This is a reblog of a short rant on my old Posterous blog, April 2nd 2011:

A brief difference of opinion on Facebook earlier today got me thinking about how we perceive offence and abuse.

A friend had posted a link, related to the murder of 12 innocent people in a United Nations compound in Afghanistan by a mob of angry Muslims - a reaction (incited by 3 mullahs) to the burning of a copy of the Koran in Florida by “pastor” Terry Jones.

One of the first comments was:

“Don’t you think Pastor Terry Jones is a self righteous prick for burning the Koran when he knew all it would do is incite hatred and people have been beheaded for it”.

A mob of violent religious nutjobs runs amok, killing 12 people - and instead of condemning them for the summary execution of a number of human beings, the commenter’s first thought is to condemn the man to whom they have chosen to take offence - for burning a book?

I shit you not.

My point here is that if we descend to this type of apologist capitulation, they win. This is what they want. They want you to accept that the burning of a book, the criticism of a religious belief, the drawing of a fucking cartoon is somehow “abusive” to them - because they have chosen to take offence. They want you to accept this, because this is the justification that they use for the violence that follows. They want you to believe that this is our fault - not theirs.

There is a world of difference between being abused and taking offence.

This is not abuse. A book cannot be abused. A dead or imaginary man (magic or otherwise) cannot be abused. A theology cannot be abused. Human beingscan be abused - and they can be killed. And for as long as we continue to cower in deference to these repulsive fallacies, human beings will continue to be killed.

photo-monkey:

Yes, just like TV shows are doing, I’ll be running a quick sneak-peek at the action on the blog for next time.

As this is my first real entry *phnar* thus far… There’s not much to make a spoiler of. So I’ll just run down some of the topics I’ll be ranting about in the coming weeks and months.

(reposted from my old Posterous blog)

I reproduce below, without comment, an email exchange I’ve just had with the ever-reliable Parcelforce. My original web enquiry is at the bottom of the text; it is followed above that by their canned reply; my response today is at the top - you may want to read from the bottom.

Dear Parcelforce/Emma/whichever employee, knowing nothing about this situation, is next to read this email,

Thankyou for once again demonstrating your frankly staggering ineptitude. Had a human being actually taken two minutes to look at the possible reasons for us sending our enquiry, you would have noticed that we were the SENDER of the parcel, not the recipient. Instead, you took the opportunity (eventually) to send us a canned response (and one scripted for the recipient, at that).

Well done. Really, well done - it takes a very special type of dedication to achieve this type of counterproductive interaction with your (business account holding) customers with the monotonous regularity that Parcelforce achieves. Are your customer service employees specially trained to provide this level of incompetence?

If you’ll forgive me, I’ll attempt (although I admit that the experience may be akin to “pissing into the wind”) to nudge you back to the general thrust of our enquiry - which you managed, impressively, to ignore completely. I realise that I typed two whole sentences - and that this may be somewhat daunting to your employees - but for the sake of clarity I will reproduce them here, verbatim:

“Item shows “insufficient address”. Please clarify and confirm exact address details shown on label?”

It will, by now, I hope, be dawning on the reader of this email, somewhere in the dim recesses of his or her mind, that the below canned reply has neither clarified the error message, nor confirmed the address on the label. Again, well done. That noise? It’s me, clapping. Slowly.

Our enquiry was originally sent because despite the parcel having a printed label with barcode, generated by your system, in a transparent, waterproof label holder (supplied by you), stuck firmly to the parcel, detailing the name of the recipient, the house number, the road, the town, the county and the full postcode (as confirmed by your system) - the parcel failed to arrive with our customer (who informs us that the address is a clearly marked, semi-detached property with no other occupants, to which other parcels arrive just fine). The error message shown in your system (presumably picked from a list by your equally specially trained driver), was “insufficient address”. Perhaps we should have specified the country, planet etc.?

Thankyou for pointing out the scheduled delivery time of the parcel (presumably back to us, as your system states it is being returned to sender). The parcel was sent on the 18th of April with your “Express 24” service, to arrive on the 19th. So by your estimate, by the time it arrives back with us after its pointless, several hundred mile round trip, it will have been in transit for eight days. This is, of course, assuming that the driver on this end can find us. To their credit, they usually manage that - but then we do have a twenty foot banner above the door. Perhaps I should ask our parcel recipients to arrange something similar in future?

It will, of course, have to be checked and then go back into transit (once we have repackaged it, which judging by the usual care with which your depot employees handle items marked “fragile”, we will have to do). You cannot possibly imagine the giddy anticipation that we - and our customer - will feel, waiting for news of its progress the second time around. Will it arrive? Will it be in one piece? Will we ever feel that we’re getting what we pay you for? Will we renew our contract? Oh, the tension.

I realise that I will almost certainly receive an equally scripted, equally patronising canned response to this email - and that we will almost certainly have the now familiar to-ing and fro-ing and confusion and frustration that arises when Parcelforce have, once again, failed so spectacularly to do what we pay you to do - which is to deliver a bloody parcel - until the situation is eventually resolved to nobody’s satisfaction. However, I cling stubbornly (and almost certainly vainly) to the hope that an actual human being, with actual functioning brain cells, will actually read this email and actually send us a reply, actually written by them. Which may even actually resolve this in some way.

But I’m not holding my breath.

James Ogilvie

On 22 Apr 2011, at 15:03, <parcelforce@parcelforce.co.uk> wrote:

Dear James Ogilvie

Thank you for your email.

I appreciate your concern over the delivery of the parcel.

I have checked the tracking information and your parcel is scheduled for delivery on the 26.04.2011.  As this is the first delivery attempt to your address, it will take place between 7am and 5.30pm unless it has been placed on one of our timed services.

If no one is available at the delivery address to accept the item an automatic redelivery should be attempted the following working day and again take place between 7am and 5.30pm.  Our driver will indicate whether this will happen on the attempted delivery card.  Alternatively, your parcel may be left with a neighbour, returned to the local depot or taken to a local Post Office and again, our driver will note this on the card.

A redelivery can also be arranged by contacting us on 08448 004466 where one of our agents will be happy to help you.  May I request that this is done after you have received the attempted delivery card, as details from this are required to process the redelivery.

Alternatively, you can arrange a redelivery online at http://www.parcelforce.co.uk/ if this is more convenient for you.  A full list of redelivery options are available on our website.

I have listed below some further information regarding redeliveries which may be of assistance:

• For inland parcels, redelivery to an alternative address will incur an additional charge of £5.50.
• Redeliveries to a local Post Office will require a £1.00 payment to the Post Office Clerk. You must take 2 forms of ID with you when collecting your parcel and the attempted delivery card.  One form of ID must be photographic. We recommend that parcels left at the Post Office are collected the following day.
• Parcels subject to Customs Charges cannot be delivered to a Post Office.
• Parcels that are large, bulky or in excess of 15kg may be refused by the Post Office.
• Requests for Saturday redeliveries will incur a charge of £14.40 including VAT.

I trust that the above information has been of assistance to you.

If you require further assistance, please contact us at: parcelforce@parcelforce.co.uk

Our hours of business are Mon to Fri: 8am to 7pm, Sat: 8:30am to 5.30pm and Sun:  9am to 5pm.

Kind regards

Emma [redacted]

Parcelforce Worldwide 

Customer Service Email Team.

This email and any attachments are confidential and intended for the addressee only.  If you are not the named recipient, you must not use, disclose, reproduce or distribute the contents of this communication.  If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender and then delete this email from your system.

Parcelforce Worldwide is a trading name of Royal Mail Group plc.

Registered in England and Wales.  Registered number: 4138203.  Registered office at 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.

——— ORIGINAL MESSAGE ——-

FROM: james@[redacted]

TO: parcelforce@parcelforce.co.uk

SENT: 20 April 2011 14:37:15 (GMT Standard Time)

“PBWZ4783484001”,”“,”James Ogilvie”,”james@[redacted]”,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”“,”Item shows “insufficient address”. Please clarify and confirm exact address details shown on label?

Thanks,

James