it was FADS

stupid useless British paint shop! we dont order paint, that would mean repeat customers and we really just want to go out of business so no customers bother us ever again!

Why Britain really doesn't quite get capitalism

So you run a chain of shops, selling, oh let's say paint, and a customer comes in to one of your b ranches and tells you that they're looking for a specific colour, which they bought the last cans of from you just a couple of weeks ago, but which hasn't been re-stocked yet, and would like you to order in for them.

Do you

a) Say "Of course sir/madam, let me take the details and we'll order it in in the next order."

or

b) Say "Well, we used to have a system like that, but we don't do that any more. We're expecting a new delivery of paint in a couple of weeks, but we can't tell you specifically if the colour you want will be in it as it will depend on whether the colour has sold enough."

Personally, I'd've thought that a chain that wanted to encourage repeat custom and actually make sales would opt for a), but our local D-I-Y branch seems to belong to a chain that subscribes to b) as a business model.

Bah.

Hmm, which is more offensive?

a) Being charged £4.05 for a crayfish and rocket sandwich at Wimbledon - note, not £3.95, which would indicate a slight sense of shame at the outrageous over-pricing; an attempt to make it seem like it isn't really four quid for a sandwich, but £4.05 - that last 5p being shorthand for "because we can".

Or

b) Getting to the checkout at the self-service buffet restaurant at Wimbledon, be charged nearly £30 for a chunk of "mushy and unpleasant" (corrector of bah) pasta bake (£9.50!), an OK curry (another £9.50!), two teas and pastries and then find a tip jar!

Having said that, I did enjoy the Wimbledon experience, rain and all - and by comparison to the above the rather nice strawberries and cream at £2 a bowl were almost reasonable, and even at £6 a go the Pimms was nice.

The thing that gets me though is this: all the profits from the Wimbledon tournament, and they must be substantial, are supposed to go to the Lawn Tennis Association to develop the game of tennis in the UK. So why are we still so rubbish at it?

Bah.

Dear BBC and Guardian

If I wanted wall-to-wall coverage of Glastonbury, don't you think I'd've gone to it?

Love,
Bah

egregious use of the word refreshing

this word needs to be exorcised from the speech of poncey middleclass English as it is only ever used to express the newfound experience that poor/ordinary people are not as untouchably unintelligent or uncultured as they thought.

On the rubbishness of modern rail tickets

There's really little hope that Britain's privatised rail industry will ever get the trains to run on time, not if my experience of one of the smallest, simplest parts of the system is anything to go by. I mean, if they can't even get the physical tickets right, what hope is there that they'll ever sort out the trains?

My esteemed employer offers an interest-free annual season ticket loan, so ever since we moved to sunny Medway I've bought an annual seasonal ticket from Gillingham to London. I'm now on my fifth annual season ticket, and so far I have yet to have one that actually lasted the whole year without having to be replaced.

OK, they're only little rectangles of magnetically-encoded cardboard, and they take some punishment - being extracted and run through the ticket gate machine at least four times on every work day - not to mention the effects of mobiles and other electro-magnetic devices. So I accept that I'll probably have to replace my ticket at least once during the year (I think I did have one last about nine months before the magnetic stripe died).

No, my complaint is that recently Gillingham station had its ticket counter machines "upgraded" to spiffy new ones (you may have seen them at your local station, you know the sort - now have a full PC keyboard and monitor and take about twice as long to issue the tickets as the old machines). These machines issue their ticket on different "stock" to the old ones, and its rubbish. Firstly the magnetic encoding is much more sensitive than on the old tickets, so I've had to move my staff swipe card out of my ticket holder after having a series of failures, almost on a daily basis. But what's really inexcusable is that the ink smudges so badly that I've had to replace my ticket after just three months due to the expiry date in the centre becoming illegible. Now when I go through the gates I'm taking care to grasp the ticket by the corners and now the printing there is getting faded after just three weeks.

Is it really too much to expect a ticket that's valid for a year to actually last a year?

Bah.