Lost Doctor Who episode returned to iPlayer

A cardboard box found in a collector's "ramshackle" collection of vintage films contained an episodes of Doctor Who that have not been viewed since being removed from iPlayer in the 2020s.

The episodes feature the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, played by Matt Smith trapped in a 1980s hotel where the corridors change as fast as people's ethical values and people's worst fears hide behind locked doors.

Arthur Davrill, who played the Doctor's assistant Rory Williams, was invited to the Phoenix Cinema in Leicester on Wednesday under false pretences to view the two episodes.  A restored version of the episode will be released on BBC iPlayer this Easter.

Disks were found in a cardboard box as part of an "eclectic" collection of thousands of old digital versatile disks in an old man's home.

So how did they become the first lost Doctor Who episodes to be announced to the world since 2026?

The work of Leicester charitable trust DVD is Fabulous! (DIF) is behind what had become the longest gap between lost episodes being uncovered coming to an end.

Many previous lost episodes had been found in archives of TV stations overseas, including the last episodes found, which had been recovered from a Nigerian TV station.  But with The God Complex, the story was not sold to the general public before being removed from iPlayer.  Censors in the United Kingdom deemed it too likely to contain a cancelled person and without their buy-in, keeping it on iPlayer was profitable but not regarded at the time as ethical.  Combined with the move towards cancel culture, the colour story was thought to have little future value and consigned to the bin.

But copies of some episodes were still made by BBC Enterprises to check for problems which might need to be fixed ahead of pitching the episodes to fans on DVDs.  It was these versions that made their way to an amateur collection.

Professor of cinema and television history at Leicester's De Montfort University, Justin Smith - chair of trustees at FIF - said "a debt of gratitude" was owed to the anonymous late collector, whose DVDs - largely focused on his love of trains and canals, including hundreds of home videos - were donated to DIF after he died.

Prof Justin Smith said the find was "stuff".

He said: "We travel all over the country to recover DVD collections from private hands.  A lot of the boxes had suffered water damage and the cardboard covers had corroded. This run if the mull episode was in what was an eclectic and ramshackle collection, a lot of which hadn't been looked after as well as the Doctor Who had.  The collector did recognise what he had, but how he acquired them has been lost to time. It is believed he bought the episode in a shop."

True Romance

I watched True Romance the other day largely because it was there on Netflix.  A few things I didn't realise until now... Originally the script had a non-linear narrative and an unhappy ending but the director reordered narrative to a more conventional linear one and didn't want to kill off Slater & Arquette's characters so changed the ending.  I think this was a mistake as it kind of makes the film celebrate their amorality in a way that I don't think was intentional.  In Tarantino's films some characters get happy endings and some don't but we're not really encouraged to idolise any of them ... Apart from perhaps Natural Born Killers and that's satire ... Well, obviously the title of the film suggests that we are supposed to root for Slater but it's also a joke ... is selling a suitcase of cocaine to a film producer really that romantic?  Gary Oldman's wigga pimp villain is an interesting phenomenon of it's time.  Samuel L Jackson is in it for all of 5 minutes as are many other Tarantino alumni such as Chris Penn...  But what I didn't see before because I hardly knew who he was then was James Gandolfini's excellent performance as the heavy trying to get the drugs back.  I mean, I saw it but I didn't appreciate it.  The mixture of super polite and psychopathic rages in this film is apparently what won him the role of Tony Soprano.  The violent sequences between him and Arquette are truly scary as being the physically weaker one Arquette's character fights back by using everyday household items as weapons from a toilet cistern lid to a corkscrew.  I wondered if this was inspired by the scissors scene in Dial M for Murder.

The film just about broke even perhaps because many of the characters are unlikable.  For example Saul Rubinek turns in an excellent performance as the kind of oleaginous character he excels at but... he's not kind of the person you'd want to hang out with.  Brad Pitt is amusing as the comic relief.  It's a good ensemble cast but whilst the film comes together it never quite catches alight ... I also started to wonder if the success of Tarantino's revenge fuelled formula had an unintentional political dimension in that it represented a turn towards a darker view of the world an idea that society wasn't working for a lot of people as the economy got worse...  Though True Romance is a fantasy it seems to suggest that it's very hard for ordinary people to make it without living outside the bounds of a society where although it pretends to be fair the cards are stacked against them.  That may be reading too much into it...  

The love of Kung Fu movies portends Kill Bill.  I think it'd be funnier if the central character wasn't played by someone as good looking as Christian Slater.  It's hard to buy into him as a geek sometimes but I appreciate the comic book stuff in a way I didn't before.... after all the whole thing is a comic adventure.  There's some fun satire of the Hollywood entertainment industry too with the ten seconds audition that somehow leads to a role presumably as a by-product of the drugs deal.  William Shatner being an unseen character is amusing too ... 

Trump's Deputy Parachutes into Glasgow

The following statement was issued from 10 Downing Street just before midnight - "James David Vance, the Vice President of the United States and Deputy Leader of the Repbulican Maga Party has landed in Scotland in these circumstances.  "On the night of the 4th of November a VH-92A Patriot was reported by our patrols to have crossed the coast of Scotland and be flying in the direction of Glasgow.  Since a VH-92A Patriot  would not have the fuel to return to Washington the report was disbelieved.  

Later on a VH-92A Patriot crashed near Glasgow with its guns unloaded.  Shortly afterwards and American deputy to the Commander in Chief who had bailed out was found with his parachute in the neighbourhood suffering a broken ego.  He was taken to hospital where he gave his surname as Vance even though it is Bowman but later declared his name was James David Vance.  He brought with him various screenshots of his tweets on X to prove his identity".  

Since before this statement was issued the US Government mystified the world with the following extraordinary statement by the Vice President:  "We lost the election because of the war.  I blame my boss and I have run away with my tail beneath my legs in hope that I'll only end up in Spandau rather than being hung.  It's a peace mission."

Look what the cat dragged in...

Mr Brand as photographed
by By Gage Skidmore 

As the Russell Brand trial reaches it's conclusion I have heard a number of people arguing that women only came forward because of his fame and that he is a victim of some kind of recent media witch hunt.  But strange rumours have surrounded Brand for much longer.  I keep thinking of the incident that took place at the 2006 Fringe Festival which resulted in Trevor Lock being charged with rape.  

A lady went back to Brand's flat after his show at the Assembly Rooms but didn't remember anything that happened.  What she did know was that when she woke up she thought she had been raped.  But who by?  Trevor Lock was arrested by Lothian and Borders police and soon the Chortle Forums which were then the PHP place to get gigs in the UK were filled with people saying that Lock could not be the rapist.  This seemed odd to me as how would you know?  I mean, he seemed perfectly normal and polite to me and one of those people who deal in whimsical surrealism... but how would I know what he is capable of?  I only know what I've seen on stage and what I have gleaned from very casual and very brief encounters.  

To be fair I have actually spoken to Trevor Lock but I'd hardly make a convincing character witness.  Although I've probably been in the same room as Mr Brand I don't think I've ever spoken to him.  He was ... let's say ...busy ... and I had no desire to.  As I didn't know anything and still don't know anything I didn't say anything about the Lock incident but I have decided today nearly 20 years later to say that I do think it is foolish the way mostly men rush to the defence of other men in this situation.  And that's  all I have to say.  

Not that I'm an ardent feminist or anything.  Last time someone accused someone of rape at one of my workplaces I thought it best not to get involved in any way.  How could I help either of the parties?  Best to shut your cakehole and let plod do their job.  If I wanted to deal with all the dirty work in society I'd have become...  Anyway what do I know?  Nothing.  So what can I do?  Nothing.  I mean, even writing this 20 years later I'm doubtful of the utility of going down this dark cul-de-sac... besides which doing and saying nothing suits my natural character - that of a coward.

As it was the Procurator Fiscal could not make a case stand up against Lock or anyone else.  I would say he was aquitted but there wasn't even enough evidence to mount a trial and so the case quietly died. 

 Never-the-less the lady in question who was a teenager clearly thought something untoward had happened to her or why would she have gone to the police and undergone the humiliation of a physical examination for forensic evidence?  A contemporaneous report can be found here where the Star Newspaper seems to make light of these somewhat shocking goings on and refers to Mr Brand as a "legendary swordsman".  And they say romance is dead...

All of this is old gossip but there does seem to me to be a lot of old gossip ... and there's plenty more where that came from.... what about the time in 2012 when Brand was admonished by Billy Connolly for sexually harassing a wardrobe assistant by refusing to shoot unless she removed her top?  Then there was extra who claimed sexual assult on the set of the film Arthur?  Whether such allegations are prosecutable I could not say but the idea currently being mooted that these kind of allegations have only just surfaced is a load of old nonsense.  

There was always a dark cloud and that is probably why Brand's film career fizzled out.  He became a risk no one wanted to take.  And thus he ended up largely on social media.  First producing a left wing podcast with Johann Hari who was then looking to rehabilitate himself after a small cloud of plagerism allegations had gathered over him and later pallying up with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.- his views seeming to change as quickly as his funding streams...

Even if he is innocent one struggles to find anything in Mr Brand's behaviour to like...

May the Force be without you

Somebody asked me recently why I'm still on "that hate site" X/Twitter the other day.  A whole website full of people with vociferously expressed ill informed opinions who are obviously wrong about almost everything to argue with? I'm like a pig in shit.  My particular favourites are the fans of various film and TV franchises that seem to live their life in a state of apoplectic rage at how shit they are.  Well stop buying tickets then?

Recently twitter has assiduously informed me that the Star Wars prequels are shit.  Well, maybe but Star Wars Episode 1 took $1,000,000,000 at the box office so it must have done something right.  I did see it at the time.  I think I even enjoyed it at the time.  I haven't felt the need to see it since.  I couldn't remember much of the plot.  I do remember some corny dialogue and lots of politics and plotting and political shenanigans which to this day I still don't comprehend.  And of course the Jar Jar Binks CGI controversy.  

To me Star Wars is for children.  The originals were a long time ago in a far away galaxy.  The prequels are really a very very long time ago in a far away galaxy.  They're really fantasy in a science fiction costume.  The whole thing of celibate monks fighting each other with strobe lights seemed faintly ridiculous.  But the anger they seem to produce sometimes makes me want to see them again.  And then it doesn't.  Someone said something weird about them being benchmarks of American culture.  Well, maybe that's why I don't want to watch them .... the weird reverence around them... No doubt due to their peculiar religious undertones.  

I mean I have tried.  I watched the first of the sequels but after that I didn't keep up.  It was okay.  But the way people go on you'd think this is all there was to American culture.  Or indeed culture in general.  Or film in general.  I think I tried watching a bit of Rogue One once but switched off after 10 minutes.  Mainly because it was on Netflix....  Perhaps the reason I'm not watching them is these are things that are not repeated on the telly.  Whilst James Bond is often on you won't see Star Wars on Freeview.  

The thing is there are so many other films to see and watch and discuss.  It bothers me that the conversations are always stuck upon this.  People talk today about franchises but there really were not any when I was a child.  Sometimes you'd get a run of three films like Star Wars or Indiana Jones or the Dollars Trilogy but then they'd stop because.... They'd run out of ideas.  But now the cash cow has to be milked forever.  It's like a form of intensive farming.  Of course there was James Bond but they were kind of working their way through the books to an extent... And the Carry Ons?  But they were parody...

Researching this without the strain of actually watching a Star Wars film again I was saddened to discover that young Jake Lloyd's adult life has been plagued with schizophrenia and many of the dreadful consequences that come with that disease.  He would seem to have literally travelled to the dark side.  Which makes the above poster seem quite an upsetting portent of doom... what a tragedy.  Lost innocence indeed.

IMF says you'll never have it so good!

The International Monetary Fund today said not to worry about your financial future as Britain is about to enter a new golden age of prosperity.  Over the next decade Britain will become a land of milk and honey with so much spare cash that parks and public spaces will come to resemble the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Wages will rise exponentially whilst property prices will fall allowing everyone to own their own home.  Meanwhile the AI revolution will mean boring repetitive and dull work will be replaced by everyone being re-employed in the performing arts.  All mathematical theorems will be solved and mathematicians will be redeployed as philosophers.  At the same time money as we know it will disappear to be replaced by one long Blockchain algorithm that will just get longer and longer.  Unemployment will end and no one will have to work.  Taxes will go down if not dissapear as no one will have any debt anymore.  Public services meanwhile will have more money than they know what to do with with three social workers to every person.  Meanwhile healthcare improvements will result in everyone living to at least 120 if not achieving eternal life.  

"At the IMF we have a reputation as the voice of financial doom," said a spokesman.  "But I'm here to tell you that all the world's financial problems have now been solved meaning we are now the good luck fairy.  The next ten years are going to be fantastic.  Expect an unprecedented financial boom of the kind that will make the 1920s look like the 1930s.  You will have never have had it so good!"

 

Lumberjack Song 2026

 I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay

AI won't take my job away

   

Mounties : He's a lumberjack, and he's okay.

AI won't take his job away

   

I cut down trees. I eat my lunch.

I go to the lavatory.

On Wednesdays I train LLMs

To replace humanity 

   

Mounties: He cuts down trees. He eats his lunch.

He goes to the lavatory.

On Wednesdays he trains LLMs

To replace humanity

  

Chorus: I'm (He's) a lumberjack, and I'm (he's) okay.

I (He) moonlights all night and I (he) work(s) all day.

   

I cut down trees. I skip and jump.

I like to write rubrics.

I solve PHD problems 

To end Professorships

  

Mounties: He cuts down trees. He skips and jumps.

He likes to write rubrics.

He solves PHD problems 

To end Professorships

Chorus: I'm (He's) a lumberjack, and I'm (he's) okay.

I (He) moonlights at night and I (he) work(s) all day.

   

I cut down trees. I train AI,

I do not know who for

It might be the for the Pentagon 

preparing for world war

Mounties: He cuts down trees. trains AI,

He does not know what for?!

   

Chorus: I'm (He's) a lumberjack, and I'm (he's) okay.

I (He) moonlights at night and I (he) work(s) all day.

 

Yes, I'm (He's) a lumberjack, and I'm (he's) ok-a-y.

I (He) moonlights at night and I (he) work(s) all day.

   

Not APPy with charging my electric car...

Both keys at the Same Time?!?

So having availed myself of an electric car I find I am not hAPPy charging it.  Not because of the time it takes but because of the multiple charging networks that all have different ways to pay and a myriad of different APPs to download.  Paying by these APPs then involves using a credit or debit card that you need to load into the APP.  But of course in order to then authorise the transaction one must leave that APP and go into the Bank's APP to authorise... this done one returns to the charger network's APP to find it has lost it's place and defaulted to the start of the authorisation process.  One then repeats the Bank authorisation step again and gets back to the same problem of leaving the charger application APP blanking all the data in it.  The problem is that to do two factor verification you're usually supposed to have two machines but as I'm on the road I only have one machine that cannot run two APPs simultaneously.  Like Gus Gorman in Superman III then I find myself flailing about trying to do the equivalent of turning both keys at the same time.  How prophetic this was of the nightmare of two factor verification whereby instead of dreaming up ever more algorithmically complex security IT companies decided instead to force us to instead battle with two keys or devices usually at the same time which is especially difficult when you only have one and when you close one APP to open the other APP the first APP loses all its data and then you have to repeat this step over and over and over and over and over and over again in the dark with a poor pubic mobile phone data connection that also causes the process to crash so you have to start over and over and over and over again... Both keys at the Same Time?!?

The First Letter of Dot Cotton to the Zionists

 

As a Christian it's always good to see a lot of people quoting from the Good Book.  The Good News that the Lord gave us in the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles should be proclaimed far and wide.

However, reading interpretations of the good book on my X/twitter feed I feel that certain misunderstandings about the nature of the scriptures have recently caused a lack of ecumenical understanding.

One common mistake emanates from various Israeli accounts that state that Christianity must encompass Judeism and that because Our Lord is Jewish all Jewish Commandments must be respected equally to Christian ones.  As Father Jack would say that would be an ecumenical matter but as far as I understand it there is nothing adjacent to Christianity in terms of alternative faiths.  Christ says explicitly "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." — John 14:6 suggesting there is only one route (his) to redemption.  It is true that in Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus explains that "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" but much of what was Mosaic Law was in effect abandoned by Christianity as not important when Christianity officially split from Judeism at the Council of Jerusalem (48-50AD) in Acts 15.  This came about because dietary laws and rules around circumcision started to come in the way of the primary goal of Christianity that is spreading the Good News that Christ the saviour died and rose from the dead to save everyone's souls.

A common misconception then is that because Christianity and Judeism contain a shared heritage (so does Islam as an Abrahamic religion but let's skip that) then Christians are bound by the Old Testament/Torah to support Israel and Zionism.  This is a profound misreading of the New Testament however which states in several places that Christianity has nothing to do with temporal power structures.  The most notable example of this would be John 18:36 where Jesus explains "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”  That is to say the primary function of Christianity is the prepartion and saviour of souls for their next life not the power structures of this one.  For this reason Catholic Priests are banned from seeking political office Canon 285->287 (let's draw a veil over Cardinal Richelieu and the Anglical Bishops in the House of Lords).  As Jesus explains in Matthew 22:20-22 "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s."  That is not to say that Christians cannot support Israel or Zionism or any other Nationalist movement be it Plaid Cymru, Sinn Féin or the SNP but there is no obligation in Christianity to support any Nationlist movement.  Neither is there any prohibition.  It is a matter of personal choice... Ultimately Christians shuld be living their lives in preparation of the next life.  The political shenanigans of this one should always be a secondary consideration to spreading the Good News.

I take this unusual detour into theology because everyone these days seems to be waving their Bible about but few seem to be reading it.  Why, for example, does Russell Brand feel the need to take a Bible to Court with him every day?  It is a mystery to me.  After all, every Court has every holy book freely available so that you can take your oath on them despite Jesus's invocation not to swear any oaths in Matthew 5:34 : "do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one."  An invocation that has been widely ignored for 2000 years because Christ's words are ironically best spread by hypocrisy.

Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

This month I have mostly been rewatching the Joan Hickson iteration of Miss Marple... Joan Hickson really is the definitive Miss Marple and as I age myself I appreciate her performances more and more.  What she personifies that other iterations of the character do not is an absolute ruthlessness and cynicism through her delivery of lines like : "Well, of course you believed him.  I never believe people".  She also really sells scenes such as allowing the murderer to drink their own poison instead of going to the gallows.  The other thing that comes over in her interpretation is a dreadful sense of doom.  Miss Marple is literally tortured by knowing bad things are going to happen but being unable to prevent them.  She has an Oracle like power for predicting disaster.  The ITV Marples are by comparison softer and more endearing figures.  Hickson's Marple whilst putting on a pretence of onset dementia really isn't an endearing character at all so much as a formidable adversary to anyone she takes on.  An early BBC co-production, the Hickson versions clearly had a lot of money spent on them and it's all on the 4:3 screen.  Particularly effective serials are "Sleeping Murder" where the main protagonist thinks she's going mad until Miss Marple makes sense of her repressed memories and "Nemesis" which has a memorable episode ending of a person being crushed by a bust falling off a balcony as seen in reflection through a glass cabinet case.  Truly masterful shot composition.  One of the early serials is even directed by Roy of the Boulting Brothers such was the profile of this series.  Some of the most powerful episodes are the ones where Miss Marple is held back from the audience to quite a way into the serial.  For example, she's only actually in about the last five minutes of the first episode of "A Murder Is Announced" when she's called in by the police to help and puts all the pieces together into a new order to form an entirely new thesis confounding the audience.  Paola Dionisotti and Sylvia Syms are particularly good as the implied lesbian couple in this one.  Generally the casting is stella.  Not to discount the other Miss Marples... but the modern ITV Maples like the Margaret Rutherford film version play it more for laughs.  Joan Hickson's Miss Marple is a much darker character.  A deadly clever ruthless manipulator who one really should never want to cross intellectual swords with ...

Backwards Innovations - The tyre repair kit

Every time I buy a new car... which is about once a decade when either the previous one has fallen to pieces or been written off, I ask the dealer for a spare wheel to go with it.  This always results in howls of consternation and attempts to sell me anything other than an actual spare wheel.  Instead they try to sell me tools, foams that will go out of date and they can charge to replace at exorbitant main dealer rates and a plethora of other useless tools.  All of which are designed to reinvent the spare wheel.  Indeed, this is literally a case of reinventing the wheel.  

Of course sometimes you can repair a tyre but in a collision there might be (as in my last one) wheel hub damage.  In this case a spare wheel gets you home.  A tyre doesn't.  I'm not that keen on repairing tyres anyway.  Once holed by a puncture, I tend to throw the tyre away.  But the spare wheel allows me the choice to take it to a garage myself and get it repaired in my own time rather than have to waste time farting about with foam at the roadside.  You simply undo the nuts and you can swap them over.  Painless...

Elon Musk unveils new hovercar

Elon Musk revealed his new invention today - the hovercraft.  It wowed invited guests who were literally blown over by the industrial quantities of hot air he produced.  Prototypes are already in production for a new vehicle which will skim across the English channel carrying lots of cars.  "This is science fiction," said Elon. "The kind of thing that has never been attempted before but commercially failed because the huge energy requirements and lack of precision manoeuvrability made the product ultimately uneconomic for mass production.  It's a completely new innovation and nothing like this has ever existed before, commercially failed leaving huge debts and ended up relegated to the back hanger of a motor museum as a historical curiosity or a classic example of an engineering cul-de-sac.  People say hovercraft don't work but there's at least one in operation that goes to the Isle of Wight"

All is not well round the Admiral...

So as the saga of my written off Corsa draws to a close we enter the final phase.  Insuring the new car.  With actual video evidence via dashcam of the black Audi with its visible numberplate plowing into me available one would think it would be a simple job to retrieve the excess.  However, this seems beyond the capabilities of One Call Claims... or indeed the 3rd party's Insurer Admiral.  One Call Claims persists in stating that it cannot get an admission of liability from Admiral.  And Admiral have not responded to my email of who weeks ago.  When I rang them up they gave me a reference number and said that they had not heard at all from my insurer.  This means that I have to reinsure as a fault clain with no No Claims Bonus because between them they have run down the clock so there is no time left to do anything else if I want to actually drive the new car... We are at week 7 now.  Surrey Police say meanwhile that it will take 8 to 10 weeks to process the data I have given them.  The whole system just seems designed to be as expensive and time consuming as possible.  Inevitably it will go down the Motor Ombudsman who will sit on it further and time will drag and instead of this blog being filled with mildly amusing satire it will be filled with moans about financial consumer issues of the kind that That's Life used to cover before Esther died.  Of course I should fight all these pecuniary battles to the final Waterloo but I feel like Nelson I may have to bow out early due to musket fire.  I feel a bit like Mrs Moore in Passage to India when she won't go to court because too many things are holding her back from the important business of what she can cram in to her increasingly short lifespan.  So the Insurance industry goes.  Producing nothing and protecting no one but sucking the blood harder than a swamp full of leeches.  It may take time but I shall endeavour to burn them all off with matches if I can.  Or maybe I shouldn't.  Maybe I should just get my life back...

Years ago I was forced to settle knock-for-knock because Dashcams hadn't been invented.  The argument went on for years.  Finally when the technology came available I invested in the equipment to definitively prove it wasn't me.  Waste of money.  The greedy insurance industry takes no notice and constructs its usual impenetrable wall of passive agression.  They get you every which way....
 

Category N - the poverty premium for not trading your car in

This week I have mostly been dealing with the fallout of a hit and run accident.  It's all on film via dashcam.  "Excellent" said the Insurance Company One Call, "you don't need to pay the excess.  We'll sort you out with a courtesy car".  But when the agreement came through it was a hire car agreement which said "I understand this is not a courtesy car agreement".  So I didn't sign it. Because if there was a problem I'd be liable personally for all the excessive costs.  Suddenly my car is a total loss and it's a Fault claim and the men from COPART are ringing up to sell it for scrap.  Not happening mate.  I took it round the body shops myself and got a repair estimate half the car price.  

The insurer still wants to Category N it though.  And they refuse to contact the 3rd party to establish fault even though fault is unequivocal and the car that hit me is fully taxed and insured.  Well, actually I haven't seen the Assessors report so who knows what category it is?  So it sits on the drive.  Perfectly safe to drive with only cosmetic damage whilst mean men argue about money and try to find excuses not to pay out.  Of course I could take them to the Financial Ombudsman to try and get rid of the Category N but that takes 8 weeks to  get started.  So what with not supplying a hire car, not categorising it properly and leaving me to replace the back wheel with a spare and buy my own wheel hub... What bit of the insuring businesses do they actually do?

Here's the insanity of Category N.  Once the car is declared a total loss you're not allowed to drive it even though it is drivable.  If you take the pay out and keep the car then it's immediately uninsured ...so how do you take it to a bodyshop to get a quote unless you have a low loader?  You can't?  The solution then is to drive it to body shops before you take the payout while its still insured.  Many insurers won't let you although to be fair to One Call they did when I asked.  Really the car is being treated as unsafe merely for the economic crime of being cheap.  This is nonsense.  Only one person has had it on a lift to check the chassis is okay.  The man from Kwik Fit.  I'd like to say all the other bodyshops did an expert safety evaluation but most of them just sort of looked at it, tutted, sucked through their teeth and said "that'll cost ya, mate."  But at least it will have to go to a repairer before I can drive it again... the corollary of that is that if I had a more expensive car it could be potentially be patched up with no mechanical checks at all before someone let it loose back on the road because they're not legally required - the analysis of whether a car needs to be repaired and tested again is largely economic rather than factual.

Negotiations with the bodyshop car mechanics have been slow partly because whilst I want to talk about technical nuts and bolts, they want to talk about selling me exactly the kind of dodgy hire car agreement that my insurer offered me.  One where instead of providing a courtesy car, I sign off on extortionate hire car costs to be dumped on the third party insurer which I'm liable for when they say it is ridiculous...  One Call's Hire Car agreement is also based on the fact that I say the car is unroadworthy which is simply not true.  It just looks a bit ugly.  Of course the dents should be sorted out so that should there be another collision they can crumple again... but the car isn't unroadworthy in any meaningful sense of the word... None of it makes any sense ...except to the money men.  I grow tired of looking into the eyes of greedy middle aged fat men.  So much so it would be easier to buy a new car... or would it?  Once it's been declared a Category N I can it turns out ...reinsure it with no technical legal tests whatsoever... not even a new MOT ... which makes the whole process a performative farce of everyone pretending to care that the car is safe but not really... which explains why you see so many cars with dents in floating about...

My favourite part of the process is where they ask you for photos of every side of the veichle and a copy of the V5 (even though they don't need it for a Category N) so it can go straight up on the Copart website for auction without the inconvience of anyone even having to photograph it at Copart.  Copart are not happy I wont return their calls and have blocked them... They had to send a snail mail letter.  No office address on it of course so probably a hoax... They say they need to store it ...even though it is safely stored in the garage.  But of course you can't charge the third party £25 a day for that...

In the end I let them have it.  The problem was time rather than money.  Getting a new door could only be done by going to various breakers and although you could do it economically it'd be off the road a long time... The man who came to pick it up didn't use a low loader just blanked half the numberplate which I'm sure is very safe...

When I bought it ...it was the most energy efficient car on the road.  No longer. Time to move on.  Bought an electric.

 

Can't count? Become an accountant...

Dear Mr Miller,

Thank you for contacting us and for providing details of your concerns regarding Ms Helen Savage.

We have carefully considered the information you have submitted, including your concerns regarding the preparation and revision of the accounts for Castle Oaks (Park Hill) Management Limited, the treatment of the historical deficit, the reported bank balances, and transactions involving Prime Property Management.

Having reviewed the information currently available, we do not consider that the complaint discloses sufficient evidence of misconduct by the CIMA member to justify further action under CIMA's disciplinary process.

In reaching this view, we note that many of the issues raised relate to the actions of the managing agent. Ms Savage has also provided a response to your alleged concerns and her explanations do not raise concerns of professional misconduct.

It is important to note that CIMA's disciplinary process is not intended to determine commercial disputes, recover losses, or make findings regarding the conduct of third parties who are not subject to CIMA's regulatory jurisdiction. To the extent that your concerns relate to the actions of the managing agent or others these matters may be more appropriately pursued through alternative channels.

Accordingly, we will be taking no further action in relation to this complaint and the case will now be closed.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention.

Kind regards,

Professional Conduct