Arggggghhhhh!

You may remember this post, in which I detailed my struggle with Citibank to straighten out my Citicard account, which we always pay in full, except that they sneakily changed the rules out from under me.

Well, yesterday I got the Citicard statement for last month, on which I expected to see my trip to the doctor in Shanghai, and a few miscellaneous other charges, maybe £200 in total.

The balance was almost £800! When I checked, they had not credited the cheque I sent last month for almost £600 for the full balance. I checked our bank account and, sure enough, the cheque had cleared and the funds taken from our bank account.

So I called Sh*ttybank, and got connected to their customer service person in India. He was Sunil, and Sunil seemed to have great difficulty in understanding what I was saying. I told him the problem, told him that my cheque had cleared, and Sunil kept saying, "There was a credit for £17.00 last month on the 14th." Well, it took about 5 minutes for me to get him to understand that I had sent a cheque, number XXX, which had cleared my bank account on the 3rd. He promised to look into it and get back to me within three working days.

So, this is the second problem within three months with this card account. Any more trouble and I'll be closing the account and, incidentally, looking for another bank in which to place my money and get a credit card from.

Worrying by-election results

For the UK-challenged, when an MP wishes to cease being an MP, there are two ways of doing it. The less popular way is to die. The more popular way is to become Steward or Deputy Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds or Steward or Deputy Steward of the Manor of Northstead in Yorkshire. These are ceremonial roles, under the appointment of the Chancellor, and under the rules, since they are offices of profit under the Crown, the MP loses his or her seat. The rule that an MP cannot just resign comes from the days when many men were elected MP who were unwilling to serve; had they been able to resign, they would not have had to serve. I wonder if this archaic law will be swept away by the constitutional reforms proposed by the Prime Minister.

Once a seat is vacant, there is what is called here a "by-election" to fill the vacancy. The former prime minister Tony Blair is the current holder of the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, and thus his Sedgefield seat in County Durham was filled in a by-election yesterday. Labour held the seat (with a reduced majority). However, the full results show something that no one else has remarked upon:

Sedgefield results:

Phil Wilson (Lab) 12,528 (44.77%, -14.11%)
Greg Stone (LD) 5,572 (19.91%, +8.02%)
Graham Robb (C) 4,082 (14.59%, +0.19%)
Andrew Spence (BNP) 2,494 (8.91%)
Paul Gittins (Ind) 1,885 (6.74%)
Toby Horton (UKIP) 536 (1.92%, +0.36%)
Chris Haine (Green) 348 (1.24%)
Stephen Gash (Eng Dem) 177 (0.63%)
Tim Grainger (Ch P) 177 (0.63%)
Alan "Howling Laud" Hope (Loony) 147 (0.53%, +0.15%)
Norman Scarth (Anti-Crime) 34 (0.12%)
Lab majority 6,956 (24.86%)
11.06% swing Lab to Lib Dems

The British National Party, a knee-jerk nationalist, anti-immigrant, rabblerousing party got nearly 9% of the vote. This in a constituency that hasn't returned anything other than a Labour MP for more than 30 years (if not more).

I don't know about you, but I'm worried about that.

A right-on movie review...

...and it's not of Harry Potter and the whatever-book-it-is-this-time-around. There's a movie which is now showing in the United States called I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. moroccomole (who wrote 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men) wrote a very insightful review (natch!). A must-read review for a don't-bother-to-see movie.