April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

Cell Phone Saga

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Whilst I dearly covet the iphones, blackberries and other techie, gadgety oh so cool cells the phones and the plans they require are sadly beyond my current means. In the interest of economy I therefore did a comparison on prepaid plans and phones. Virgin.ca seemed to come out the winner. And as I had already previously had a Virgin phone and was impressed with the customer service I choose to go Virgin again.

I looked up their site and chose the Samsung R610. A cute little slider phone with camera and MP3 player. While no smart phone it would be serviceable and the MP3 player would help drown out the embarrassingly TMI phone calls of fellow bus passengers.

I ordered online, paid up front for a month of service and waited for delivery. The phone arrived within a couple of days and then on the second day died. Apparently I had bought a goldfish.

I phoned customer service and was told that while they could send out a return box going to a kiosk would be much quicker and easier and they would be happy to help. Unfortunately they were not happy to help at all. Eventually a call was placed to Virgin and the person on the other end assured me I would have a return box in 3 days. Fine.

10 days later no box. Gentleman at the call centre promises rush order and agrees to put another month of time on the phone as this month is running down.

2 days later a phone call in response to an email. Management type. Promises box immediately. After many calls and many call centre people with no authority to do anything except commiserate I get a gem. She tracks down a box number with which I am able to get Purolator to confirm. Box arrives March 18th, fully a month after original delivery. I sent it back the same day. Finally on March 27th I received my replacement phone.

In the interim I had again sent an email and received this in response on Sat.

Thanks for writing in and sorry for the delayed reply!

I took a look into your account and saw that everything had been straightened out and a credit applied for the inconvenience. EXCELLENT!

Thank you for your patience and please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Have a great Sunday!

Cheers,

Rob,
VM Team

A credit applied for the inconvenience?! The credit was the month they put on to make up for the fact that my original paid for time was going to run out before the issue was solved which it in fact did. Not only that but they put my number back into the pool and suspended my account!!

All this time, effort and Purolator cost not to mention my soured view of Virgin.ca could have been avoided by simply allowing me to exchange the phone at a kiosk in the first place. Does Richard Branson still own Virgin Mobile? Wonder if he knows his company is so wasteful and the customer service so deplorable. I’d phone and let him know but he probably wouldn’t take my call.

Danger, Will Rogers! Danger!

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Lorne Gunter and the National Post issue this warning after diagnosing the issue behind the young and troubled “M.T.” counselling her boyfriend to commit murder.

You see it wasn’t a matter of low self esteem, feeling that her worth came from a mans’ attention, or simple psychological problems, no sir “M. T.” is a DIRECT result of the EVIL feminism.

So when you tell girls for four generations that they are weak and should demand the kind of power boys and men have, and when you — through the pill and abortion — signal to them that sex is nothing more than a consequence-free, pleasurable act and when, finally, you remove faith-based morality from the mix, too, you should not be surprised to wake up one morning and find that you have created an M.T.

WOW I’m surprised I’m not out on a killing spree right now! I like to have sex, like it very much. And I don’t even think I need to have another baby as a result. I figure I have the same rights and responsibilities as my male counterparts and I’m an atheist. Sheesh, the killer trifecta in Gunter’s book.

I also resent the implication in the piece that my husband, sons and male friends are nothing but amoral ticking time bombs waiting to go off at any second.

There’s one thing you can say about right wingers, they are consistent. Of course consistently wrong, but consistent.

“I will be heard – one way or another.”

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More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver’s mill hands and miners with a 17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill. Technology has moved on since then. And so from coast to coast, minister Kenney notwithstanding,

If you are enraged by this fascist action by the Canadian Government please join me in posting this video. Show Ottawa that the democracy of technology overrides their tyranny.

Catnip Kitties

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These are my kitties. These are my kitties on drugs 😀

I bought a catnip plant at the market. The cats were no where to be seen until I put the plant on the floor. They approached the plant commando style crawling up to it on their bellies and then attacking! My daughter filmed it with her cell phone so the quality isn’t ideal.

Bread & Roses Members & Readers

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As you may have noticed the board has been down for a while now. We moved hosting and some of the furniture, tables to be exact got lost along the way.

I am working with the technicians at Hostgator to try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. I appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvience.

The blogs, however are all up and running.

Big Tent Shouldn’t Only Be For Those That can Pitch One

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Grit insiders say the federal Liberals are unlikely to nominate one-third female candidates in the next election and that the new Liberal leader’s main focus is finding winnable candidates rather than focusing on gender.

Sen. Smith said the leader will retain the ability to appoint candidates, however he prefers “proactive encouragement” to get viable women to run.

“If you have an open nomination, which most of our nominations are, they’re level playing fields. Where you’re sometimes proactive is encouraging women to jump in and go for it, whereas without encouragement, some of them might not have. I think that’s a legitimate and totally bona fide thing to do, but once you’re in a race then it’s a level playing field,” said Sen. Smith.

A level playing field? Sen. Smith is either badly out of touch or deliberately falsifying the facts. A woman is much more likely to face obstacles in relation to family, finance and fairness. One only has to look at the way Hilary or Palin were treated to see that there is a very different aspect to the way media and politicos alike react to female politicians. There is much more emphasis on style, on aggressiveness [seen as a negative in women of course] and ability/experience. A green female politician is somehow seen as greener than a male politician.

A male candidate is much less likely to have to consider such things as childcare both for running and after a potential win. And a male politician is unlikely to be told to stick to his knitting or to go see a ‘doctor’ when forcefully pushing the opposition on bad policy.

While I agree with Ms. Hall Findlay on quotas, “Personally I’m not a fan of quotas,” Ms. Hall Findlay. “It’s difficult for me as a woman to say that because there are a whole lot of people who feel strongly about quotas, but my focus is on getting more women to run period. I don’t need a number to tell me that, and I don’t need a number to tell me we don’t have enough.” it is hardly a level playing field. Much more needs to be done to ensure that more women are able to and have the desire to enter the political arena.

h/t Challenging the Commonplace

Story Hill Times