While I do not subscribe to this particular religious mumbo-jumbo, I do eat pancakes and easter eggs. So I thought about giving up the following.

• Axe murdering my family
• Resisting the urge to ‘Go Postal’ at work
• Telling little children Father Christmas is not real
• Flicking the back of my daughters knees while she’s learning to walk

Thinking about it though, I have not yet ‘Gone Postal’, or axe murdered any of my family, and my daughter is now nearly 2 and walks fine, so technically this year should be a breeze.

While there are a few people I would like to see attempting to give up breathing for lent, this tradition is about hardship. Giving up luxuries is hardly this. You watch in a couple of years we might see this time of year commercialised as badly as Christmas and Easter. Reductil the wonder weightloss drug, and Niquitin (plus some will-power) for your Havana craving. Who’d have thought plastic surgery would have become so popular.

For this Lenten season, I ask that you consider giving up tolerance. It would be a start and my family did it when I was 12 and we are o.k.

aquila are one of our third party providers who provide a pensions product in the UK.

Firstly, aquila have a real issue when it comes to their company name and generally become aggravated if you do not italicize it and use a lower case ‘A’.

Secondly, they are in the top 100 fastest growing IT companies in the UK.

Thirdly, their product is seen to be the best in the pensions industry. Given the pensions industry is still catching up with the industrial revolution, I think their product reflects this.

Fourthly, their company strategy is to extract as much money from their clients as possible.

This last point amuses me. For example.

1. We ask for X, Y, and Z and we want it Monday.
2. We arrange a cost for this, but it is only an estimate, not a quote.
3. They deliver X, some of Y and something that looks like Z early Tuesday.
4. We pay them.
5. They do not provide any details of any kind of rigorous any testing.
6. We spend the next week doing this for them at cost to us.
7. we find that most of Y is missing, and Z smells like tuna.
8. They provide an estimate to fix this.
9. Go back to step 3 at least twice more.

Where is the business driver to produce a quality deliverable. To do so would reduce their directors ability to live in the 19th hole.

The thing that cracks me the most is they are ISO 9001 quality accredited. They even have a quality statement (albeit updated 4 years ago and reviewed 2 years ago), check this out.

I think that this may need some adjustment - check this out.

I will be submitting the following entry to the Oxford English Dictionary:

aquilafied: (verb) To get right royally fucked in the arse.