Stopping Nuisance Calls

I recall many years ago how my Mother worried about telephone calls which she answered but where the person had rung off or didn't speak. Even then cold sales calls were common and a considerable irritation.  I think I disliked the people who made them to an irrational degree because they upset my Mother so much. She couldn't believe that sales people could be so thoughtless and so believed that they were trying to see if anyone was in the house so that they could burgle it. 

Until recently I received many such calls each day on my landline. I could have barred international and withheld calls but many of my legitimate calls are international and some friends have withheld numbers. 

Now I have solved the problem with one of the best gadgets that I have ever bought : the BT 8500 phone with Call Guardian which, for numbers not in your address book, enables you to hear who’s calling before you answer, and block those nuisance calls. As nuisance callers never leave a name and are often automated anyway they never even ring out. Brilliant.

On Giving Your Country a Bad Name

I don't know about anyone else but I judge people on who they are and I have no interest in where they come from insofar as judging them is concerned.  I was born and brought up in a city in England  where there seemed to be hardly any English people.  This was in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.  Almost everyone in Liverpool seemed to have come from somewhere else.  People were Liverpool Welsh; Liverpool Irish; Liverpool Scots; Liverpool West Indian; Liverpool West African; Liverpool Chinese  and so on.  I do not recall there being any Liverpool people from the Indian sub-continent when I was small because they seemed to live in the more central Lancashire towns.  It is rumoured that there were Liverpool English but I am not sure that I ever met any.

As for nationality I have always adhered to the fact that being born in a kennel does not make you a dog.

Which brings me a tiny bit nearer to the point of this post.....just a tiny bit nearer.

This afternoon I received a phone call from an 'Unavailable' number.  I did as I usually do and put the phone back in its cradle without saying anything as soon as I heard the familiar patter.  The phone rang again.  I did the same.  It rang a third time this time showing 'International' and then 0017324521133 and a very indignant voice wanted to know why I had hung up on him.  He was, after all, a technician from Windows who needed to help me.  I broke with my traditional silence and said words to the effect that I wasn't prepared to listen to a rogue, thief, charlatan, scammer and so on and did he really think I would stand having my intelligence insulted in such a way.  I quite surprised myself.  He hasn't rung back.  He probably thinks I was very rude and inconsiderate.

The voice was one typical to my ear of someone from the Indian sub-continent.  It did fleetingly make me think that people like him give people from his country a bad name.  Then I though about that loathsome (I accept that is a personal judgement based on hearsay because I've never met him) ex-city trader and professional politician Nigel Forage's comment about Rumanians.  I only know two and nicer, better educated, honest and more beautiful people you could not wish to meet.  They give people from their country a good name.  Then I thought about all the rogues and scoundrels from petty thieves to billionaire fraudsters from the UK (some of whom we have even managed to incarcerate away from society for a while).  And then I stopped thinking.  

After all, despite having lived the greater part of my life in Scotland and with no residential affinity now with England, I might shortly be classified as an alien and have to apply for residency or citizenship in what I consider to be my own country or, if Scotland joins the EU, be treated as a visiting resident from another EU country (just like an Italian or Rumanian or Pole or....the list is endless).  Just as all the persons born in Scotland and now permanently resident in other parts of the UK might be in a similar situation.