Of Bailiffs and The Force

Just a quick summary as I dont think I've gotten round to telling anyone this.

The previous tenants of this house apparantly left the country in June in quite a hurry. It turns out that they've got around £12,000 worth of debt to quite a few different companies: Barclary Card, O2, Orange, Capital One (aka Satan), British Gas, Birmingham City Council. Thats just a few of them.

Threatening letters and phone calls later, a postcard came last week addressed to the previous tenants, but as it was a postcard you could actually see what the contents were. Most of their "We demand money now, or we break legs" correspondance we've chucked back in the mail with Unknown at this Address on. This postcard stated one of the debt collecting agencies (we think theres five right now) will be coming round on the 7th between 8am and 8pm. Apparantly the previous tenants now have a CCJ against them. Sadly (seeing as I was looking forward to screaming "FUCK OFF" at them, showing passports and tenacy agreements and getting this whole lot sorted) they didn't turn up.

What amazes me is out of the dozens and dozens of "Pay now or else letters" that have appeared since October only one CCJ has been issued and we haven't had any bailiffs come round. Furthermore for Birmingham City Council, they've offered them a settlement which is half the original debt. Not to mention we pay fucking council tax, and they haven't noticed that the tax is being paid for this address, but by different people.

The letting agency has been trying to "sort this out". Obviously they haven't got very far. I feel with the amount of money we're paying per month for this house we should get better service off them, than the ass raping we're getting now

Being in alot of debt appears to be pretty cool. You get plea offers for half the amount, the bailiffs dont actually turn up, and when they do, as long as you say "No you cannot come in", they cant do jack shit. All the fear has been substantially over rated.

On a more cheery note I'm at the beginning of my "holiday" at work. I've only actually got two days worth, but thanks to ingenuity and a lucky couple of weekends I only have to work two days out of the next 10. And their short shifts too, so its only eight hours in total. So I've been keeping busy watching the original trilogy, playing Planetside and rediscovering an old Acorn flight sim, which rocks in a righteous fashion, through emulation.

I also get to stay up stupidly late and wake up stupidly late.

Finally, has anyone seen the pilot of American Dad? The new animated series from Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy)? Its interesting. Kinda Family Guy, with more political satire and not quite as funny. I'm amazed he's even doing this with the Second Coming of Family Guy in a few months time.

That makes me laugh, when it first aired it never had a fixed time or day, so the ratings were low and the network cancelled it. Then the DVD release came, and they realised it was worth alot of money. So for the first time in television history they resurrected a show based on consumer sales.