Service with a smile ... from Sunderland
HEAVY criticism has been levelled at the Inland Revenue over its poor response rate to dealing with public inquiries.
This initially seemed to be true when I spent a nightmare day trying to contact their Dorchester office to get income details from several years ago to complete information required for my son’s university grant.
A total of 17 phone calls to several numbers failed to connect to a single human being during which time I made two calls of nearly 20 minutes which were then cut off and at least seven other calls which were cut off with an explanation because, a computer voice said, staff were “very busy”.
In desperation I got in my car and drove to the Inland Revenue office in Dorchester only to find it was shut on three out of five days a week including the day I called!
I faced having to try and fit a second visit in with a busy working day but was spared that by pure luck.
Keen to check and make sure I’d got the right place and the right time I rang the Dorchester Inland Revenue number information line from home one more time -.and got a human being.
She was wonderful, sorted out my query in double quick time, identified my records and quickly arranged for all the information I needed to be sent straight down to me.
I gratefully thanked her and, chatting away, told her of my many failures to reach the county town office the previous day and how nice it was to finally get through.
She then let me down gently and told me I was talking to her in Sunderland! Now that’s what you call service with a smile.
Unhappy memories from the firing line
MEMORIES from 70 years ago came flooding back for one visitor to Weymouth’s Nothe Fort when the military site made him recall the outbreak of the Second World War.
He said: “I was a child and I lived in a small circle of about 20 houses.
“Only one household in the entire circle had a radio and I was outside with other people when the radio’s owner came rushing out shouting: “We’re at war with Germany! We’re at war with Germany!”
That was how they first heard the news, he said, adding that the Nothe Fort’s Artillery Volunteers made him recall an early artillery training incident.
He said: “When they were training they used to line the guns up in a row and they all fired in turn. You could hear them go off one after the other.
“One day they started and then there was silence. Apparently one of the guns had not gone off so everyone except the gun crew involved was ordered away from the area.
“They then started to get the shell out but it went off while they were doing so and the breechblock took a man’s head off.”
Who designed global warming?
A YOUNGSTER walking along Preston beach road sea wall asked her mum and dad why an excavator was shuffling shingle about.
One parent told her that global warming had increased the tides and stripped shingle away from the beach which machines were moving back.
The other parent tried to agree but ended up saying it was really because the original design for the sea wall had been faulty and the shingle shift was needed because of poor design.
Fortunately the parents’disparity was smoothed over by the child’s praiseworthy attempt to cover both schools of thought.
She said: “Why has global warming been badly designed?”
Strangely enough, neither parent seemed to have an answer to that!
Move that car!
IT had been steady business in the pub and staff were working hard to cope with demand.
Then the situation changed and there was a welcome slow down to give them a bit of a break.
After a while staff began to wonder what was happening because they were getting virtually no fresh customers coming in at all.
To their horror it emerged that a woman had parked her car so close to the pub that it had obscured their entrance and there was no obvious door for the casual passer-by to see.
She was politely asked to move her vehicle!
And finally... politicians... you have been warned!
NOW all you politicians, stop what you’re doing and listen very carefully to this.
Just because a General Election has been called for May 6th is no reason for you all to go stark raving mad.
I do not want my letterbox jammed with an avalanche of letters begging for my vote.
I do not want my doorbell rung every night by campaigners with piano teeth smiles telling me only their party can give me what I want.
And I definitely do not want to enter any free draws to win life-size cardboard cut-outs of every party leader.
I’m well aware of the local and national political situation so I don’t need my evening meal interrupted to have it all explained to me in questionable detail on my doorstep.
As alleged public representatives who listen carefully to what people say… I don’t expect any of you to pay a blind bit of notice to my wishes.
But bear this in mind as well. There are three more View From editions before the big day and I can and will use this column to highlight the more annoying intrusions that people tell me about or that I hear and experience regardless of political party. You’ve been warned.
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