Danskcolin: Saturday November 29th 2025 "Does new technology mean more curses than blessings? YOU decide!!!!!"

Yes, Friends, does new technology mean more curses than blessings in YOUR life? It's not all good, is it, to put it mildly!!!! Did you see this story in this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire - it's a real "doozy" !!!!

Poor Wickes !!!!! And poor Lovell !!!!!

But reading their sad story here this morning in lovely, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I give each other a bit of a sideways, lop-sided smile, as we carry on our own struggle with "the new technology" (!).

me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois - a recent picture

Well, we can be forgiven, can't we, given "our years" - 79 and counting! Even though we're both unquestionably "marvellous for our age" haha (!).

Our activities today, for me, are dominated by the start of a campaign by me to get HMRC (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs) to pay us back the excess stamp tax we paid them when we moved to our current home in Liphook, 11 months ago. We had to pay HMRC £27,000 extra - which is not exactly chickenfeed, to put it mildly! The reason for having to pay that extra, was that we were technically the "fat cat" owners of two houses, our old one in Malvern having not yet been sold - what madness, wasn't it !!!!

flashback to January: we move out of our old home in Malvern, Worcestershire (left),

and move into our new home in Liphook, Hampshire (right) - what a madness it all was !!!!

"But why the beef about 'new technology', Colin?", I hear you cry!

Well, seeing as how you're obviously 'gagging' to know (!), [Not me! - Ed], although we've finally sold our own home, and are now just a pair of 'thin cats' who only own one home, HMRC is apparently going to hang on to our £27,000 until we master the new methods of claiming it back online.

In other words, they're making us do all the hard work for them!!!!

a typical HMRC office - this one's in Telford: it wouldn't surprise

me if they can manage with just two members of staff (pictured)

seeing as how they now make the public do all the hard work !!!!

In the (good) old days, they'd have just sent us a form, which we would have filled in and posted back to them, and they would have checked all the details. Nowadays, you have scan QR codes, and try to get your smart phone to acquire a so-called "biometric image" of your face, or some-such nonsense, and then somehow 'link' your phone in to your so-called Government Gateway account on your computer, before you can even start to tell the Government's computers all the important stuff like name, new address, old address, how much stamp tax we paid, how much we want to claim back etc etc - all facts which they should know for themselves already!!!!

how to scan a QR code - what madness!!!!

How do really old people - like people in their, like, 80s (!) - ever manage to cope with all that 'malarkey'!!! It's utter utter utter utter madness, I tell you !!!!! I start work on it after breakfast and spend about 6 hours before finally succeeding, would you believe. Lois inspires me with her favourite phrase, "dogged as does it". The phrase, although I' personally had never heard of it before, was apparently first made popular by Victorian writer Anthony Trollope in his Barsetshire novels.

Enough said!

We normally take a shower and go to bed on Saturday afternoons, but today, to celebrate, we just "do the bed bit", filthy as we are! And we have a glass of red wine in the evening, which is nice too.

Cheers!!!!

It takes me 6 hours to put in our claim to HMRC, while their staff lounge around doing nothing (!), and it's all a bit weird, thinking about all the things I'd been trying and failing to do today, over and over again, e.g. to get my phone to accept a biometric image of my face, when it kept telling me that "the light isn't good enough, try again later", which was totally crazy.

It was weird because, finally, at around 1 pm, suddenly, yes, suddenly, everything starts to fall into place and roll my way. I finally manage to input my details. The HMRC computers say they've received my claim, and promise to get back to me "within 35 days" (!!!!), would you believe!!!! How's that for "speedy" haha!!!!

It's just a fancy, but I like to think it was my dear late sister Kathy, celebrating her 78th heavenly birthday today, who somehow called in a few favours, and finally fixed it for me. She'd have helped me if she could, I'm sure of that.

(left) one of my favourite photos of my dear late sister Kathy, who, with husband Steve,

had flown in from the States and taken our mother Nan back to the beaches of Glamorgan

where Nan had grown up, and (right) flashback to the 1920's: our mother Nan (foremost)

aged about 9, with her parents and 4 of her 8 siblings on that self-same Glamorgan beach

21:00 Lois and I, tired out by our stressful day, just want something relaxing to watch on TV tonight, and we pick another Channel 5 "royal family" programme.

Poor William, when he becomes king, will have to deal with the Uncle Andrew problem, finally removing him from the line of succession, but also the Prince Harry problem - a pity, because the lads were so close, growing up, as this joint media interview shows, from the time when they were both training to be helicopter pilots, with Harry ribbing William about his so-called "baldness" issues (!):

Here, Harry gallantly acknowledges William's superior brainpower, while touting his own more practical skills.