Available now!........or not

I remember a time many moons ago, waiting patiently for a ticketing website to go live with the sale of some tickets for an event my young son wanted to go to - I think it was some sort of wrestling event.  However, as soon as the tickets went live, they appeared to be sold out. Apparently it's quite a common scenario where a massively hyped event appears to sell out virtually immediately leaving genuine punters unable to get what they've been hoping for.

There are suggestions that large numbers of tickets get bought "up front" (how?) buy nefarious outs or other third parties who then sell them on (presumably at some additional profit). It's really frustrating for Joe Public, genuinely trying to buy a ticket for something.

More recently, I've experienced a similar issue in a different context. Tee times at my golf club have to be booked online, and until recently sue to COVID restrictions have been restricted to bookings up to 5 days in advance for 2 balls only (two players), rather than the usual 4 ball limit. Understandably this has put some pressure on the booking system. So at 10pm (when booking opens for the fifth day in advance) several hundred people are sat at their phone/tablet/computer waiting for booking to open to get a tee time. Several times I've sat watching the booking page refresh to open, only to see all tee times immediately booked as soon as the page refreshes. I've got fibre broadband, so my internet connection is excellent. But it's clearly not fast enough because pretty much very tee time is gone my the time the page has refreshed. 

At least the change to 4 balls from 26 May may ease the pressure somewhat, but I just don't understand how it happens. Is there some sort of secret early password trick?

And then today, Cardiff City released an retro shirt (see below) - much sought after and plenty of forward comms about this. The club's Twitter account announced in a tweet at 10am "It's Back", but by 10.03 when I had it in my basket and went to pay it had "sold out a few moments ago". Judging by the comments that were underneath that tweet I wasn't the only one unable to purchase.

This is either really bad luck on my (and others) part, a crap internet connection (no) or more likely ridiculously poor planning by Cardiff City in terms of their anticipated demand for this shirt. I suspect the latter, although whether it was just crap stock planning or an intentional let's keep numbers low and interest high is another matter (cynical me).

The point of this post I suppose, is that despite the wonderful technology we have at our disposal these days, a combination of poor marketing approach, poor availability and possibly poor systems continues to create frustration for customers willing and ready to part with cash.

How much do you trust politicians? Not as far as I could throw one

I’m getting on in years. Whilst not eligible to vote in those day, I can vaguely recall the premierships of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. 

Thinking back, I’ve never really trusted politicians of any colour. My early casting of electoral votes was based entirely on my parents political persuasions, and I stuck with that approach for years.

Mind you, back in the day the choice was much starker. Red or Blue. Labour or Conservative/Tory. There wasn’t much in the way of any viable alternative in rural and generally conservative Lincolnshire where I spent my formative years. 

As I’ve aged I’ve become more and more cynical of politicians of all colours. Broken promises and lies (£350m a week to the NHS anyone?), taxes, service cuts, expenses scandals, financial meltdown, the seemingly incapable ability to address “real” issues like a struggling NHS, low pay for certain sectors of society and so on.

There are countless examples why I wouldn’t trust a politician as far as I could throw them.

And now we have the Conservatives in a pandemic.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t wish the governance of the country on anyone during what we’ve experienced over the last year or so, and in the early days I was generally sympathetic towards the pressure the government was under - especially Matt Hancock and the fresh out of the box Chancellor  Rishi Sunak (although that was before I realised the latter was a multi millionaire in his own right)!

But as the pandemic has worn on, irrespective of the right or wrong basic decisions around lockdowns, whether to wear masks or not etc, the continuing exposure of contracts for mates and family members has staggered most people. 

How can any of these politicians look someone in the eye, and say it’s ok that I’ve benefited financially from awarding a contract to someone with whom I have a direct association?

When I was working, I officially couldn’t accept a “gift” in any form worth more than £25 or I’d have been disciplined at best, and sacked at worst. And we are actively encouraged not to accept ANYTHING, let alone something worth a humongous £25.

And it’s not just current politicians. David Cameron, former PM is now in the news for lobbying the Chancellor for a mate. Any yet no one really holds anyone to account. The Government has just won a vote not to investigate these, ahem, ‘alleged’ misdemenours, and unsurprisingly, it wasn’t just Tories who voted in this way. Talk about turkeys not voting for Christmas!

But it also seems that the mainstream media is inept in really pushing this and holding politicians to account. If this was any other country, we’d be seeing stories of corrupt government yet here it’s brushed under the carpet, and sideline news. 

At the end of the day, whilst it’s the Tories in power in Westminster now, and Labour here in the Senedd in Wales, I’m not sure I trust any of them to be truly open, transparent and honest to the electorate. If I could find a political party who could claim, but more importantly honour that, they may well get my vote. Instead, I’ll probably end up casting my ballot to the least worst option.