GOV.UK push in action: Er, FEWER Brits filling out govt forms online

Have to agree.....

Tax Disc, perfect.

Renewing my garden waste collection, what a joke.

Go to waste collection, read instructions.

Choose "sundries" from small list of services.

Enter ID. Now is that the customer id or the reference ID? Neither are recognised, still no matter can still pay.

Now choose my address from the empty drop down list......sigh

Enter the fields manually.

Postcode can't have spaces...sigh.

Click pay and all seems ok.

Now enter email for receipt of payment (why didn't you ask fo that when entering all the other details).

Hooray.

So it sort of works, but boy is it so badly thought out.

Now don't even get me on trying to find the school term times and teacher "training" days. Yet to manage that.

Look, I must get this off my chest

Not directly relevant to this news, but during the week my wife emailed the local council to ask if a small ploytunnel requires planning permission. She was sent a five pages for to fill in that was merely the form to request someone to look into the planning regs. Shifting institutional luncay like that online isn't going to improve the take-up, and I suspect that in many cases guvmint, central and local, regard online services as form-gasm rather than easing the process.

HM Borders & Immigration gets my goat up.

To apply for residency you have to take the "LiUK" test; to do this you must first set up a user account with B&I, so you can book the test.

When you have passed the test you then need to book your visa application appointment; to do this you HAVE TO SET UP A NEW AND ENTIRELY DIFFERENT USER ACCOUNT ON THE SAME FECKING WEBSITE!!!

I also get annoyed with local government websites that only work properly with IE 6 or older (trying to pay a parking ticket in Shrewsbury a couple of years ago).

Finally, a little sympathy for our country's registrars, who have to enter various information on births, deaths and marriages into a system that is totally SCREWED!!.

My wife, being Chinese, has her family name first, when you come to select this option (after entering a dozen or so pages of information), the system throws a fit, deletes all the info, and sends you back to the beginning!!!

(Trying to get a certificate of non impediment, so we could get married).

Still, at least these departments have figured out how to USE the internet - unlike the Foreign Office!!

While waiting in China for my wife's entry visa interview, we received a call from the Consulate, asking her to "attend as soon as possible".

We jumped on the next train, and a mere 18 hours later we arrived at the UK Consulate and were handed an envelope; inside the envelope was a letter asking her to attend her interview the following week!!!!!!

NUKE!!, cos that is what the UK Guangzhou Consulate officials need shoving up their collective arses!!!

The numbers filling in forms online are about to fall further

Once the public realise that the current government want to make as much money as possible from any information they hold, the public will stop making it easy for them to gather that information.

Of course more oldies are using fondleslabs than previously. Previously a lot of them weren't oldies

Paying VAT

I can remember a few years ago when I had a company and having registered to use government services, I went on-line to pay my VAT for the first time.

While HMRC's website had lots of help, unfortunately at the time that's all I could find. I clicked on links that suggested that they would lead me to a page to effect payment only to get more help. I went around in ever diminishing circles until finally, just before disappearing up my own fundamental orifice, I emailed them asking for some help in circumnavigating their website.

I also suggested (reasonably politely under the circumstances) that their website should have links to the actual functions from which help could be sought IF NEEDED and only then. Not the other way around as they had it.

Having said that, they were exceedingly prompt in getting back to me with a direct link into the requisite page. Maybe it was because I mentioned that I was desperate to pay them some MONEEEEYYY!

I don't know if they ever changed it but I am REALLY glad that I don't have to go through that any more.

Who designs these websites anyway. I was always of the opinion that you make a function easy to get to and use, and only supply help if explicitly asked for. The HMRC gave screeds of 'useful' advice. Unfortunately, that's all I managed to find despite trying every damn link on every page I came to. It just seems that someone forgot the purpose for which the pages existed