Gmail primary addresses and alternates

What a pain in the arse Gmail can be. With my new Android phone I thought it logical to set it up to use my Google account; and hey it would make sense to use the googlemail address I've got too. However I'm still using my old orange account, but at least I can set up Gmail to fetch that email so I just use the one. Hah!

Gmail doesn't pick up all the email from the other account so I still have to log in to it; which makes using Gmail pointless; however I still need it to sync my contacts.

So far so what? Well having started using Gmail it now makes that's my "primary email address" so now when I make a comment on a blog that I'm signed into using Google that's the one I'm using to subscribe to it. Except I'm not monitoring that account for emails now.

Can you change the primary address - not without deleting Gmail. Can I change it so it sends to the original alternate address - no.

So now I've reversed the Gmail fetch to push and have to forward emails sent to it to my original account just so I can see them without having to monitor two accounts.

What's so pathetic about this is that a) it used to be possible to change the primary email address and b) the number of people on the Google forums asking how it can be changed.

This is obviously something that people want and Google have taken it away and refused to return it - talk about do no evil.