Over the past few days we have been sorting out a holiday, sorting out a couple of investments and organising a few other matters and it has resulted in filling in forms by the bucketload.
That's not to mention all the telephone calls we have had to make and the number of things that went wrong trying to use the internet to do things.
We have virtually wasted days trying to sort various things out. There seems to be so many layers of bureaucracy to even the simplest matters that used to take up a few minutes and which can now take up hours.
And the levels of incompetence seem to be mind blowing. Take my other threequarters' attempts to take a signatory off one of the charities she is involved in. A simple matter you might think - take one person off who is moving from the village and add a replacement.
But no - a lengthy phone call ended with forms being sent via e-mails. They turned out to be the wrong forms and we only found that out after we had printed a lengthy document out. Then in the post came the same incorrect forms (talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing) In the end a simple matter that should have taken 20 minutes tops ended up taking hours.
Every time we need to do anything admin wise we end up having to fill in forms. This often involves passwords on the internet. These may work one day but not the next. Frustration sets in. It took me two hours to transfer some money from one account into another. That was over an hour on the phone receiving temporary passwords that wouldn't work. In the end the guy at the other end of the phone just transferred the money when he was happy that I was whom I said I was. Why he couldn't have done that in the first place goodness knows. I nicknamed him Password Pete.
And with the closure of banks, post officers etc it's all going to get worse. More and more transactions will have to be done on the phone and on the internet. I pride myself that I'm reasonably savvy when it comes to technology. Goodness knows what happens when people really struggle to do even the basics.
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Hello to my mate Jon Smith who is a keen reader of my blog. I met up and had lunch with Jon at Hethersett Queen's Head. It must be three or four years since we last got together. I worked closely with Jon when I was with the Police and it was good to catch up.
Time is a strange thing. You have to estimate when you last did something and then add on a couple of years to cover lockdown. I know Jon will be reading this and it's good to be able to give him a name check.
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Early evening we had our latest Friends of Hethersett Library meeting and talked about quite a few events that are being lined-up for the remainder of the year. These include talks, presentations, a quiz and children's Christmas party. I will let you know dates as soon as things are arranged.
One thing I learnt at the meeting and something I missed was a big police drugs raid in the village on March 2nd. As a result of the raid in Priory Road, a woman has been charged with numerous serious drugs offences. I came home and caught up with this piece of news on the official Norfolk Constabulary website and that reminded me of the days before websites were the norm.
The Force's first ever website was run in conjunction with Radio Broadland (who remembers them?) and I had the pleasure of organising that and also our first fully fledged website. Maybe I will talk about this some more in a future blog.
See you tomorrow.