Here are a few little tips to make life a little less annoying as a result of unwanted calls and junk mail.  Courtesy of my husband who has a pathological hatred for cold callers. 

(1) Three little words: "Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that sales would grind to a halt.  Just wait for the "beep-beep-beep" tone, and then you can hang up your handset.

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no-one on the other end?  This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.  It is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" salesperson to call back. If you notice that there is no one there, immediately start pressing the # button on the phone, 6 or 7   times, as quickly as possible.  This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system.

3) When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the post for everything from credit cards to bank loans and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Many of them come with a prepaid return envelope.  It costs more than the usual postage if they are returned. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these postage-prepaid return envelopes and post them back.  You can also send back the empty envelope; after all, it is their property.  To remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you return.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but we need to overwhelm them, in order to stop them.

This will also help keep the Royal Mail busy.  Since the Royal Mail is saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let's help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again.