Date   : Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:56:21 +0100
From   : adsb@... (Andrew Benham)
Subject: 8-bit Articles wanted for next issue of Drag 'n Drop

On 29/09/10 12:04, J.G.Harston wrote:

> It got so much beyond annoying that more than half the messages I
> received from via the Council system came like that that I stopped
> fiddling about trying to de-encode them and they all went straight
> into the spam bin.

Why are you trying to decode the messages - are you reading your email
via telnet ?  I hadn't noticed the email body was base64 encoded, email
clients here just do the right thing.
OK, it can be annoying when messages are larger than they need to be
(IIRC mutt base64 encodes any attachment, even when it's plain text)
but there are plenty of annoyances bigger than that on the Internet.

> The same with people phoning me from the Town
> Hall with the source phone number blocked. If you can't even be bothered
> to do me the courtesy of telling me who you are before I answer the
> phone, I'm not going to.

I recommend signing up to your phone service supplier's Anonymous
Call Rejection feature.  For a few quid a month, it gets rid of more
muppets (some of the ones that aren't caught by the Telephone
Preference Service).
I can think of no reason why the Town Hall's PBX shouldn't present the
switchboard's number to you, other than someone being too lazy to
configure it.

-- 
Andrew Benham     Southgate, London N14, United Kingdom

The gates in my computer are AND OR and NOT, not "Bill"