And cue flounce

Oh how I long to be in France. The shit is still hitting the fan, ESSA-wise. I had a visit from the deputy head (finally! It’s only a month since it happened!) which was mainly prompted by my calling the papers. Amazing how quickly things move when the press are involved.

The deputy head, Sandy Reid, was mostly bothered about damage to the school reputation. She wasn’t bothered about me, my safety, my story, my losses. She was bothered about the good kids getting tarred with the same brush. Not that that’s true. The story will be page 7 or so, with a small little column. It’s local news in a local paper. It’s got a small readership of people who mostly are elderly. But at least it’s public. I don’t care about the phone or camera any more. I just want justice. And if that’s justice-by-media, so be it. In many ways, that’s way more damning than actual justice. I don’t agree with it. But if the law won’t help, then what’s the way forward? If the school don’t take some responsibility, fair enough, but it’s not a good sign. I don’t know why communications failed so badly. I do know the school didn’t contact me between the 8th and the 17th June. That’s not good enough for me. It’s a month since it happened and they were just dragging their feet even more.

It did make me realise I’m a total flouncer. I like to flounce out of jobs. I’ve flounced out of three so far. I didn’t use to flounce in my early life. I flounced out of a Topshop job on behalf of my sister. I can’t remember why, but it involved me going into Topshop in Bury and throwing a dress back at them and saying my sister wouldn’t be working there any more. I gave up each of my jobs with a little sadness: greengrocers, milk-rounds, kitchen jobs, waiting on, pub jobs. I even gave up my first teaching job with sadness. Not so much after that.

My second teaching post, when the deputy asked me if I was jealous of a newly qualified teacher, after a stand-up row for 4 hours, I laughed. I told her she’d have my notice on Monday. She did. I had a new job three weeks later.

I moved then to a council job. When the shit hit the fan with an incompetent old bitch who tutted publicly in meetings when I spoke, cornered me in empty offices to give me ‘a piece of her mind’ and called me ‘young lady’, we were offered mediation. I accepted. She refused. Wigan did nothing to enforce better behaviour, so they had my notice a week later. I had a job two weeks after that. I move quickly!

Finally, when the third school I was in did not support me during some scandalous gossip and name-calling, I walked. I really flounced. I stormed off, giving the head of education in the local council a massive sounding-off about judging me a cheat when he was the one shagging a maths consultant on a pool table a few months before. I did the whole ‘How dare you judge me!’ speech. I told the deputy off for having no backbone and told them they’d have my resignation. They did.

At that point, I decided to work for myself. Why not? I’m reliable, efficient, honest, hard-working and loyal. I have done okay. I could have done better, but then I haven’t really been bothered. Plus, I’ve had 3 years of shit hanging over me which I needed to deal with. I needed a bit of early retirement and life and priority-adjusting.

Then, the council and the country start getting shirty with me, so I’m off-ski. Cue massive flounce, as LJ sticks out her tongue, puts a thumb to nose to ridicule Bolton and does a great big raspberry.

J’en ai ras le bol #2

It seems some days are just sent to try your patience. This was one of them.

My debit card has been used for a fraudulent purchase. It was used to buy game credits at ijji – so it’s some techno-hacker who likes playing retarded on-line games. I never went to this site before today, but I’m not a happy bunny.

I’m not happy google checkout is so lax. I’m not using them again! They have no protocol (like paypal) to protect buyers, only sellers, so I can’t report a fraudulent transaction directly for them to sort out, like you can with paypal, or set it up as a dispute. I phoned my bank and cancelled my card, grudgingly, since it took them 6 weeks to replace the last card and I was without funds for that time. It’s embarrassing.

In February, when I reported my cards and cancelled them, they told me 3-4 working days. One arrived straight away. The other still hadn’t arrived 14 days later, so I called them and got put through to ‘collections’ *(though they had nothing to collect!)* who then transferred me to the usual number. They said it hadn’t been ordered and they’d place it on order.

2 weeks later, it still wasn’t here. I called again. Apparently it still hadn’t been ordered. They placed it on order. Apparently the branch hadn’t authorised it. Twats.

It arrived after that. I had to cry on the phone to get them to do it though. I had to say I’d been wearing the same clothes for a month, couldn’t afford to wash and couldn’t fill my car up. Truly, I couldn’t MOT or tax my car, or sort out my car insurance. I was without car insurance for 28 days because Directline said they needed a card number, as did every single one of the 17 companies I called. No setting up of direct debits without a card number to start with. And that isn’t a falsehood. If my car had been nicked, I’d have not got a penny.

I put in a complaint. The complaint came back after 3 days to say it hadn’t been upheld because they had no record of either calls when I’d called up and it had been diverted through collections, despite them saying phone calls may be recorded for training purposes etc.

Today, when I called, it went via collections yet again. I have nothing to collect. They are such a bunch of twats.

So… Lloyds TSB, big BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO to you. If I don’t get my card, I’ll be royally pissed off.

Organisations who have pissed me off today:

1. Google checkout

2. Ijji

3. LloydsTSB

Oh, and they can’t give me the money back until it’s been taken, and they can’t stop the transaction. What??! I got a full on lecture about how debit cards have a promise to the seller to protect them and guarantee they’ll receive payment, but this ijji must be complete retards. No-one has my CVV and if they’d tried to use Visa secure payments, they would have found they didn’t know my bank password. Even I didn’t know it. So how are they so lax that they don’t ask for the CVV??!

Paypal don’t get my vote of confidence either, since they were royally hacked back in March. They denied it, but in a forum I go in, there were at least 30 people saying the same thing. The same ‘seller’, the same amounts. If that is a small forum, I hate to think how many other accounts were breached.

And this wasn’t a problem from my computer – I’m safe, I hope. Ish.

I don’t trust the internet for money any more. I don’t trust the banks. I’m going to have a Post Office basic account, and that’s it. I’m going to have a La Poste account, and if I can get by with cash, that’s how I’m going. In fact, I can totally understand why gold is at the highest price it’s ever been. People don’t trust the banks, obviously!