Things you hate III

Getting to the end of a online newspaper article and seeing a message begging for money.

Yes I'm looking at you The Guardian.

Similarly Wikipedia, every Christmas they ask for dish to be donated.

If you can't earn mega bucks using your chosen method, get a job like the rest of us.

 

Right, so you would rather we all had to pay for those websites than put up with the "irritating message", would you?

 

I'm just saying, stop bloody begging for my cash. They aren't skint, they're just not making as much as they would like. Tuff. That's life

 

The Guardian lost £69m last year. Personally I think the message is a very small price to pay to keep free access to its website (unlike the Times).

 

Or even "totally avoidable" ..........

 

Totally changing the way you want to put something before hitting submit, but not proofreading properly.

 

The sooner that rag goes belly up the better.

 

Right, Meister. Thanks. Let's all read the Daily Mail, shall we?

 

Spoilers....the revealing kind. Not the ones that go on the back of cars.

 

A 2 minute trailer that make a film look good, only to discover that the rest of the film is 88 minutes of dross.

 

I even looked to see it you were right

 

Ok, obviously not a popular choice by me then! I'll try again with some another organisations that irritate me by either begging or being false.

The first example is a quickie but I'm pretty sure will get you all agreeing. There is a current TV advert for a bank, I think it is Lloyds. In the advert they depict a cancer patient who is being helped through their illness by 'caring' Lloyds Bank. I find it obscene that the advertising bods use this disease as an opportunity to push their product and to get their grubby hands on your money. I have to switch it off, it actually discusts me.


My next irritation is going to be a bit controversial but stick with it, it is a true tale which happened a couple of years ago.

The RSPCA, wait a moment, I know, you love animals and so do I but this is a tale about the organisation's behaviour concerning multiple mistreated animals.

My partners journey to work passes a field which often has horses in. These horses don't always look like they are kept under the best conditions and often look a bit, well dead and this wasn't the first time we'd noticed this. It was also around the time of the supermarket horse meat stories.

You must appreciate that we're not horsey people and are not the most confident approaching them so I suggested phoning the RSPCA. They'll know what to do, they're good people, they'll send somebody out. After explaining our concerns and giving our details the conversation went something like this:

RSPCA: 'maybe it's sleeping',
Partner: 'Um, I don't think so, it's been there for some days'
'Well can you go over and see?'
'Not right now, I'm at work'
'Oh ok, next time can you go over to it and check if the horse is asleep'
'How?'
'Well just go over a make a loud sound, or clap to startle it'
'It's in the middle of a field down a small country lane and I'm not that confident, there are other horses'
'How about honking your horn loudly to see if that rouses it'
'Can't you send somebody out?'
'No we don't do that'
'I thought you cared for mistreated animals'
'Yes we do, but we won't come out for that'

And that's how it was left. Until about 6 months later. My partner received a call from the RSPCA team. The grabbing bustards we trying to obtain money in the form of monthly donations. This did not go down well with my partner and they were made fully aware of that by the end of the telephone call. The greedy sods only had the contact number was because of a complaint that they wouldn't investigate. Grrrrrrr!

Anyway, I'm off now to pay my Gardian subscriptions

 

Interesting one, I've got the other side of this story for you! As a vet I get called every so often by the rspca to go and see injured wildlife or horses on the moor. I have no problem doing this, however the rspca are notoriously poor at paying bills. They only ever phone during emergency hours.

Most recent one;
Them - we have reports of a foal unable to stand on the moor?
Me - ok was it asleep?
Them - we don't know, the member of the public didn't say.
Me - it's probably asleep, it's the middle of the bloody night.
Them - well our inspector doesn't want to go, will you go?
Me - you want me to go wandering around on the middle of the bloody moor in the middle of the bloody night to find a foal that may or may not have been asleep? You must think I'm a ****ing Wally mate! What if the member of the public is some psycho? You are basically setting the scene for the beginning of a really bad horror movie!
Them - ahhh yes I see your point.
Me - Tell the member of the public to shout loudly at it and see if it wakes up. Then call me back.

10 mins later.

Them - It woke up.

 

The rspca are well meaning enough, but they have a chronic problem with misusing funds and prioritising problems. I could tell you stories that would make your fingers curl. I don't like them one bit.

 

Overpunctuation .... if it makes sense without commas then don't include them, afterall this is 2017 and ****ens died years ago.

Also spellcheckers that flag up 'overpunctuation' and 'afterall' as mistakes, they're not.

 

While you're there the RNIB. They have an oversupply of guide dogs and end up putting quite a lot of them down ... It doesn't stop them advertising for guide dog donations though.

 

The RNLI have a massive stockpile of lifeboats too, some of them are dual lifeboat/air ambulance too! Just rusting away as a tax exemption that costs hundreds of dolphins their lives every week. The NSPCC also kills dolphins to save children, but end up euthanising the children before the age of 4, because the adoption agency is badly organised.

 

Anyone who's ever left part of their estate to any animal charity in their will would be f***ing horrified to know how these charities operate as soon as the body is in the mortuary.

 

I once made a comment about how rediculous it was that people leave money to donkey sacncturaries, turns out thatmy mother-in-law has in her will., ooops, that me out then!

 

Google it, show you MiL, get her to change her will.

 

Are you sure?

http://inventingrealityeditingservi...t-heres-the-skinny-after-all-vs-afterall.html

 

One thing I hate is that groups like the RNLI and the various Air Ambulances aren't publicly funded and have to rely on donations and bequests to do their work. I just don't understand why they're not paid for by the taxpayer.

 

Nope that's even worse. The newspaper industry is dead. Has been ever since the internet appeared. The only way papers can stay afloat is buy publishing more and more inflamatory stories. Websites are going the same way with clickbait.
I haven't bought a newspaper in a decade.

 

RNIB & Guide Dogs are 2 separate charities.

I think Guide Dogs are the most financially solvent of all of the charities. I guess this is because that as a nation we prefer animals to people.

 

To a certain extent I agree with you. But think of it as population controlled taxation, self governance as it were.
If the government ran these bodies through taxation they'd be far less efficient and we'd have less control about which bodies got the most money, paying more tax to boot. The way these charities are currently run is according to public donations, ie the public think we need air ambulances, so pay for them, the government giving tax relief on those donations. It's got to be better than the government deciding we actually need lifeboats instead, taxing people to pay for theses boats and only forwarding 60% of the funds collected to the RNLI which we know is currently over supplied anyway.

Just putting a different spin on it for debate.

 

Lifeboats are manned by volunteers who unselfishly put their lives at risk. Lifeboats are purchased from funds donated by the public. Their is no government funding (and never has been, by any government); in my opinion, there should be.

 

Pah! experts, who needs experts?

My very dearest and reverend Keighley,
My retort is that English is an evolving language so common usage rules O.K! and if it didn't we'd still be in ye Olde Dayes of Yore.

Verrily yours,
Godfather.

 

My mistake and apologies to the RNIB. .... but I still think GDFTB is just a moneymaking scam for it's owners. If there's a surplus of hounds why the need to advertise?

 

Because they need money to operate: wages, overheads, rent, administration, management etc... There are a lot of myths about where charities' funding actually comes from. There is/was quite an interesting piece from an "Independent" (sic) "Think Tank" (sic) that looked, primarily, at the funding of one of the anti-smoking charities (ASH?) - I think it was from this "free-thinker" (sic) - which I can't be bothered to search for.

 

In an ideal world where government can be trusted to spend efficiently the way we want then I agree with you.

 

Anecdotes being considered more reliable, and important, than facts and studies.

'The rspca is crap because my wife phoned them once and they didn't rush out to save a horse which no one was sure was unwell or asleep,' seems to have persuaded a few on here that the rspca is indeed crap. Don't worry about the 129602 animals which have been saved this year by the rspca.


The rspca is not perfect, just as most charities aren't, but come on, there must be a thousand other things you could hate more.

 

Agreed, my one and only experience with the RSPCA to rescue a goose in our car park was 100% favourable.