Straight To The Point

If you've been scouring Barclays page looking for a way to actually send them a message, I pity you.  It's almost impossible to find a page to send your own message, and you constantly end up being shown lists of "common questions".  Even the page link to with the words "Email us" doesn't even mention the word "email" anywhere in it (or, as of the time of writing this, simply says "there seems to be a problem").

However, after what seemed like hours of trying, I finally found the link to send them your own message:

https://bank.barclays.co.uk/olb/auth/FeedbackForm.action

Use it if you want to send Barclays an email or message and tell them how terrible their service is and how you refuse to be a pawn in their financial games.

Call me naive, but shouldn't the olympics just be sporting events held at relevant venues (e.g. sports stadiums, football pitches) just like normal events?  How come it costs £10Bb?

Er, because the IOC make ridiculous demands for no known reason other than they can get away with it: the UK government is using taxpayers money to provide them with 40,000 (!) hotels rooms for free, as well as 500 limousines.  And that's just the start.

www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/06/international-olympic-committee-london-summer-olympics

[Warning - do not read if you get angry easily].

I hope it dies on it's arse.

I've just had the kind of experience that puts you off buying things on the internet: paying for something online, the supplier takes the money but then denies all knowledge of the order.

In this case the amounts weren't large, but I paid for it using Google Wallet.  It's when you have circumstances like this, i.e. slightly out of the ordinary processes, that Google's flaws come to light.  How on earth do I contact Google to find out what happened to my money and whether the supplier received it?

As far as I could see, there's not even an email address to send problems regarding Google Wallet to, never mind a phone number.  All weblinks along the lines of "having problems?" all direct back to the supplier; but the order number I get it from Google, which means nothing to the supplier.

Thankfully in this case the supplier and Google sorted it out between them, but it serves as a warning about putting all our information and systems in the hands of one faceless corporation who couldn't care less about the problems of one of its users.

I've come to conculsion that there is no such thing as free will, because there is no such thing as true randomness. Even the roll of a dice could theoretically be predicited if all the variables are known. Therefore, everything from weather to human brain functions, can theoretically be predicted, meaning that everything that happens must always have been going to happen.

To put it another way, if time was re-wound back a year, exactly the same thing would happen again, since there would be nothing to cause it to be any different.

If you work for the council and are going on strike, you're about a year too late. You should have been protesting when Labour gave all our money to the banks. There's no point striking now: there's no money left to pay you with.

I was just browsing the RPGCodex forums when I came across a thread about gay marriage being legalised in California. And, to get straight to the point, I was quite taken aback with the homophic comments I read. It's not like it's a Christian Fundamentalist website or anything where this kind of thing might be expected.

The thing that irks me most however, is that these people are arguing against a decision which doesn't affect them in any way whatsoever, but has a major impact on the lives of others.

Stuart Campbell, the famed games reviewer from yesteryear, continues his quest to get the truth from dishonest and corrupt product "review" site BenchmarkReviews.

In a nutshell: Don't trust anything BenchmarkReviews says (or rather, has been paid to say by the manufacturer of whatever product is being "reviewed").