Dear British Whingers,

I want to address your whinging about paying £130-odd a year for a colour TV licence to receive TV signals in the UK.

You can’t afford it? Well you managed to buy a TV, I’m sure you can. I trust that you did, if you nicked one, you aren’t in a position to whinge.

You’re whinging because the BBC has crap output? Well, you’ve obviously never visited or lived in another country long enough to see just how much worse it is. You probably pay for cable/satellite TV too, and you’ll notice that 100 extra channels doesn’t quite match the quality of the terrestial channels. You also get extra BBC channels to cater for different interests on those subscription services and on Freeview.

You’re whinging because the BBC doesn’t concentrate all its funding into BBC1 and BBC2 channels? Well, what about BBC Radio 1, etc, etc? And don’t tell me you never use BBC News Online. A lovely free website without ANY adverts, well updated, and covers a huge arrange of subjects. And that’s not counting the BBC website.

You’re whinging that the BBC Worldwide caters to an international audience, and getting free TV? I wouldn’t be so sure about that, for one, it has adverts to pay for it. And for millions of Britons visiting/living abroad, it’s a great repreive from trashy news channels.

You’re whinging cos the BBC is senstationalist, or biased, or anything else you think? Well, so is every other TV station in the world. Why should the BBC be any different? It caters to the mass market, so it has to stay “interesting” – even if Casualty never seem realistic or the subtitles on Trawlermen offends Scots because it was still an English language being spoken.

And if you still disagree with everything so far, then consider this… the BBC seems, in my view, has the most subtitled airtime of any TV station I’ve come across. My only wish is they do that for BBC World News. It engages with the public via many means, especially its website. Give me a TV station that does all this – answers on a postcard please.

What is the alternative? A subscription service to the BBC in a cable/sky package which will probably be included as standard anyway and bump up the basis commercial subscription prices? Adverts every 2 minutes? Get rid of it altogether?

The BBC is popular for a reason. It has broad international appeal that is not matched by anyone else. Does that not make you proud? The BBC is probably a great advert about Britain and probably influence a lot of visitors to come and visit (much like Hollywood is a great advert for the USA). Don’t underestimate this…

If that doesn’t stop your whinging, then emigrate!

Yours faithfully,
Kyle Sterry

I’ve integrated my blog in better with my website. I hate CSS!

I eventually fiddled enough php files to have it sorted. However, am still battling with logout cookies expiring in 2005 though, but no longer do your cookies goes rotten after ten years, its now 2 days!

If any of you have any problems, drop a comment or email me kyle @ (see graphics at top for the remainder).

Walk down my street, and you could be well forgiven for thinking it was Christmas yesterday or that Christmas falls on 25th November.

Neighbours now started their one-upmanship on having the best Christmas tree(s) in their windows, the most rubbish (ie, inflatable snowman/santa/uglythings) in their gardens, and of course more lights on their exterior walls/windows than a small African nation.

Now, will people PLEASE take a reality check and follow these instructions on how to have a Christmas:

1) No Christmas decorations of any kind until a week before Christmas. Personally, my family used to put them up on Christmas Eve. That way, Christmas fatigue doesn’t set in as early as you would get it.

Also, who cares if your neighbour has a better decoration than you have – so keep it simple, don’t deprive your neighbourhood of electricity – number 31 on my street will be getting a bill for my laptop if I get a brownout when the kids come home from school to switch the lights on.

2) You do not need to have as much presents as the boy did in Home Alone. Your lounge is not Toys R Us. Therefore you do not need to spend as much time shopping. Stop commercialising Christmas.

3) Stagger your Christmas shopping.

4) Save money on cards, don’t bother. And save the trees and reduce the environmental effects of transportation of sending said stuff.

5) All the family should be together on Christmas Day, with a giant turkey, and all the clippings and booze up, but not binge drink.

Keep Christmas simple, in the family, and short. The shorter it is, the more you appreciate it and don’t feel sick of it by the time Christmas actually comes round.

While I’m on the soapbox, I’d like to draw your attention to my Amazon wishlist *coughs* http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/2EY914QPFMKKW *coughs*

Oh, and one more thing. It has bugger all to do with Christanity except in name – we’re celebrating an ancient pagan festival that the days are getting longer again.

I don’t like it when people answer a question with a question… except when I do it…

What is it like to be hearing?

I have left my desk job in Holland now that I secured another job. I’m very very much looking forward to the new one.

It will take me all over the world, meeting new people and to areas where no one with half a brain cell would go to. I will get paid lots and tax-free soon!

To be eligible for tax-free income, I must not be in the UK for more than 3 months in a tax-year. So I’m planning new US roadtrips. I also get a third of the year off work to do my elaborate tax-evasion scheme.

Can’t beat that!

However, that’s all very well but if the job turns out to be unchallenging, not tasking my brain, then no perks in the world will make it better.

Anyway, enough rambling. My contract and associated paperwork was posted to my UK address in early October.

It didn’t arrive until the last week of October due to a typo in the address.

I duly filled out all the forms, and sent it back. A week later, it was discovered I needed to send another form back which wasn’t on the supplied checklist.

More delays. A renewed passport means my visa to a country somewhere in Africa needed renewing.

Bets are on now for whether I’ll actually get to go to work before Christmas. I need the money, as if I don’t, it will be two months without pay, and that’s over Christmas/New Year…

I went into my local branches where I hold a credit account at each of them. I wanted to close both now that I’ve paid off MOST of the outstanding bills on them and I don’t really want to have any temptations in the future.

It seems the only way I could cancel a credit card is by telephone which I can’t do cos I’m deaf, or in writing to “the head office”. And as haven’t paid all of it off, I needed to instruct them to debit my current account to fully close it.

I pleaded with both staff counters, adding a white lie that I’m going to work abroad for 6 months starting from next week, and by the time the letters go back and forth to confirm that I want to pay it from my current account, I’d be long gone somwhere in Africa and of course, too late for me.

And they say customer services are improving all the time. My bloody arse it is! It’s just another eroding of the high street by centralising services which will affect the disabled and the eldery most of all – a very sizeable population running into at least 15 million in the UK.

Don’t you just hate it? You arrange to be available on the day a parcel is suppose to come to your house.

Whilst most people would take the opportunity to catch up with house chores, I can’t do that. I can’t hear the doorbell unless I sit in the hall.

So I sit by the lounge window overlooking the street from 8am to whenever it arrives. There’s no pattern.

Today is one of those days where the courier failed to turn up at all. Their tracking website showed as “in transit” to my address.

I wasted a whole day watching an empty, deserted suburban street, bored out of my skull.

Thanks DHL. I will have to do it all over again on Monday.

It took two days (well two mornings) to try and remove a bolt off my car’s chasis.

We (my brother and I) only managed to get the nut off the bolt. The bolt would not budge despite putting enormous pressure on it using a clamp, two bodies for brute force, an air compressor attached to a socket set, and a mini sledge hammer.

Iron Oxide won on those two days.

Today, Iron Oxide lost to a cutting disc. Cut the bolt into pieces and hammered out. New panhard rod attached. 5 minutes it took.

Took it for a spin, and then the exhaust blew after a few minutes. Argh! There’s a hole in the silencer box.

Went back to Durham UK Passport Agency on Monday gone…

…2hrs late – 1pm instead of 11am.

Traffic was fine, car was fine, etc etc. My brain wasn’t. I forgot my passport after travelling about 25 miles – so we turned back to pick it up again, back and forth through the choking Tyne Tunnel fumes numerous times (webcam below).

Arrived there, and this time a pleasantly younger-ish lady served me, she was very good, one of those who is actually good at customer relations. When asked to repeat what she said, she changes her words to make herself understood which to me is a sign of an excellent communicator. Explained the fiasco of the last time I was here, and asked if this can be processed as quickly as possible.

She told me as it is 1pm, it would not be ready till next Wednesday, instead of Tuesday as 12pm was the deadline. Nevermind, I’m not too much in a rush, one day doesn’t matter.

You can imagine my surprise to see my shiny new biometric passport arrived this morning! Took them only two days to do it instead of a week. I’m impressed.

My car, a Suzuki Jimny 4×4, was being driven on a dirt track at about 30mph when all of a sudden it decided to do some kind of a butt-shaking dance routing. It flayed to the right, then to the left, then maybe a bit further to the left before swinging wildly back to the opposite extreme and repeat until the car was totally stationary.

The rear stabiliser bar had snapped in two. Fortunately, the off-roading group I’m in are the sort of people you’d want if you’re marooned on a desert island (eg, Lost). With a strap, a red tubing and brute force, an ad-hoc fix was made to keep the car together for its long journey back from rural Northumberland.