Eastern Europeans

Eastern Europeans come in for a lot of stick around these parts, partly from me.

Earlier on today I was wondering down Gold Street at a time when a singular Police Officer was trying to arrest a violent member of the public. An Eastern European man immediately jumped to the aid of the Police whilst British people, myself included, walked on by.

True, I am not best suited for such things and would no doubt be more of a hindrance than a help but, even so, it never even crossed my mind to help.

British Motorists

We are so not taught to driver properly, so many seem to be incapable of even driving as they were taught.

On a roundabout earlier a motorist drove across the two lane roundabout because they were going straight ahead totally oblivious to the fact they could (and did) have traffic to their right. They were feeding the wheel as they would have been taught but too slowly and they were barely driving at 15mph against a speed limit of 40.

Another motorist was at least 200yds out from a green traffic light yet approached it at 15 mph by which time it had gone red. They then took an age to get going when it turned green and proceeded to drive the entire length of Mill Lane at 30mph despite it being clear and a 40mph limit.

One of those was female and the other an elderly man, you might choose to guess which was which.

Lollipop Patrols

I get that we have to save money where we can but these men and women were a great asset, a glorious British tradition and one cut too many in my opinion. Now we have huge queues of traffic anywhere near a school because crossings are always in use. Back in the day the Lollipop men and women would use common sense and hold up both motorists and pedestrians as appropriate to ensure free movement as much as possible with minimum inconvenience.

To many they brightened up the dark mornings and it was one extra person to watch out for the children. One of the things which made this country what it was that we’ve lost to save money, to move ‘forward’.

Retail

I am not sure if it is just Northampton, it could be across the country but, the shopping experience has gone down hill loads. I can rarely walk into a store, especially chain stores where they seem to have all but lost interest in customers. Do they really think that making a customer wait whilst they sort out a bit of stock is good practise? Worse yet, making customers wait whilst they have a jolly chat about non work related stuff or, even work related for that matter. I am sure the ladies in Marks & Spencer earlier really did have a wonderful time at Butlins but I didn’t need to be an inconvenience to that conversation, they should have either not had it at all or stopped mid sentence when they saw customers walk in.

Customers don’t like seeing huddles or whatever stores call them, do that before the store opens and pay the staff to be there before the store opens to have those staff meetings.

Second Hand Stores or Pawn Shops

… do not insult your customers, do your research! I am not paying the same price for something 2nd hand that I could pay for it new online, just not happening and have no desire to haggle with you.

5 Seconds of Summer

Guys, you’re from Australia, you have no concept of what 5 Seconds of Summer is … this is Britain, we know!

We have entire summers that don’t happen. We wait for 6 long months for those long, warm summer days and what we get is barely warm wet days which end within 3 months before we accept the natural progress through the Autumn into winter again but … they were always hot and long when I was a kid, we all have the same memory regardless of how old we are. Of course, only those of a certain generation know the significance of 1976!