Damola

[The rants keep coming at the mo, but first...]

This is Damola. Damola is a creative stuck at a desk. Damola likes good music. Damola likes good photos. Damola has cool shoes. Damola and I have 3 things in common.

What Damola is doing, in order to find an outlet for that creativity, is trying to set up a couple of things involving photography at the Fringe/Festival (can someone tell me why I keep typing 'Fringe' as 'Finge' at first attempt?).

The first of these is a Fleshmarket flashmob, for which my idea has photography at its very core, and I'd urge any Edinburgh blippers to get registered on his site to find out more!

The other has a site going online this Sunday, looking at setting up some photography tours lead by various people, with the results of the tours then being put on public display. It's a sort of 'come to Edinburgh for the Fringe and Festival and become part of it' thing (and yes, it still needs a slogan).

I've been there for Damola to bounce a few ideas off, and I've ended up rabbiting on about a million and one things because it's a break from being surrounded by people who think taking a picture of a strawberry on double yellow lines is odd for some reason.

Anyway... Those who read yesterday's little contretemps with BBC Breakfast may be surprised to find out that I've ended up having quite an email discussion with the Editor of the show, to the point that I've now been told if I'm down in London anytime to give them a shout and I can go and see the show being made. I still have issues with the programme (and the editor knows that) but she has been very willing to accept constructive criticism, and answer points in a pretty considered manner!

I wonder if the Royal Mail would be as approachable? Yesterday a card was put through the door saying that they couldn't deliver something because the postage was 'deficient', by a whole 8 pence. So I had to go and collect whatever it was, and pay them £1.08. Yep, there was a £1 'handling fee'. What I don't get is this - if I'm sent a large item, or something that is recorded delivery, they will try to deliver. If this isn't possible the item goes back to the sorting office, and a card is left to go and collect the item.

Now, when the postage is deficient the postie doesn't even bring the item out (probably not allowed to ask for cash at the door for reasons of counter-terrorism or something). So it just goes to the sorting office, into a plastic tub, to be collected. So for Royal Mail having to do less work I have to pay a 'handling fee'.

Is the Royal Mail really that hard up? We're down to one delivery a day, stamps keep going up in price, and we now have to pay according to size as well as weight. And yet in order to recover an item of mail that was 8 pence short on postage I've got to give them over 13 times that deficient amount!

One of the most annoying things is that the Royal Mail now being a private entity I can't even do an FoI request to find out why the administrative burden is £1 (there were at least 50 letters there - thats fifty quid to Royal Mail for weighing a load of letters and putting a sticker on them). I know it's only a quid, but come on, justify it somehow!

It's a bit like tickets for anything being bought in advance having a 'booking fee'. So by being organised and creating less of a burden you get penalised. And this REALLY grates when certain things HAVE to be bought in advance otherwise the tickets all sell out. Christ, just add the £1,50 onto the cost of the ticket and say it's the ticket price. Don't say tickets are such and such an amount, then when you come to buy it find out that there's a booking fee to go on top of that.

Seriously what IS a booking fee? Someone here must know...