Blocks, Tesco, adverts, and banks.

Well that was a surprise I've just had a call from Worcestershire County Council. You might recall that whilst attempting to find out what was happening on the Stour Bridge I complained about the slabs in High Street

as being a different colour and different texture to the originals. the gentleman I spoke to thought I meant the tactile slabs, no those are fine, what about the ones next to them. Well they're not sure who laid them the infamous BB or WCC's own department.

"You can't get those slabs anymore"
"I spoke to Blockelys they say you can"
"Ah well see they make thousands of batches and they don't always come out the same colour"
"Well are they the same type, freeze resistant and slip resistant to the same degree?"
"Ah well that's the question"

So 'you can't get them' to 'they're not the same' in one short hop, hmm. Take a closer look at the second picture, they've had to use small spacers to make them fit the same gap. Now digging up and filling up a hole isn't going to leave it exactly the same I'll admit, but still it's poor. Ah well I'm meeting them later this week, as to results well don't hold your breath.


I've had this a while, but it hid down the side of a briefcase. A little birdie dropped this to me.

It's the plan, no not the official one, of the new Tesco in Stourport. What caught my eye when I first saw it was items B and D (and to a lesser extent E and G) detailing the trees and shrubs to be planted alongside the development. "That sounds familiar" I thought, "Weren't the Tesco in Kidderminster supposed to be doing exactly the same thing along Corporation Street?"



That worked out well didn't it. I could of course check the plans they submitted, except they're not available on-line. It appears that no plans are available pre-06, damn. Maybe everyone at the college and the library (who are to my left) demanded that they be able to view the store in all it's neon wonder "If you don't study hard, that's where you'll end up working"?


Has anyone caught the new Kia advert? When I first caught it I thought it a TV promo for something along the lines of "Primeval". Thanks to my PVR I could rewind it multiple times and thus present it here verbatim.

"How? Where? When? Why? How? Why?
How? When? Why? Where? How?
Why? Why? When? Why? Where?
When? Where? How? Why?
The new Kia Cee'd with 7 year warranty."

What? All shown with interspersed clips off, well frankly odd things; the car only appears for the last sentence. First thing I thought off was the ill-famed Dunlop ad with Velvet Undergrounds "Venus in furs" ("Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather"; that one), but despite everyone not remembering who the ad was for and thinking it was for a car manufacturer, at least it did show the tyres through the ad and kind of make sense in context. This one is just bizarre.


Okay banks up next, my father is a member of an local organisation I'll not name. To safeguard against illicit use of money all cheques need two signatures (a fairly common occurrence in these sorts of situation) there are currently three named signatories. As this is a democratic organisation people get elected to positions and some people just retire and need to be replaced.

This happened recently to a signatory, the new one needed to be authorised. The bank sent through a form to fill in. Name, signature, DOB, address - no problem. Financial dealings? What? Yep this is the new crack-down on money laundering and terrorism, the banks want to probe you mercilessly. As the bank doesn't have an easily accessible local branch, the new signatory also has to send proof of identity in the post, along with the exemplar of their signature and personal details. Through the post! My father queried if they couldn't spot something wrong with this request; they couldn't, can you?