Contraceptive Pet Hate at the BBC

I've developed a new pet hate - hotel booking sites.

Wanted to book a room in an hotel near my office, as I'm returning late from a business meeting in Aberdeen tonight and it will be a pain to go all the way home from Southampton and then back again at 6am on Thursday for another meeting. 

On searching for the phone number for the hotel, all I could raise on Google was half a hundred bloody 3rd party booking sites, none of which had the hotel phone number (naturally, as they don't want you to book direct). 

It's not as if I'm incapable of phoning an hotel and booking a room, for God's sake!

When I finally did manage to find a phone number, I couldn't get a response from the other end. A message told me my call was important - but obviously not that important, else they wouldn't have kept me holding on for 15 minutes.

Ended up having to book through a booking site after all....

One hears that abortion is the new contraceptive for some under 16s. Not ideal, is it? While I'm pro-choice, there's pro-choice and simply taking the piss out of the NHS.

You know, it strikes me that the BBC could save a shed-load of money if they didn't do so many needless outside broadcasts. They never seem to miss a chance to do some news item without having a live reporter standing outside (or inside) some vaguely relevant location that adds nothing to the story itself, yet must cost an arm and a leg in communication costs.