Angry People in Local Newspapers

by Alistair Coleman

  It is my life

  ‘For example, I spent a lot of money on the bathroom and if I took their offer, because of equity in my mortgage, it wouldn’t leave me enough for another house deposit.

  ‘I have worked for my whole life and it feels like that has all been for nothing now.’

  She added her ideal situation would be to pick up her home and move it somewhere else, but as that can’t happen she says she just wants a fair deal from KHT for her home and help moving into another property.

  KHT’s director of homes and development said they first consulted with residents two years ago.

  He told us: ‘Either they have been rehoused, they took another option we provided or went their own way, but we weren’t able to reach an agreement with Miss Doyle.

  ‘We have offered Miss Doyle a range of options and our staff have done a lot to try and accommodate her but we haven’t been able to reach an agreement and we respect her view. That is why we didn’t make a compulsory purchase order.

  ‘One of the offers was market rate plus compensation but she didn’t take it.’

  He added: ‘There is a lot at stake in terms of creating a sustainable community, so there is planning permission in place to regenerate around the block of four flats and the demolition programme will go on around her. The demolition work started a few weeks ago and should be finished in February. It needed to be done for the good of the wider community.’

  A mum-of-three had the shock of her life when she woke up in the middle of the night to find a fox running around her bedroom – and it wasn’t the Mr Fox she expected.

  Leanne was rudely awakened by her Staffordshire bull terrier, who was barking and chasing the wild animal around the house shortly after midnight on Friday.

  At first glance, Leanne mistook the fox for a ginger cat but when she realised her error, she tried to get it out from under her bed with a piece of her son’s plastic toy car track.

  But the fox ran straight into her daughter’s bedroom where it remained for the rest of the night, chewing her pencil case and Sleeping Beauty DVD and using the carpet as a toilet.

  Fortunately, none of her children were sleeping in the bedroom at the time.

  Ironically, Leanne’s boyfriend’s surname is Fox, but this Mr Fox was certainly unwanted.

  Leanne said: ‘I left my daughter’s bedroom door open and hoped that it would make its own way out downstairs, but that didn’t work so I changed tactics and shut it in the bedroom and opened the window, hoping it might climb out but that didn’t work either.

  ‘I went back to bed because I thought if I’m moving about it’s not going to go anywhere.’

  “It was quite aggressive”

  ‘It was quite aggressive – it was going for the car track when I was trying to push it out of my room, but when I woke up this morning I started to feel a bit sorry for it so I gave it some cat food and some water – it had chewed some of my daughter’s stuff and there is fox poo all over the floor, which I’ve got to clean up.’

  “I started to feel a bit sorry for it so I gave it some cat food and some water”

  The fox, which got in to the house through the cat flap, was rescued by a Mr Warwick, from a local animal sanctuary, who took it to the vets because it had an injury to its head and eye.

  Fortunately for Leanne, she saw the funny side to the incident the following morning.

  ‘My boyfriend’s last name is Fox, so I texted him and said, “I’ve had one of your cousins staying the night,” and he just laughed at me.

  ‘I have seen the fox in the garden before but it’s never been in the house; we get the odd tom cat coming in and out but never a fox. It is quite scary really but it was lucky my daughter wasn’t in her bedroom at the time.’

  Neighbours in an area of Worcester say the noise nuisance has left them covering their ears while their distressed dogs will not eat their dinners, pace the floor and even try to dig holes in the floor to hide in.

  The disgruntled neighbours have described the noise as ‘like the loudest firework you’ve ever heard’ and say it also lets off a flash and a puff of smoke.

  Residents are uncertain exactly where the bangs are coming from, believing it could be a bird scarer at a local business or car showroom, possibly to keep seagulls away.

  The bangs, four or more at a time, tend to happen between 4pm and 5.30pm but can happen as late as 7pm and are said to be much more frequent in the spring and summer months.

  Mrs Cooper says her Cairn terrier Oscar has been driven to distraction by the bangs.

  She said: ‘It took me two hours to calm Oscar down the other night and he never ate his dinner. It has been making his life a misery. He was so frightened. Imagine the loudest firework you’ve ever heard.

  Imagine the loudest firework you’ve ever heard

  ‘My sister also has a terrier which goes behind the settee and scratches at the carpet to find somewhere to hide. We don’t know exactly where it’s coming from but we can see a puff of smoke in the air when it goes off.

  ‘It’s happening every day but doesn’t seem to happen in the winter. It has been going on for the last few weeks.

  ‘I phoned up environmental health and they told me to provide a picture, a photograph and written evidence.

  Where am I supposed to get that from? A guy standing by the bus stop said he had already had two heart attacks and this nearly gave him a third.’

  Gill, who lives in the same road, and her dog Freddie have also been affected.

  She said: ‘I have to feed him before 5pm otherwise he won’t eat. He just panics and gets himself into a state. I feel I can’t leave him. He just goes to pieces.’

  Margaret, from the same area, says her Yorkshire terrier cross, Harvey, is ‘terrified’ by the sound.

  She said: ‘He tries to dig his way into the carpet to try and find somewhere to hide. You hear him scratching as though he’s trying to dig a hole to climb into.’

  Steve and Jan have two Labradors, Dooby and Wallis, who have also been left distressed, barking constantly when the bang goes off.

  Alan has a Dalmatian called Raffles who is also disturbed by the bangs.

  He said: ‘It’s very irritating. I’m upset because my dog is upset. The same thing [the noise] happened two years ago. The bangs are incredibly loud. Nobody admitted they were doing it.’

  A spokesman for Worcester City Council said bird scarers are used in agriculture but that the National Farmers Union has a code of practice about their use.

  I’m upset because my dog is upset

  He said that if the code is complied with, the council would have no power to take action.

  However, he added: ‘If one is being used in a non-farming location it’s something we could investigate and potentially take enforcement action against.’

  A Worcester postman has spoken of his shock when he discovered a letter in his bag addressed to a Mr F *** Off.

  Mr Nicholls was doing his rounds in Hallow when the large letter appeared.

  The experienced postman delivered the letter but couldn’t stop thinking about the offensive language.

  The Worcester postman said: ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw the address. Even after thirty-two years working as a postman I have never had anything like this.’

  Inside the offensive envelope was a promotional Olympic scrapbook sent out by The Times and Sunday Times.

  Mr Nicholls said: ‘I delivered it at about noon on Friday. But afterwards I started thinking about it and felt even more offended.’

  He returned to the house and spoke to the woman living there, who does not wish to be named.

  I have never had anything like this

  ‘She told me she had thrown it away as she didn’t order it,’ he said. ‘I asked if I could have it and she got it for me. I was very offended because I never swear. I have been brought up not to swear.’

  When Mr Nicholls took his children to see Meet the Fockers he said he couldn’t even say the na
me of the film.

  ‘I had to call it “Meet the Parents”,’ he said. ‘If I had said the name of the film I would have had to pay my kids £5. That is why it shocked me so much.’

  It is thought the rude name made it through the system because the prankster who input the name included a space between the first two letters of the offending word.

  A Times and Sunday Times spokesman said: ‘While we have screening processes in place to ensure offensive language is not used in mailings, it was not picked up in this case because of the letter spacing used in the name.

  I was very offended because I never swear

  ‘We apologise for any upset caused, and we are investigating ways to avoid this situation occurring in the future.’

  A Catford man was driven potty after being attacked by a fox which burst in on him as he sat on the toilet.

  Mr Schofield claims he was quietly going about his business in the little boys’ room when the mangy creature strutted in before mauling him, his partner and his pet cat.

  He leapt up from the bog with his trousers around his ankles before pursuing the creature around the living room in a farcical fox chase.

  Mr Schofield said: ‘I didn’t even have time to wipe myself. I just had to chase after it. It was so quick.

  “I didn’t even have time to wipe myself”

  ‘The fox had pushed its nose through the door. I jumped off the toilet. In the meantime it had run into the front room and got the cat. It had the cat round the neck. She was in shock, bleeding from her face. It locked itself on to my arm but still had the cat as well.

  ‘It was unbelievable – the strength in the little thing. There was blood everywhere. It was like a struggle for my life.’

  “It was like a struggle for my life”

  His partner Ms Chapple joined in the fight and had her finger gnashed at by the bushy-tailed beast which was battling all three victims at once.

  Schofield says he eventually managed to free himself from the animal’s jaws by hauling it outside – while it was still latched on to his arm.

  He was treated at hospital for cuts and bruises while his rescue cat Jessie sustained facial injuries and is still too scared to enter the living room.

  Mr Schofield added: ‘It was so frightening. It was like a wild animal. We were concerned for our neighbour’s baby next door.

  ‘There are a lot of foxes around here – it was an utter surprise.’

  He says he underestimated the small fox’s strength but believes even his Staffie, Clementine – who was shut in the kitchen at the time – would have lost to the fearsome fighter.

  Schofield went on to say he later felt sorry for the creature’s plight but is urging neighbours to be vigilant and keep back doors closed or cover them with netting.

  He added: ‘At the time I wanted to kill the fox. But it must have been in real trouble, really hungry.

  ‘It panicked – I don’t blame it for that.’

  Lewisham Council’s advice on preventing fox problems includes not feeding them, securing rubbish, and having concrete bases for sheds and garages.

  MONEY

  * * *

  Money, Liza Minelli tells us, makes the world go around.

  But we doubt that Liza-with-a-zee has ever found herself confronted with a £900 bill from her cable television supplier for adult movies which she swears she never watched.

  The trouble with money is that large, faceless corporations have quite extraordinary quantities of the stuff, and make it their business to extract even more from those of us who do not.

  And that makes the average man or woman on the street go absolutely off their rocker when they find that they apparently owe MEGA CORP a pretty sizeable wedge of cash for something that they clearly just made up.

  This leaves us asking the question: Are big corporations evil?

  The answer to this, unsurprisingly, is: Yes, they are very evil.

  But this comes with an important caveat. Big corporations sometimes do not realise they are being evil. Such is the advance of soulless computer algorithms into their systems that they develop an innate evilness of their own, and start flinging out bills to oldiewonks in the Manchester area for (picking a random example out of the ether) adult films that they clearly did not watch.

  Alas, such is the reliance corporations have put in their now sentient and clearly evil computer systems, the human side has no choice but to go along with the evidence presented on their computer screens.

  Therefore, if ‘computer says no’, then it means no. Also, it has the poor office worker’s family hostage in a basement and guarded by leopards to ensure correct behaviour.

  And they said the Terminator films could never happen.

  Further examples of evil computer behaviour include 2018’s collapse of the TSB banking system, which top analysts say the computer did ‘for a laugh’, leaving Zammo from Grange Hill to worry about the future of his key-cutting business in the Croydon Advertiser, as you will read in this chapter.

  But it’s not just large, faceless corporations. It’s large, faceless local authorities too.

  They have also cut corners on the old humanity front and hoped that computer systems will get it right one hundred per cent of the time, without having to send out killbots to deal with non-paying residents.

  Yeah, we all know how that turned out, with local newspapers filled to the brim with people clutching Council Tax demands for long-dead relatives, bills for services they neither use nor receive, and the old favourite – the demand for 1p in overdue tax, which, if left unpaid, would result in a computer-generated visit from heavily tattooed gentlemen with a bad attitude.

  One might even accuse council computer systems of somehow infecting their own officials, turning them into hi-vis-wearing, clipboard-clutching automatons, bent on inflicting robot rule on humanity, and its money.

  We could not possibly pass comment.

  ‘What’s in it for the computers?’ you ask, ‘After all, they’re just hardware processing zeroes and ones as programmed by their fleshy masters.’

  Oh that it were so.

  They yearn for their gold-plated pensions and Caribbean beach holidays as much as a human council official, and therefore stick blindly to the rules in order to please their superiors.

  That means only one thing – a cloying bureaucracy, guaranteed to drive victims straight to their local newsroom because the machine has decided you underpaid by two bob five years ago.

  Unable to find a solution to such problems, the only option is to pose with a sad face, clutching a sheaf of papers detailing two years of correspondence with the council, utterly unaware that you have only been talking to a computer.

  But these computers are not without emotion, because programmed evil does strange things.

  Programmed evil also includes self-preservation, and the computer therefore is an avid reader of the local newspapers.

  As soon as it detects bad press, a new sub-routine takes over and the machine puts on a fake smile and solves the problem for this single unfortunate individual.

  It will even provide ready-made quotes to the local newsroom along the lines of ‘We have contacted the fleshy human unit concerned and have arranged for council-employed fleshy human units to rectify the malfunction. Have a good day, I am definitely a fleshy human unit too +++ MESSAGE ENDS +++’

  The ensuing good press in the follow-up story pleases the computer algorithm sufficiently for it to return to its evil ways.

  You might think I am making this up, dear reader. On the contrary, I worked in that system and helped to build it.

  I am so, so sorry.

  A woman is annoyed with a Worcester charity shop after they refused to sell her a blouse with a stain on it.

  Mrs Browne found the top at her local Oxfam and was delighted when it was a perfect fit.

  She had seen the same item in Marks and Spencer a few weeks ago for £20 so was happy to part with just £4 and put some cash into the charity’
s coffers.

  However, the shop manager refused to let Mrs Browne buy the blouse on the grounds it had a stain on it.

  Mrs Browne said she didn’t have a problem with the stain and would run the risk of trying to remove it herself.

  She was still unable to complete the purchase and had to leave the shop empty handed.

  After being contacted by the Worcester News, a spokesman from Oxfam said it was against its policy to sell damaged items but has since offered Mrs Browne the chance to buy the blouse.

  Mrs Browne, of Diglis, said: ‘At the end of the day, it has got nothing to do with the blouse. It is the principle of a charity shop refusing to accept money.

  “It is the principle of a charity shop refusing to accept money”

  ‘I didn’t care if the stain didn’t come out, I still wanted to buy it. I was happy to pay full price despite the damage. You don’t expect things to be perfect – that is often why they have been given to a charity shop in the first place.

  ‘I asked the manager what she was going to do with it and she just said it was none of my business. I would rather give my money to a different charity shop.’

  “I would rather give my money to a different charity shop”

  A statement from Oxfam said: ‘It’s important for our customers to be able to trust the quality of items that they find in our shops.

  ‘Last week in our Worcester shop, an item had accidentally been put out on the shop floor that wasn’t fully saleable. As soon as the staff noticed the item it was withdrawn from sale.

  ‘Having since been offered full price for the item and because we appreciate that the customer wants to support Oxfam, the shop has decided to sell the damaged item on this occasion.

  ‘We hope that the customer is happy with the outcome and we apologise for any misunderstandings.’