivity-claim-v72rmtmnv

Those are the friends you want. "He does the elephant ears thing with his trouser pockets and his todger becuse he has autism..."

"Your Honour, I only "copped a feel" because I am on the autistic spectrum ". Judge; " case dismissed". It works every time.

This seems to be getting quite lawyerly.

"Before the report’s publication, Wallace accused programme-makers of failing to act on their suspicions about his condition.

“Nothing was done to investigate my disability or protect me from what I now realise was a dangerous environment for over twenty years,” he said. “That failure is now being quietly buried.”

My son was diagnosed at a very early age. His main symptom s turned out to be classic study case material including when learning to crawl, crawling backwards and a particular association with the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. More specifically the faces. There was an autistic learning tool called Transformers TV which used Thomas the Tank Engine illustrations as a model. There were loads of other things too. Bad behaviour was not specifically one of them.

Gregg Wallace was earning what? seven figures a year, and he is blaming the BBC for it's pastoral care of a middle aged man, because he, by several accusatory accounts was prone to inappropriate sexual behaviour. I am afraid that is ( quite appropriately) bollocks.

"Gregg Wallace’s autism means he can’t wear underwear, say friends

Sources close to ex-MasterChef presenter claim he has ‘hypersensitivity’ to tight clothing and his condition is partly to blame for his inappropriate behaviour" (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/media/article/gregg-wallace-autism-hypersensitivity-claim-v72rmtmnv

Bollocks.
Loose fitting cotton boxers are older than him.
Disgusting that his "friends" and the Times would try that on.

Actually, an aversion to kinds and types of clothing IS a feature of autism. It's not ludicrous

This does not mean Wallace is innocent, but the claim is not intrinsically ridiculous. He is obviously autistic. Recall his "day in the life" article

So bloody what! Autism is not an excuse for predatory behaviour and sexual harassment. Nor are people with autism more likely to behave in such a way. It is disgusting the way he is trying to turn himself into a victim. He's no victim. Just a gropey entitled predator who won't take responsibility for his actions and was enabled by lots of others who turned a blind eye to his revolting behaviour. Good riddance.

A right old set too on the Loughborough Facebook pages. A couple of the balaclava clad bastard bike thieves have been named, shamed and threatened with broken legs.
To be fair, most of us knew at least their names, and it turns out I went to school with one of their grandparents. He was a tosser as well.
It's all kicking off, photos posted, addresses posted and the youngest (a 17 year old lad who apparently posts videos of his fuckaboutery and calls himself the TikTok Twokker) has run off to the Police because he fears for his life.
Mums and aunties are slagging each other off and I witnessed a bit of handbags this afternoon in town between two female middle aged druggie clan members who were jonesing too hard to make the blows count.
I'm hoping the resulting gang war takes out most of the Keats Way Massive.

The alarming aspect of this particular scandal is the corruption and deliberate misleading of our courts and the failure of the court system to spot it. This failure undermines the rule of law in a very serious way. If we can't rely on the courts to get to the truth who can we rely on?

That's my view but I, like @Cyclefree, am a lawyer so maybe that aspect is overly prominent in my mind and maybe non lawyers don't quite see it that way.

The story on Today this morning was mainly about the blood scandal but the description of how the compensatory schemes have completely failed to work was so similar that it was easy to get confused between the two. What is plainly required in both cases is immediate interim payments that are substantial enough to let people start re building their lives. If we end up slightly over paying in some cases that is simply too bad. I was shocked and appalled that the claims for the blood victims die with them, they do not form a part of their estate. And hundreds have died. It has been used before on this thread but for shame. For shame in our name.