I’ve learned to become reasonably patient with the customer service departments of assorted multinational corporations I invariably have to deal with from time to time. Having done similar jobs when I was a student, I know that a) the job is usually crap; and b) customers getting angry and giving grief doesn’t usually solve anything quickly. Usually it doesn’t take more than a couple of calls to sort the problem out and mobile phone providers, banks and even NTL got there eventually (only just with the last one, but they were always polite and reasonably helpful).

I am, however, rapidly running out of patience with British Gas. Their customer service ranks up their with the very worst.

The situation is thus. In my house we have a boiler. Said boiler has thrown a hissy fit whereby it will no longer provide hot water unless the whole heating system is on in the house - radiators, the lot. In hot weather this means the house becomes a sauna if you want to do something like, ooh, the washing up, or have a shower.

I have been living in a sauna for the past week.

This problem hadn’t passed us by and about a month ago I called out British Gas to do a combined safety check and fix the boiler. Unfortunately the man they sent out hadn’t been informed he was meant to fix the boiler and, after having a quick poke about, concluded there was something reasonably major wrong and would need the right tools and more time. He was very pleasant about it all though, and fitted a carbon monoxide detector, so we didn’t die. Which was nice.

From here my housemate took up the reigns and tried to arrange somebody to come back and fix the boiler. They didn’t turn up.

Housemate then rearranges an appointment. This time they turn up but at the wrong time, when nobody is in.

The boiler’s still not fixed by this stage, but we’re slowly getting a working sauna.

Housemate rings up for a third time. At this stage, he’s told they do evening visits. Which would have been nice to know beforehand so he didn’t have to take a couple of days off work to wait for Godot the gasman. But anyway, a third visit was duly arranged for last night.

No gasman. Not even a hint of a gasman.

At this point, housemate becomes frustrated and passes on the organisation to Housemate 2, least he utter unpleasant four letter words at the customer service bod at the other end of the phone.

Housemate 2 rings British Gas to arrange another evening or weekend appointment only to be told British Gas don’t do evening or weekend appointments.

Housemate 2 rings landlady to find a convenient time for her to ‘house sit’ the gasman.

Housemate 2 re-rings British Gas and is offered an evening or weekend appointment but with a day already agreed with the landlady, and with levels of Schrodinger-like doubt as to the existence of these evening or weekend appointments, duly passes on this offer.

So, we have the landlady popping over to our house on Friday waiting for a British Gas boiler fixer who may or may not turn up, or even exist, such is the existential nature of their service. I hope she’s impressed I strimmed the lawn last weekend

Fortunately our landlady has a service plan with British Gas, so we’ve not had to pay anything. But if I was her, I’d be somewhat miffed that I’m paying this money for somebody not to turn up. If I wanted to spend money on somebody doing that, I’d pay it direct to Kate Bush or some other reclusive celebrity.

It’s not the first time I’ve had problems with British Gas. When I tried to swop suppliers in a different house a few years ago, British Gas seemed to have a problem letting go of me and continued to bill me, despite another utility company also sending me bills. When this was pointed out to British Gas, their response was to send us letters with lots of red on it, warning us of dire consequences if we didn’t pay our bill.

So, I await Friday with baited breath, and whether or not my breath gets sufficiently baited on Friday, I’m going to suggest to the landlady to switch accounts to a company that actually knows what its doing and has employees that actually exist.

Largely because of work-related stuff plus sunshine, and other social activity (blogger has social life, shock horror).

Anyway, the sunshine seems to be receding, the football season is coming to an end, or will do for me after Exeter City’s trip to Wembley on Sunday, and my two major projects have blossomed to fruition.

Firstly, along with several others, I’ve been beavering away on this new little press centre for ITV. I’ll let my colleague Ben take it from here...

“As well as the freshest information on ITV programming and corporate news, there are new tools and functionality that includes video clips in an integrated media player, downloadable audio clips and RSS feeds for the latest press releases.

The ITV Press Centre is still aimed at journalists, but access is now available to all who want to be kept abreast of ITV content and developments. Those who are really keen to know the latest as it happens can follow ITV on Twitter where followers will receive the latest news as it happens plus titbits from show publicists.”

There’s still lots to be done on it but at least it is now live and largely working. Which is always a relief.

Then there’s the England Legends v Scotland Legends match tomorrow night at Southampton, which I was drafted onto a few weeks ago, and involved, among other things, catching up for a quick chin-wag with Peter Reid. Once the final whistle goes tomorrow I can relax a bit more than of late, starting with cheering Exeter onto League 2 (hopefully) at the weekend.

Ok, I’m still looking busy, but I should get time for more tea than of late, which will come as a relief to others in the office. I’m a firm believer in sharing the tea love, so if I’m having one, I’ll make one for you.

[If you want to return the favour, I have mine strong with a dash of milk. Or occasionally an Earl Grey, as it should be].

At Soccerlens on the sad demise of Halifax Town and Altrincham’s third reprieve.

Nope, I’m still not tiring of it yet. I’ve been really impressed with Catherine Tate considering nothing on earth would have compelled me to watch her sketch show, and I haven’t found myself longing for next week’s preview too many time so far. Last week’s episode wasn’t the best Who ever, but still pretty decent. I do feel in a bit of a minority though. Most places I read regularly seem to hate it.

Am I alone here?

Sometimes us PR people can cross the line a tad, especially when it comes to pestering journalists for this, that, and t’other. There’s nothing more irritating than having your personal peace and quiet disrupted by a rouge email to your inbox or a phone call to your personal mobile number. An old journalist colleague even had a marketing person ring their land line at all hours trying to push less-than-stellar interviews.

But a ‘cold’ email to the work account? That’s fair enough. I used to get plenty in my inbox when I was a reporter and every now and then a real unsolicited nugget of a press release would crop up. If the PR bod was repeatedly emailing me when it was clear I was the wrong person, they’d get pointed in the right direction.

Now, on the other side of the fence, if I can get to chat to the journalist that I’ve not had contact with before and give them a heads up, brilliant, but sometimes there’s just not the time and a ‘cold’ release has to do. And if I get a request not to email, or to send the release elsewhere, that’s not a problem.

But what to do with bloggers? I’m always of the opinion that if the blog is either good enough or influential enough then I’m happy to treat requests and releases in the same way I would any other journalist or reporter. After all, they’re getting the message out there, which is the key part.

Obviously this is within reason - if a national newspaper or broadcaster needed something, be it a response or clip, asap they’d probably get preference. But then if the blog wanted something quickly and the other requests could wait, they’d go to the top of my intray.

But how to make first contact [1]? Now there’s the rub. If I was rushing to get a release out and wanted to make sure it got to a blog I’d not worked with before then there’s a possibility I may send it to a personal email address by mistake, and incur said blogger’s wrath.

One reason some people I’ve met in both journalism and PR are a bit wary with bloggers is the reaction they may get when they make that first contact, or even second or third contact. If a journalist doesn’t like your release, chances are they’ll hit the delete button and have a few minutes of exchanging cutting remarks with colleagues before getting back to whatever they were doing.

Bloggers will occasionally take that one step further and take that tirade online. Sometimes this is justified if whatever they’ve been sent is utter garbage or completely crosses the line. Other times it can be unfair to the PR bod who’s put in a lot of work only to see it trashed.

Ok, this isn’t that common and a lot of blog editors are happy they’re finally being taken seriously as a medium, and from a personal point of view, it’s incredibly gratifying both from a journalist and PR perspective when your work does get picked up and discussed around the blogosphere. But getting it out there is always tricky.

At the end of the day, contact has to start somewhere and if it isn’t always obvious or clear where to go to, there’s always the risk of winding up in a personal inbox.

As a rule, if I’m contacting a blog for the first time, I’ll make it clear in the opening email that I’m happy to send material to a different address if I have picked up the wrong one by mistake. I’ll also ask them to email back if they don’t want releases full stop, or they do want releases just on topic x and not topic y, and so forth.

A little bit of dialogue can often go a long way, and it’s as much feedback for me as it is for anybody working predominantly online.

[1] So to speak. Bloggers and blog editors aren’t alien lifeforms, although some in the media would have you believe otherwise.

And I am. And I have been. And’s it’s been sunny outside. And lots of football. And then half my tooth fell off earlier while biting into a cheese baguette, and that was really rather painful, and the hole where the tooth was has now been filled and that took time (and money. Lots of it) as well.

In conclusion, this is why I have not been blogging much.

There is stuff to come, in the form of half a dozen poorly written and badly thought through drafts, which I bet you all can’t wait for.

Unless it stays sunny. Or my whole mouth falls off, or somebody tries to invade my street with uzi-wielding five-year-olds. In which case, I reserve the right not to blog much for a bit longer.

Wembley! Wembley! We’re the famous Exeter City and we’re going to Wembley!

Pics from cheggerspics.co.uk.

Alcohol from from pubs.

Hangover tomorrow: all my own doing.

Londonders, and the whole of England awoke this morning to the news Boris Johnson had been elected Mayor of the capital.

Depending on who you read, the floppy haired one will either offend every ethnic minority in the City within a month, encourage racism, destroy the environment, break public transport, and take the whole city down the swanny all because people elected him for a laugh. Or, on the other side, he’ll be a breath of fresh air to the courrupt, nepotistic anti-semtic Ken, who has broken our public transport system, lost control of crime, gives jobs to cronies and has became far too comfortable and power-hungry in the top job.

The reality is probably nowehere near either.

The best analysis today comes from Nosemonkey at EUtopia, and the subsequent comment from Doctor Vee. I could quote the whole piece, as it sums up exactly how I feel, but here’s just a taster:

“Boris Johnson is not some monster - by painting him as such when he blatantly is not is going to rub off badly on you, not him. Just as it rubbed off on Labour badly when they tried the same trick with Ken back in 2000. (That certainly helped push me towards voting for the guy…)

If the left/Labour can’t get over the snide remarks, personal attacks and class prejudice that seems to imbue every aspect of their relationship with the Conservative Party - and, ideally, come up with some practical left-wing policies rather than populist and ill-considered appeals to the middle-classes and big business - they are going to continue to slide in the polls to the point of embarrassing defeat.”

Despite his penchant for ill-timed comments and the buffoon persona, Boris Johnson is probably a lot more capable and intelligent than people give him credit for. Had I been living in London for last the election, I probably wouldn’t have voted for Ken but that doesn’t mean even he critics can’t acknowledge he make an averagely decent fist of running the capital, probably more so than other politicians. Johnson noted this last night, and there’s no reason to suppose he won’t do similar. After all, Ken was subjected to similar abuse when he first ran for Mayor.

From numerous conversations over the past week, the split between Ken and Boris seemed roughly along the lines of the vote last night and not once did somebody say they were voting for him as a laugh. To portray it as such belittles those who voted for either candidate.

Boris should be judged on how he performs on the job, not on his previous buffoonary or comments, many of which were taken out of context or, in the case of the Liverpool one, not even written by him. On that, Ken should be judged as doing a reasonable job. What I’m sure of is Boris Johnson is not London’s answer to George Bush but does have a lot of expectations upon his shoulders. I seriously doubt London will either change massively or go completely to pot, but neither do I expect him to be the political Messiah so many of his fervent supporters believe him to be.

As for the attacks from the left, some of which come from usually surprisingly sane sources, it does the party no favours, and reminds me exactly why I find politics these days so depressing. Invoking Thatcher is stupid as many of today’s voters have no real concept of life under her, and anyway the parties have moved on. If anything, Cameron is more of a heir to Blair than the Tory bogeyman. Portraying the Tories as some evil-eyed monster who’ll take the country to the dogs ignores the fact Labour have done exactly the same over the past eleven years.

I have no reason to suppose Cameron will be any improvement on the current lot and, if anything, he could be worse if Labour continue down their road of self destruction and hand the Consevatives a huge landslide come the next election. That would be possibly the worst thing that could happen to British politics - we saw what happened when Blair had two terms virtually unchecked.

While it’s nice to see Labour get a good kicking, and frankly they completely deserve it on current form, and the last round of elections have been interesting if not exactly inspiring, it leaves the landscape looking bleak. If Labour do battle back against the odds, it’ll be somewhat depressing. If the Tories get a landslide, it’ll be somewhat depressing. None of the other parties, least of all the Lib Dems, looks like making any headway.

If I’m gloomy today, it’s not because of who has been elected, but because of the signs for the future.

UD: Another good piece, this time Doctor Vee expanding on his thoughts from the comments on Nosemonkey’s blog. After weeks of just seeing Ken/Boris hysteria and yah-boo infantile politics, it’s been really refreshing to read two thoughtful, sensible analyses of Thursday.

UD2: Ian at the Devil’s Kitchen also notes the number of commentators who called a victory for Boris a sad day for democracy, thus completely misunderstanding the idea of how democracy works. Democracy isn’t a sham if your chosen candidate doesn’t get in, it just means the majority of those who voted didn’t want your candidate. Rather than crying and throwing your toys out of the the pram like a big baby, and hurling abuse at the victor, wouldn’t it be more constructive to put the same energy into analysing why your candidate was beaten and work towards it not happening again? As Rumbold at Pickled Politics says, a lot of commentators culd learn from Ken Livinstone’s dignified exit speech (as could those who opposed him).

Gawd, I’m probably nearer to the personal politics of some of these people, but their reactions are precisely why I hate associating myself with any kind of political movement.

Over here at Soccerlens.

And I’ve also now learnt Nick Hornby supports Cambridge as a second team. That’s what comes from not being a big fan of his writing and therefore never reading Fever Pitch.

Right up to the point I walked into the voting booth yesterday I still had naff all idea who to vote for in the London elections. I had my usual internal debate of whether to cast a vote or draw a huge cock across the ballot in protest before putting an X next to Paddick on the grounds he was the least shite of them all, not that I especially was enthusiastically supporting him to win.

As I type it looks like Boris is ahead and may well win, although it’ll probably come down to second preferences. I may be unusal insofar as I’m not verhemently anti-Ken or Boris, just distinctly underwhelmed by them both.

I’m no fan of the current incumbent, but think he’s done a decent job in several areas. I also think Boris is a lot more capable and intelligent than people give him credit for, and there’s a surprisingly large amount of stuff I’ve found myself agreeing with him on. I just don’t think he’d be suitable for London Mayor. But it’s just difficult to get enthusiasm.

And as for the local elections… to me it looks as much as people wanting to give Labour a darn good kicking rather than a big Cameron love-in, but I could be wrong. I usually am. Both parties look equally unappealing from where I’m sitting currently, and I really hate voting Lib Dem continually for the reasons I voted for Paddick - they may be a bit rubbish but aren’t as rubbish as the other parties.

Finally, a quick thought on the second preference in the London election. I’ve lost count of the number of articles or people I’ve heard saying the electorate don’t understand how it works? How? It’s perfectly simple. The first vote is for your favourite candidate (or least worst), the second vote for your second favourite candidate (or marginally more shite but not as shite as the rest). How is that complicated?

In my more misanthropic moments, I wonder if we shouldn’t just sod it all and install a dictator. Or emigrating. But then I’d probably get locked up under the former or be equally underwhelmed by the latter.

Better the political devil you know, I suppose.