Utility Bill Direct Debit Madness

Utility bill direct debit madness hits us around the start of the summer. We are asked to assess the value of the direct debits that we are paying to our power supplier. We are told that, over the past few months, our energy requirements have increased, so we are forced to have an increased in the direct debits.

The reason for this utility bill direct debit madness is quite clear. The bill is assessed in the winter months, when our energy levels are highest, because that is when we are battling against the cold weather. however, the new direct debits come into force in the summer months, when our energy requirements are at their lowest. So we are paying more for when we use less. And we are paying less for when we use more.

Does this sound like good sense to you? Even the most basic laws of market economics show that such a situation is more than a little bit crazy. What do you think?

Speedy Secured Loans

Speedy secured loans are in demand. We all want the red tape and paperwork to be kept to a minimum, so the need for speed is at a premium. We all want a speedy secured loan; we don't want a loan to drag on in the application or processing stage.

I've found that it's best going to a smallish broker for a speedy secured loan. If your credit rating is not great, or if you've been turned down by the bank, a friend of mine has had dealings with this independent brokerage and says that he's very good at providing a speedy secured loan service.

Here's a general list of speedy secured loans available.

Speedy secured loans should be just that; speedy and fast. If you have any feedback on the services offered by any of the above (including any criticisms) then please get back to me by leaving a comment. Thanks.

Trading Standards Offices are Useless

Trading standards offices are useless. That's my conclusion as I finished speaking to a local office in Harrow after reporting an obvious scam to them. The scam in question, an outfit calling themselves MoreThan Traffic, set up a website which promised unlikely amounts of web traffic to your website. All they wanted was 15% of what YOU earned after 6 months, and they wouldn't take a penny from you upfront.

But, er, they did want about £100 from you upfront for setting it up.

I phoned up Haroow Trading Standards, which is close to where the scamsters'offices were in Station Road, but trading standards offices are useless, and true to form they said that they could do nothing about it. They advised me that until lots of people complained about them they could not act.

Isn't it about time we did away with the Trading Standards system in the UK completely? We sould get in place something like the Federal Trade Commission in the US. The FTC has real teeth, and has powers similar to the police. Or perhaps trading standards offices are useless because the government don't actually mind these scams operating as long as they pay their taxes into Treasury coffers.

Recruitment for Technical Author

Recruitment for technical author is another wicked experiment of mine concerning the accuracies of Overture's reporting facilities. Apparently about two and a half thousand searches were performed last month using that term. Technical authors are clearly in demand.

Recruitment for technical author is one of a number of puzzling things about OV, as we call her in the tirade (yes, tirade).


The fact that we have recruitment for technical author as a search term would indicate that it is in high demand. There are only two results for the exact term recruitment for technical author in the whole of Goog. UK.

en.wikipedia.org recruitment site

A bit of an experiment here. The entry for en.wikipedia.org recruitment site has shown over 14,000 searches on the Overture database last month. I don't believe this. Now, I'm not Overture-bashing, but regular readers of this blog will know that I am absolutely fair in my dealings with everyone and everything. Recruitment consultants and recruitment agencies are presumably very much in vogue at the moment.

It's just that I don't think that that number of people have physically typed in en.wikipedia.org recruitment site into a search box. Anywhere. Also these are just UK figures. Are we to assume that a greater number have typed this in as far as the whole world is concerned. Recruitment consultants and recruitment agencies are obviously very popular.

I think not. I'll be looking at my stats with interest. If indeed en.wikipedia.org recruitment site is a popular request than I'll be getting lots of adsense clicks, won't I? Recruitment consultants and recruitment agencies are the dish of the day. Or possibly the month.