ewx: (no idea)
Richard Kettlewell ([personal profile] ewx) wrote2012-12-30 06:45 pm
Entry tags:

Question arising from tidying up

What on earth is the point of the Thomson Local directory? I don't think I've used it once in my life (even before discovering the Internet) but it's been coming through the door for as long as I can remember (which in this case means at least back to the 1980s).

Have you ever used it?

[identity profile] bugshaw.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 07:13 pm (UTC)(link)
It was great when moving every couple of years, a handy section in the front telling you about councils and libraries and local maps and emergency chemists and stuff. Haven't used it since I got broadband internet.

[identity profile] oldbloke.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeh, that bit in the front.
I have used it in the past, before every small business had details online, as we get a phone directory that's useless since we live in WYorks but have a Rochdale area code and an Oldham postcode.

[identity profile] lethargic-man.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 07:35 pm (UTC)(link)
I have never used it either.

[identity profile] crazyscot.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 08:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Does using it as a makeshift cutting and drilling mat count?
ext_8103: (Default)

[identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Seems like a stretch l-)

[identity profile] pseudomonas.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope. I think opting out of Royal Mail walk-sorted junkmail or something on http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/ has stopped them sending them to me.

[identity profile] pseudomonas.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)
ah, yes here (http://www.stopjunkmail.org.uk/guide/junk_buster.php).
gerald_duck: (by Redderz)

[personal profile] gerald_duck 2012-12-30 10:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Nope, never. I've always thrown them away unopened, as have my parents before me.

Even before the Internet I used Electronic Yellow Pages via a modem in the eighties. But we've been throwing away Thomson Locals for longer still.

[identity profile] ceb.livejournal.com 2012-12-30 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)
ISTR that when I still lived with my parents it was better than the Yellow Pages for some purposes, though I don't now remember what they were. It may have been an artefact of where we lived and the respective areas covered.

Of course these days it has approx. 0 in it, so is useless.
simont: A picture of me in 2016 (Default)

[personal profile] simont 2012-12-30 10:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I vaguely recall that at some point in the last couple of years I have used it once to look up a local business, though I forget which one. I don't doubt the Yellow Pages and the Internet would both have had that number too, though; the Thomson was just closest to hand.

[identity profile] em788.livejournal.com 2012-12-31 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
There was a year when it provided some information we couldn't find in the yellow pages, since when I haven't been allowed to throw it away. I think that once it had a map of how the local post codes worked although I can't now remember why I was so pleased to find that.