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Thank you Linda

The electoral roll thing is taken care of. Every year when they send you that letter asking if the details of the adults in your household are still correct for council tax purposes, there's an option to be on the published or unpublished register.

I'm not sure whether the details are online or not. I rang one of these obnoxious twits to ask (politely) where he'd got my details. I figured that if it was one of my current suppliers, I would cancel their contract as they would have broken my specific request to keep my details secure. I was quite shocked when he told me he got my details from the register office and he was very insistent about telling me that it's perfectly legal for any individual to go and look to see who is getting married. I got the impression that he may have actually physically gone to the register office in person, to write down the details of that fortnight's happy couples.

Phoning the registrars office is a good idea. I think I've got a feedback card somewhere in the gumph they gave me, I could put it on that as well and then it's written down.

Meanwhile I'm pleased to report that my hackles are settling and I've put the flamethrower down.

No one in the wedding industry can spell. Fact.

Absolutely seething with anger right now - I nearly put this in the Rants/Religion/Controversy section and then I realised it was about marketing.

As the regulars know, I'm getting married next year. As part of the secular marriage procedure, you have to go and "give notice" some time before the wedding at the local register office. Your notice of intent to marry is posted in the council offices for two weeks, just like a planning application and for pretty much the same reason - so that if anyone has an objection, they can put it forward. The equivalent for a religious service is having the banns read in church so that anyone with a reservation can speak to the priest/vicar about it. The purpose is to prevent illegal marriages.

Instead, some horrible grubby little trolls have decided it's appropriate to use the opportunity to harvest our contact details and add us to their mailing lists.

I accept that we're going to get aggressively marketed at for getting married and I was fine with it being contextual. I don't mind that the register office gave us marketing materials from local dress shops/florists/photographers along with the ceremony information. It's okay that venue brochures carry more advertisements than useful information. I understand that email spam is unavoidable, and I am completely relaxed about the fact that every time I mention the wedding plans on my personal twitter, I get follows from all sorts of bridal companies.

But I'm protective of my home address. I always avoid giving it out and regularly give fake addresses to those who insist 'the computer' needs an address to continue. If I have to have something delivered then I always insist that my details are not shared, and if I can't find a tick-box for it then I send a separate email. Heck, I even shred things with my home address on before recycling.

I'm absolutely fuming that some mercenary little tick thinks it's okay to take advantage of the legal requirement to give my correct details to the registrar in order to spam me at home.

Honestly? No one who is capable of that level of inappropriate behaviour is coming NEAR my wedding, let alone being paid for it.

I'm so pissed off, I'm not even going to tell the parasites involved about all the typos on their marketing materials. Yeah, see me sticking it to the man. Ugh, I hate this powerless feeling of having lost control of my private details.

(Um. Re-reading this, it is just a rant rather than a discussion point, if any mods would like to move it, feel free.)

I have been doing the PAYE for my assistants online for almost two years now. It's a little confusing the first time - like it asks whether you want Cumbernauld or Shipley and you end up frantically scanning your letters trying to figure that out - but once you're in the swing of things it's really nice and simple.

I also prefer it from a filing point of view - I can print off my receipts on A4 paper and I have electronic copies for easy searching, which is a vast improvement on rummaging through the stubs in the yellow booklets.

That said, registering for self-employment online was a mistake - much quicker over the phone, not to mention more reassuring to be actually speaking to someone who knew the system and could clarify questions. And I'm kind of anxious about doing my first online tax return.

I had to youtube the song, but as soon as it started I recognised having heard it during the World Cup so definite earworm credentials there.

Coca-cola songs have always been earwormy though. Like Holidays Are Coming, or the more summery Always Coca Cola.

Prince's Trust defined Yoof as "under 30" (and I can't tell you how pleased that made me).

As for windfalls, that's where the attitudinal shift comes in. *serious face*

Right-wingers with jobs, solid incomes, homes, two point four kids, etc, tend to be very focused on personal responsibility, hard work, "deserving" or "earning" everything they have. True righties get very upset if you suggest that luck or contacts or a windfall had anything to do with where they are in life. Even if they can be persuaded to admit that there was something other than their own hard work which helped - an inheritance, some parental contacts, a cancelled train that saw them sharing a cab with someone influential - the focus remains on "I made this happen, I am master of my own destiny." They believe they're in control of their lives, and so is everyone else, and so those who aren't so successful, simply aren't trying.

If there's one thing that adulthood-acquired disability makes you realise, it's that you're not in control. You can work or fight for position within the range of your current circumstances, but the big shifts - positive, negative, or neutral - are out of your hands. Hard work is an essential factor, but not the major factor and certainly not a guarantee of success.

Example: you have an entry-level PAYE job for an employer. Hard work will prevent you getting sacked for not working hard enough, true. And it might increase your chances of being promoted. But no amount of hard work will guarantee a promotion, and no amount of hard work will keep you safely employed if the business goes bust and all employees are made redundant. That's down to luck.

So if I did get an inheritance or a lottery win or a suitcase full of cash on the bus... there would still be no part of me capable of asserting that I deserved or was responsible for it, any more than I believe I deserved or was responsible for my illness - or for my current relationship or for the support I got setting up my business.

As long as I believe that luck trumps everything else, I can't possibly become right-wing. As long as I am aware how easy it is for me to plummet to the bottom again, I'll want to do what I can to make sure that those at the bottom are protected.

I don't count as I do not have the potential to ever get a mortgage!

Barring miracle cures, I will always need practical assistance from social services.

Social Services are means-tested on an assessment as a household. They don't count our earned income, but as soon as you have assets or savings above

I thank you... although if anyone asks me to write two hundred and fifty versions of the same article, we're gonna need more Ben&Jerrys.

Got to say I think it depends on the business.

If I want to get a pizza delivered, I'll rummage through the menus that have arrived through my door.

If I want to buy something humdrum like, to pick a recent example, 100 small ziplock bags, I'll search eBay.

If I want something very very very specific, like A4 magnetic paper suitable for use with a standard inkjet printer, then I'll search Google for a couple of specialist paper suppliers and compare.

If I want something personal, like a hairdresser, then it's word-of-mouth Every. Time.

I reckon part of it is degrees of separation.

In a larger company, the people who make the decisions don't have to deal directly with the customers, and the people who do have to deal with the customers probably didn't have much advance warning themselves of what was going to happen.