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<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nFor many years my LL Bean boots have given me excellent service. Now, however, the rubber has split in several places and when I trudge across the dew-laden recreation ground with Molly each morning and\/or across the fields in the pelting rain in the afternoon, I return home with wet socks and cold feet.<\/p>\n
Regrettably, Bean boots are not available in the UK and although I could order them from the States the delivery and import tax costs make them prohibitively expensive. So, I went on to the web and found a suitable compromise and placed an order. The boots arrived within a day or so but unfortunately, they were the wrong size. My fault entirely \u2013 I looked at the size tag inside my Merrells which said US 10.5, UK 10 and so I ordered size 10. The boots were the size of a small naval landing craft when they arrived so I parcelled them back up to exchange them for a pair of size 9s.<\/p>\n
I took the parcel to our local post office and this is where the fun began. No issues about posting them (apart from the extortionate cost) and I was given a tracking number and told that they would be collected on Friday and that they would be delivered in 48 hours \u2013 guaranteed (not including Saturday or Sunday, of course). So, they would reach their destination late on Monday or first thing Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d I said and handed over a small fortune.<\/p>\n
On Friday I decided to check the tracking information to see where they\u2019d got to \u2013 hmm, no information available. On Monday I tried to check again \u2013 still no information available. So, I telephoned Parcel Force and, after navigating a labyrinth of menu choices and shouting various snippets of information into the phone, I eventually was connected to an agent who explained that the reason I couldn\u2019t track the parcel was because it had not yet been collected from the post office!<\/p>\n
Long story short \u2013 in order to get the Royal Mail ready for privatisation (i.e., stealing it from the taxpayer and selling it off at approximately 1\/5 of its value \u2013 don\u2019t get me started!) various reorganisations were put in place to make the service more lean and efficient. One of these was to change the main depot from whence parcels are collected to then be dispatched around the country and world. Our post office used to have its parcels collected from Coventry (22 miles); now they are collected from the Milton Keynes depot (29 miles). It turns out that either no one at the Milton Keynes depot had received the memo or they decided, in the interests of efficiency obviously, not to collect any parcels from Byfield at all!<\/p>\n
An \u201cangry\u201d phone call to the Milton Keynes depot on Monday afternoon did achieve the promise of an upgrade from 48 hours \u201cguaranteed\u201d to 24 hours, similarly \u201cguaranteed\u201d. We\u2019ll see. In the meantime I am still trudging around the recreation ground and across the hills and dales in wet socks with cold feet.<\/p>\n
[Update: You will be pleased to hear that on Tuesday the parcel was \u201cin progress\u201d having finally been collected and on Friday I received my replacement boots. My feet are now dry and warm on our strolls across the countryside.]<\/em><\/p>\n A few weeks ago the Sun (brought to you by Rupert Murdoch) ran a story in which it claimed there were \u2019600,000 benefit tourists\u2019 in the UK and that the European Union had said this was \u2018no problem\u2019. You won\u2019t be surprised to hear that this is the same song the Conservative members of the coalition government have been singing since they came to power.<\/p>\n A couple of weeks ago the Befouled Weakly News had a snippet from a European Union commissioner<\/a> arguing that this wasn\u2019t true and stating that the EU had been asking the coalition government for three years<\/span> to provide evidence to support their assertion. Of course, the government has been unable to do so since it\u2019s simply not true.<\/p>\n Now, the Sun has published a \u201ccorrection\u201d, which was tucked away on page 2 of Monday\u2019s paper:<\/p>\n In other words, the entire story was made up, as is so much of what Murdoch and the other tabloids produce.<\/p>\n Yet still the government keeps banging on about immigrants arriving in the UK merely so that they can take advantage of our \u201cgenerous\u201d social benefit system. It doesn\u2019t matter that it\u2019s not true \u2013 as Iain Duncan Smith, the minister for Works and Pensions stated, if one believes it to be true it\u2019s essentially the same as being true<\/a>. Why bother with evidence when your ideology is so much more appealing.<\/p>\nOur 21 October headline “Brussels: UK’s 600,000 benefit tourists is no problem” was not accurate. There is no evidence of 600,000 “benefit tourists” in the UK. Neither has the European Commission said this would be no problem.<\/h5>\n