Charging me up - getting new phone batteries

My Nokia 6230 takes a small BL-5C battery. I've had it for a few years, so the battery doesn't take much of a charge any more. Getting a replacement has been a struggle, tho.

My first port of call was Amazon. Lots of those batteries there... until you discover that they're all practising a scam -- ask £4 a battery, and then £9 postage! Lots of stuff about 'genuine Nokia' batteries gives the impression of lots of counterfeits around, eh?

Anyhow, I order two: "Nokia Genuine Battery for 6230 Bl-5C Li-Ion Nokia Sealed product" - £8 each plus £8 P&P.

A day or so later, a tiny jiffy bag flops through the letter box. Posted first class letter post (cost less than 50p), it contains, loose, a single (1, not 2) BL-5C battery, not in any kind of wrapping at all, as if it had come straight out of the back of a phone. The P&P was clearly less than a pound. Back it went, and, to their credit, they made no fuss.

Bruised, I try ordering direct from Nokia online. They stock the batteries, but want a lot. Total order is £35! I order, sit, and wait. 8 days later, I look on their site, and it has not despatched. I email them and ask when it's available. No answer is received. Next day I telephone their customer service. I get an Indian who tells me that the order has been cancelled and that I should talk to my bank. As far as he is concerned that is the end of the matter. Considering the quantity of books I have bought over the last week, I know better. Nokia, it seems, don't care about customer service at all.

I'm not going back to Amazon. I want a reputable supplier. In the end I try an online advertiser again, Foneshop.com. I ordered two today, £23 including next day postage. Let's see what arrives...

Ipswich Hospital - robbing the sick?

I went to see my GP today, and he asked me to do a sample and drop it in to Ipswich NHS Hospital for analysis. I drove up there, parked... and found that they wanted £2.50 for the privilege. I was there around 10 minutes in total.

Petty officials can be very mean and very impudent when they think that they can get away with it. It's hard to imagine such a nasty tax on the sick -- worst, of course, for those poor souls who must go there regularly.

The moral of the story is that the NHS probably needs to be abolished. It's sad to say, but what can you do with so rotten an institution? It's not as if it is free for most of us. It costs £100bn a year; since there are around 25 million workers in the country, that means each worker pays around £4,000 a year for the health service in tax. Most of us probably get about £15 a year of value from it. You could get a pretty huge amount of care for that sum, privately.

I'd rather have a proper NHS. But at the moment, we pay...and pay, and pay ... for one which is cheapskate in every respect.

I noted today that Rose Gibb, who was 'chief executive' of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent, and was forced to leave after a dirty-hospital scandal, is sueing for 'compensation' (See The Great Simpleton: Rewarding failure goverenment style). In my opinion she deserves to hang. What can you say, however, about an institution that handsomely rewards greed, impudence and negligence, at the cost of our health and lives?