A while back,

I wrote a post entitled "Everything changes". I hinted at something - that there are changes in my life afoot. Significant, immediate and massive changes. There are. And some of those changes are nearly upon me.

Looking over the past months output on this blog, it's been pitiful. And minimal. My mind has been elsewhere, locked into the real world. It's funny sometimes how you have to spend time in the real world as opposed to the online world.When it will not wait.

As you may know, as of the past fourteen months since my wife and I parted ways, I have been staying at a friends house in their spare room. It was anticipated to be a short term arrangement at that point - I went to the council and went on the homeless register. They did not consider me vulnerable or in need, despite the fact I could not stay at the marital home, and I went on the housing list, whilst awaiting to be rehoused.

There is the urban myth about the teenage girl who gets pregnant, gets the council house, and then lives the rest of the life on benefits. The simple fact of the matter, is that it's not that easy anymore. What I did not know then was how much things have changed.

One of my friends first came to Birmingham 12 or so years ago. When they came, they went on the homeless register and were housed in a homeless hostel ; a single female under 21 with no ties to the city, orphaned and unable to go anywhere else. They stayed there for 11 months before eventually getting a single bedroom flat. They moved to Nottingham a few years later and again where bunged to a homeless hostel.There, they stayed a year, but not before things were stolen from the hostel by other people living there.

Lets rewind some 20 years, back to the years of Coal Strikes, Margaret Thatcher and Feed the World.; a time when Birmingham City Council owned 300,000 residental properties. Then someone has had the genius idea of the 'transfer' of housing stock. Everyone was granted the right to purchase their council home if they wanted to. Fair enough, but what happens to those homes when they die? They are now part of the private land ownership, and affordable and decent housing disappears off the market, fixed only by the vagaries of market demand and highest bidder wins. And with this sell off, the councils were forbidden and were not allowed to use the revenue to build replacement housing stock. So the amount of council housing units are sold off to the highest, lowest, or most politically expedient bidder - see what happened with the homes for votes scandal in certain marginal London Conservative districts in the late eighties - and were never replaced. Couple this with the sudden advent of housing associations, where council housing stock was transferred to private companies with grand sounding names and ridiculously sized waiting lists, and all of a sudden, there is a sudden and dramatic crisis in socially affordable housing that was I)Completely avoidable with a little foresight and ii)Completely unnecessary.

By the way of an apocayrphal example, A friend of mine bought their three bedroom council house in the mid 80's housing boom; for £23,750. Right now, the same house sells for £150,000. To put that in perspective of the rise of the Cost Of Living, the same house right now would cost £47,500. In other words, them cost of property has risen over 300% in that period. Doesn’t that reflect the sudden rise in the requirement for properties?

With such demand, Britain needs affordable social housing more than ever. And that's undeniable. Back in the good old days - and not the good old days of the mythical past that never existed that seems to live on John Major's Middle Britain mindset and leaflets from the British National Party - people used to stay at home until they married, then they'd move out of the parental home and move in with the husband / wife, pop out a couple of screamers and that was that. The advent of Birth control and abortion removed that. Now we could have sex without automatically having children. All of a sudden we didn't need to wait until we married. We didn’t need to leave home and get married. So we didn't. The simple fact of the matter was that the average age at which people married rose by 5 years for both sexes - from 23 to 28 in the case of women - in three short decades. Divorce rates rose also.

People could now be independent and live away from home and enjoy sexual lives, socialable lives, and they could do so without requiring the husband or wife. They could do so alone. So the demand for housing rises, as people live away from home or simply cannot stay there any longer, and the number of and proportion of the population living in single households rose exponentially - from about 9% back in the 50's, to about 32% now. (Again, all these figures are coming from memor,so might not be 100% reliable).

The rise in divorce rates was doubly important - firstly, the number of people who could no longer stay in marital homes due to split rose. They needed to live somewhere, especially if they were under the threat of violence. After all, the average number of times a woman is assaulted before she reports it to the police for the first time is 34. Why should they expect you to return to an enviroment where it is unsafe? Well, why indeed?

Secondly, the number of people who could return to the parental home deceased - maybe their own parents had divorced, and like my own father, moved their new partner in, and their children. Suddenly there was no room at the inn.

Add all these factors together, and this means is more houses are needed to house these people. Simultaneously, the response of the government was to slash the council housing by turning vast swathes of council housing stock to private companies, creating a vast armada of paperwork whereby everyone had to apply to the same organisations in the vain hope of finding somewhere to live. For example, I'll just cite the number of council owned residential properties in Coventry; Nil. It's all owned by one of two private housing associations. Similarly, how about a major municipality like Glasgow? Largest city in the country of Scotland and the number of Council owned residential properties? Again, Nil. It’s now owned by some 25 private housing associations.

In Birmingham's case, what was 300,000 council owned residential properties 20 years is now 34,000 - 11% of its previous total. And its not just Birmingham that affected - One example cited by someone over a cup of tea last week in their kitchen to me was that 20 years ago was that an 18 year old in London could leave school and get a 2 bedroom council flat the same day in Greenwich. It sounds absolutely unbelievable now, but it's true. The most a 18 year old girl just left school with a child could expect now is to throw themselves on the mercy of the council and hope for a homeless hostel , or perhaps more likely - a charity to take them in.

And our government claims that tackling 'rough sleeping' is a priority.

Really? Why the hell don’t they do something about it then? Building 1000 affordable homes in the stockbroker belt of surrey that will be then resold for vast profit by lucky speculators isn't solving anything. What they need to do is accept some social responsibility, rather than leaving it in the hands of he grand god of market freedom.

Oh, Hang on....Why they don't seem to be doing anything is because there's no money to be made from helping the homeless. They have no political franchise. They don’t give financial support to the political parties in the run up to elections, not in the way that Barratt Homes might. They do not control the press, they do not buy airtime. They aren't able to be sexed up to appear glamourous. They ain't too handsome to be homeless. They don’t have perfect teeth and glib answers off autocues. (I know I'm in danger of sounding bitter, but what the hell….)

What this insane drive for selling off council housing stock did was to eviscerate the number of available properties whilst demand skyrocketed. The result is property becomes a issue where demand outstrips supply. And People cannot afford skyrocketing rents. They stay wherever they can. The results are obvious - social instability, a rise in anti-social behaviour, urban deprivation, crime….and lower consumer spending, except that which is financed by credit.

The result is that with this, there's urban instability and people practically fighting for somewhere to live. And that’s the situation I find myself in. Paying the long term price for these bargain basement sell offs of council housing courtesy of the Milk Thief and her insane desire to follow to free market economy. (On a side note It's a little known fact that the prime example used to justify the free-market model is the fact it was apparently successful in Chile back at the turn of the 80's - when its ruler was General Pinochet, since prosecuted for under International law for war crimes and universally recognised as a bit of a despot. Perhaps we should follow Pinochets example in other areas - say, detainment of enemy combatants without recourse to law or even being prosecuted, torture, and so forth?)

Where I am staying, I cannot stay any longer. As of July 1st, I will have no fixed abode. That's what most of the past month has revolved around. Visits to GP's, local neighbourhood offices of numerous municipal authorities - Dudley, Solihull, Birmingham, Walsall, and Coventry - and filling in forms for housing applications. None of them would help me, the usual response was 'Oh, it's the responsibility of Birmingham Council' when I explained the fact that I was about to made homeless within the 28 days they require. The really odd thing is that often these municipal authorities say that they aim to deal with these forms within 33 working days - which is six and a half weeks. But to even make the application, you need to be able to state that you are likely to lose your home within 28 (normal calendar) days. Does the maths of that work out? There's a whole two and a half weeks there after you lose your home and have nowhere to sleep before they send a letter out telling you whether you are homeless or not to the address where you don’t even live anymore. Does that strike you as a little strange? So much for the idea of prevention being better than the cure. Does that strike you as maybe they aren't fulfilling their care of duty a little bit?

Even stranger is that you then end up going down neighbourhood offices and making an application of 'temporary accomodation' before they've even decided if you are going to be homeless or not. By that point it's academic - you have nowhere to stay any more. Simple as that.

So most of the past month has involved trying to liase with local authorities, who end up passing the buck from pillar to post, then I've been contacting housing associations and making applications, none of which Have emergency housing, and all of which have a 12-18 month waiting list. Ludicrously enough, one of the local authorities wouldn’t even let me hand in a housing application without an appointment - and the first date they could offer me an appointment was four weeks away from the day I went to hand the bloody form in. That is officious bureaucracy gone mad, it really is. Then they said to try another municipal office for the same authority - a 45 minute bus ride away - which wouldn't accept it anyway without proof of somethign I don't have proof for because it's in the old flat used tos hare and couldn't possibly get acces to it anyway. Bearing in mind all the travelling and being shunted around three separate housing offices for the same council and getting there and back in the first place, that took Six goddamn hours to discover I couldn’t even hand a form in. For some reason I was reminded of the Computer Game where the whole point is to get a bank to accept a change of address notification; something that took 20 hours of gameplay to succeed at. (It was one of the PC games in the mid eighties written by Douglas Adams, by the way.)

Then there's even more time spent making Phone Calls, finding information on homeless charities from the God of internet knowledge who goes by the name of Google, And appointments with the Citizens Advice bureau. Even the CAB were a little stumped trying to find a solution - the average appointment is one advisor for 40 minutes, and it took four of them 70 minutes to come up with a plan of action in my case. Either way, I've been discovering the list of options available to me is narrowing down to nil. Pretty much every avenue I've tried is blocked, as a single male over 25 with no dependents. I've even found cases where a woman with three children fled a violent partner and the three of them slept in the car for a week ; People I've spoken to. By comparison to that, I'm a nobody. But my needs haven't changed, only my circumstances. I still need somewhere to live.

The significant and massive and immeadiate change is that I no longer have somewhere to stay. No fixed, permanent location. I've spent a lot of time in the past few weeks or so trying to find a way out and deal with this imminent problem; and what it looks like is it's going to be a combination of things. A GP's letter stating I am considered by him to be at risk and needs to be rehoused as a matter of priority, backed up with letters from psychiatrists. Letters from my host stating that I need to leave. I've not found anywhere permanent, but a friend who offered me the floor in their kitchen appears to be the best option at the moment. Mind you, I did spend a couple of days last week helping them move some stuff. As for staying at theirs, I'd probably take a couple of boxes of clothes, and thank the good lord the library with internet access is just immediately across the road from where they live ; So I can still email people. In the meantime, the council have another four and a half weeks to process the homeless application I've made after I'm out.

All this stress and hassle was complicated by the visit a couple of weeks ago to the Emergency department of the hospital with chest pains. Suspected heart attack, and that's something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Possibly anxiety or stress related, but it's a horrible experience. That, and the late nights and early mornings and grabbing whatever little food I can as and when I can - probably not enough to fulfil the daily requirements of 2500 calories I'm supposed to need to get through - means I've felt very run down. That takes a toll on the immune system. So aside from the psychiatrist and the prescriptions I've got, I've contracted a viral skin infection. It's very common in children - Quite a few of my friends have children and It’s a possibility ; its also quite common in the elderly whose immune systems aren't fully developed or in decline. Apparently its quite rare for adults, but it's just like a verucca really - don’t share bathwater or towels. It's the result of being run down, poor sleep, stress, all these things coming together at once I guess. That’s why last week I was attending appointments in Hospitals and having syringes poked into my veins to take blood samples and being zapped with liquid nitrogen - It tingles, but not in a good way I might point out. And the fact that someone is writing poison pen letters to my wife saying I've got a local girl pregnant and am expecting a daughter in a few weeks doesn't help things neither. And I wonder why sometimes I get the feeling that someone out there really, really doesn't like me. Especially given the fact that my wife states she will be within 6-8 weeks giving up the flat we shared, and as my name is still on the tenancy agreement, I will be able to take it over as somewhere to live; who knows what will happen? Whilst Technically I have every legal right to return to the property, I don’t have the keys or any practical means of accessing the property, nor would I want to return there whilst she lives there. She's incredibly fucking lucky - as indeed am I - that someone was able to take me in when she decided to end the marriage. Surely though, the person who decides to end the marriage is the one who walks out and makes a new life for themselves, not the person who is told it's over. Oh well. The situation is a big fucking mess, really.

All this is whats been going on in the real world that has been completely unavoidable, and even though I've spent a time online recently, I've not been aspiring to blog. I've not been able to face up to it. I can’t deny that blogging takes its emotional toll on me. What I write sometimes isn’t easy for me to write, and I can't always write what I want. Something inside means I cannot - simply it’s a self defence mechanism to a certain extent. Don't let things out. There's been a hell of a lot going on in the real world, the whole housing situation that I can't and haven't been able to put off because it needed dealing with immeadiately, and it's taken up a lot of energy, time and efforts. But that time and effort means there's been very little left over to write it all down.So what I'm writing here I feel like I've said a hundred times, and its certainly not news to me, nor the complete strangers in the myriad of housing offices and housing associations and on the other end of the phone who've taken my calls, read my forms, or spoken to me on their front desks.

Either way, I've had a shitty month and next month is going to be a little more uncertain. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't see the end of the tunnel sometimes. I know my depression is boring, but hell, it's not just about that anymore; it's about so much more than that. I'll still be blogging every now and then, I'm sure. I've just had a hectic month and living day to day has taken a lot more than I've had to give most days, hence my quietness. So, now you know. It's not that I've had nothing going on,. I've had too much going on (housing, medical, personal).

I keep on promising I'll see people when I've got some good news. I never seem to have any good news. Maybe that's why I never see people? God knows. I did see my dad and had some good news for him, but at the same time, I did have to tell him about all of the above. Not the easiest thing in the world. But It was good to see him - the relationship he and I have had has been very fractious sometimes, and it seems to be getting better. But with his other half and her children there, there's no room at the inn. But I'll hang in there, and I'll get there someday. As someone I value dearly said recently, "A good day will come along soon".

I really bloody hope so.

Either way, I'm off for a few days to see Mark and Ellen And Xander (or X-boy as I call him - according to Mark his X-men power is "smiling", which is cheerier than having razor sharp claws come out of your hands or setting fire to stuff as superhero powers go), and then on Saturday, I'm off to Live8 in Hyde Park with Mark - being one of mere plebs who haven’t paid for the £350 gold circle tickets, I'll be in the back with the other ruffians, clutching our plastic 500ml bottles of not very cheap carbonated drinks bought from onsite caterers at silly prices like £2 each for what costs 3p to ma\ke (it being a 99% water/sugar solution) and some rather unappetising pizza/burger van produce whilst we squint at video screens half a mile away. However , I'll be able to say I saw Pink Floyd and U2, and…according to the BBC, Queen - three bands I never thought I would ever possibly see, And for the cost of a couple of text messages, it's a damn fine deal. The Cure however pulled out, and we get UB40 instead. I find that more depressing than listening to the Cure anyday. Maybe you'll see me on TV - I'll be the one looking like a scrtuffy hobo. And I can’t think of anyone I'd rather spend my birthday with than my brother, his family and his adorable nephew. In the past sometimes I've just rung up to speak to him, and hearing him go "agu" and burble along just makes me go all soppy. After all, its not everyday you get your first ever phone call, and he didn’t have much to say, but he did seem very happy saying it whatever it was. And I'm really looking forward to having him wrap his hand around my fingers in that way that babies do. Bless.

Oh, and the occasion? It's my birthday. I'm 32 on Sunday. My last birthday, the only present I received was from someone who I'd met for the first time three days earlier, and that’s something I was glad I could do, but without them, I would have been in a bleak state. And What I really want for birthday is somewhere to live, and somewhere to call my own. Well, one can dream.

I did really have a witty ending to this post organised but alas, I couldnt find the photoshopped picture of Martin Luther King at the million man march in Washington in the sixties saying "I have a dream.....it's about these three lesbians....". Honestly, it was funnier when I thought of it. No, really, it was....

More after the weekend...

Just spent a little while fumbling away on some HTML template formatting to try and correct the bloody garbage that is automatically inserted by Blogger. Apparently, there is a manual solution

Check this post on the Blogger Forums regarding problems with the Bluebird blog template. Similarly, try this solution .

Or even easier, look at this blog and follow the instructions. Seems to work for me. How much easier it would have been if it hadnt been DELIBERATELY broken in the first place eh?

Don't worry. This Blog isn't dead. There's a lot of stuff going on in the real world Which absolutely could not wait, and I've had to deal with that instead. I've not had much time to Blog. The Current Fuck up with Blogger formatting doesn't inspire me much, either.

So, Yes, I will return. Sooner rather than later....hang in there!

Ever wondered where smilies come from?

Well, now you know. And it's heartbreaking isn't it?






if Only I was going to u2 tomorrow, I might wear this.....

Darwin awards visit birmingham

I used to live next to this station, travelled from it every day for months.The things I'm amazed by is it took so long for somebody to get killed there. The local idiots are brain donors in waiting,as the story says - " "The train struck a 17-year-old who was crouching by the track.Shortly before, youths were spotted playing by the tracks and we were given a warning".


Having lived around there, I can say I'm not surprised. The only thing that surprised me was how long it took for something as tragic as this to happen. there's no amenities, no recreational facilities, nothing to do except set fire to pubs and play dodge with trains round there. It's not hellish, just an area overrun with bored troublemaking kids with nothing to do, short attention spans, and a penchant for anti-social behaviour. As for problems with Access to the station someone has commented on, there's no more problem than any other station i've ever been on. You can't hermetically seal the railway line away from the world.

Really, who would have thought that crouching next to railway line where thousands of tons of metal is propelled at 125mph though an urban area would have been dangerous eh? You'd think you'd realise they didn't need a warning it might be dangerous. Some people, you can't protect from their own stupidity. It wasn't like it was dark or anything.

Bloody idiots.

It starts as a slight tingle.

Take your hand, place it over your left nipple - that’s where the pain is, in circles radiating out from my heart. Take that hand and touch your skin, then clench it over your skin every few seconds. Imagine that as a ball of white cold. The Pain, though not excessive, is still enough to make me worry. It occurs every few seconds.It's constant and its cold. It's a feeling of chill, arcing out, in a radial pattern. I'm by the bus stop, and I decide to ring the doctors. The Phone swallows the 30p. Not really what I need right now. There’s bigger shit in the world than 30p.

By the time I walk to the bus stop, which is a matter of about 15 feet, The Bus has arrived, and I get on it. I get home, and the pain still hasn’t gone away, and that’s about 10-15 minutes later. I pick up the phone and dial the surgery. I ask for an appointment, but they ask what is going on. They put me through to the Locum Doctor. The Locum doctor goes through a check list of items - are you sweating? Yes, intermittently. When Did it start? About 20 minutes ago. What else has happened today? Stomach Cramps and Diarrohea. Do you feel weak? Yes. Don’t Drink or eat anything. That’s Great news when you've been up since 6AM on three hours sleep. Call an ambulance, the doctor says.

So I Call the numbers. They ask for the symptoms. Run through the checklist like the Locum did earlier. Take numbers. Addresses. Lie still, they say. Gather your prescriptions, they say. One has been dispatched.

I call a few other brief numbers. Mark. My dad. Send text messages to who I am supposed to be seeing later. Talk to housemate. Go back downstairs and await. There's a knock on the door. It's time for the machine that goes ping.The two members of the ambulance service that arrive, they wire me up. There's a machine that’s is roughly square, with a number of leads that come out of it. A Spider if you will, its' sticky conduits across my chest that monitor the ECG. The machine goes Ping. The numbers fluctuate. 82. 86. 88. 93. 89.91. 82. 86.

The average pulse rate should be 72.

How would you rate the pain? They ask. On a Scale of 1 to 10.

You have to go to Hospital, they say. We're going there now, you can come along. So I do. We'll leave the spider on you.I walk into the ambulance, the leads still dragging down on my chest. They ask questions - date of birth, age, full name,. Address. What have I eaten? They arrive there, and they wheel me in, and take me to the emergency area. They hook up the leads again, and they continue to register the heartbeat, the erratic pulse that powers my body. The machines, they still go ping.

They ask for my previous address. Yes, I did used to live there, I say. From the last time I came in, with the similar symptoms. A different address, a different life, it seemed so long ago. Almost 4 years ago.

The nurse comes in. Well, its good news. "You've not had a heart attack at the age of 31", she says. Yes, that is good news I think. They unhook the spider, and Walk me through to a treatment room. Wait here, until a doctor comes to see you. It's 11.05AM. I haven’t eaten in almost 24 hours, and I’ve only had three hours sleep. I’m bored, tired, and ridiculously hungry. And I can’t find anywhere where I can even get chocolate.

By 12.31PM, no one has even come to see me. Not even to say the doctor is on his way. I have to eat, and I know it wasn’t a heart attack. I am practically weak from the lack of food. I decide that as no one has seen me, if they do there’s no chance of eating anyway and it will delay me further, and I have things to do, appointments and so forth. I can’t stay. I know it’s wrong to leave, but I’m utterly ravenous, tired, hungry and my situation will wait for no man. I leave, I go to my appointments, and I come home.

I sleep for 15 hours. God, did I need it. Im so stressed out, like you wouldn’t believe, and it’s just taken its toll. It’s wearing me down. I don’t mean that in the victim sense, but when you get an ECG in an ambulance for chest pains, that’s never a good sign.it’s related a lot to other circumstances, which I’ll go into in a bit…

God, I’m so fucked in so many ways. I've been so busy, pushing myself in so many different directions and i don't know what happens next. Or anything.

And in the right corner, the undisputed championship of the cute babies contest, Xander!:"guuuugglele gugggle gugggle!"

And in the left Corner, Swiss Toni, A vertiable Giant of a Man.
Swiss Toni: "If I just squint a little harder i can do that general Zod thing where laser beams come out of my eyes!" (Squints...) "Dammit, its not working!"

Ellen:"Xander was thinking the same thing. I know. Boys. Pffffft".

Surely the finest piece of graffitti, ever. (thanks to bumhug, whoever he is)

Busy busy day, Today. Very busy. My days just seem to fill up with stuff to do. Stuff that needs to be done.Appointments, visits to offices, that sort of thing. And then the day was behind me, and even a nice long bath couldn';t undo it's frantic pace.

But never mind me, how the hell have you been?

Dammit! I got the same results as him .


You're a Denial Goth! You are so not Goth. In fact you're Post-Punk/Darkwave / Whatever lesser-known synonym for goth is popular this week. Give it up, it's obvious you're a Goth. What kind of Goth would you be? brought to you by Quizilla

And hell, I got the same results as Him both times.


You're the Smiths. Like Cure, you're not technically a goth band, but you're popular amongst the black clad. Cheer up, darling, Robert Smith may hate you, but I think you're gorgeous. Nice boots dear, and I DO mean it.
What Goth Band Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

*SCREAMS* anyone would think That I stole my taste in goth music from him. (ie GOFF). Ya know - The Sisters Of Mercy, The Mission, the Cure, the Cult, New Model Army, The Fields of the Nephilim etc. The only difference is that I own a Rosetta Stone 12", mainly because The Sisters Of Mercy don't make records anymore, and this one was a fairly passable imitation. (for passable, I meant shoddy, rubbish and unoriginal but enjoyable in a throwing flour around whilst wearing long black leather coats kind of way....)

I'll get my coat. (It's neither long, nor black, nor leather. oh well. I'm such a Fraud sometimes.....)

I hate mobile phones.

Really, I do. I hate the whole mobile phone industry, it’s obsession with ringtones, and especially, the crazy fucking frog . 48,000 advertisements later at the cost of £16million, (including 12,000 on terrestrial, ie ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5), and a record number of complaints – there’s been 11 million downloads of it. At £3 each. So let’s work that out…


The Advertising Standards Authority has received more than 400 complaints. It’s hit No. 1 – the first example of a ringtone driving a single’s sales, rather than the other way around. Is it really the case that the charts are nothing more now than an advertising tool for an ancillary product? It’s like equating the film industry with being solely driven to sell us ancillary product – and having the No.1 movie in the country being a toy commercial. (Those who think that Star Wars movies are nothing more than glorified toy commercials will not have me entertain that ideas on the basis of one simple queation: What the plot of the Crazy Frog? Aha, I see…)

Revenue Generated: £33 million.
Advertising Spend: £16 million.
Net profit: £17 million.
Annoyance factor:Infinite.

Mobile phones this. Mobile phones that.

Why not use this a ringtone instead? I did point mark in it’s direction the other day – or download the mp3

Thing is, even on my crappy* old phone (not that crappy, but its certainly very rudimentary by comparison to some – no camera, no ringtones, no WAP, no bullshit), I got a message from 82525 which stated “Message cannot be displayed here”. Abit of googling later… and this is what I find -
I discover i've signed up for a “ringtone club”, which charges you £3 per tone. One each week. I didn’t sign up for it. I don’t know who did, but All I had to do was text “STOP ALL” to 84242. And you receive a text immeadaiately unsubscribing from something you never wanted to be part of in the first place. Without google I would not have known that, nor how I was inducted into this, or anything. Fortunately I did not get debited the said £3 (they’d have had a job, I don’t have that in the account anyway), but when they start doing this to those under 16 (ie under the age of which they are legally allowed to do this) plus randomly signing up numbers, The one thing I want to do is take these people’s heads and nick £3 out of each and every one of their wallets. Because what they are doing is nothing more than theft.

“under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2004 it is unlawful to send an unsolicited sales and marketing text message. Telemarketing companies who send SMS messages need your prior permission. There is no obligation therefore for companies sending SMS messages to people who have agreed to receive them, to screen against the TPS file. If you wish to stop receiving SMS marketing messages, please send an 'opt-out' request to the company involved. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) is responsible for the enforcement of these regulations.”

Looks like someone has been breaking the law. Fuck them, and the crazy frog they rode in on. Cunts.