Is It Time To Ditch The High-Street Banks?
The title of this post, is the headline across two pages of the Money section of the Sunday Times.
I would answer yes and in my view high-street banks only have one purpose and that is to fill in the spaces between the betting-shops, charity shops, pay-day loan companies and kebab houses.
I need to pay my bills and for that reason I use Nationwide and will continue to do, unless they object to my keeping just enough money in the account, so I don’t pay charges. I would also leave if they did a NatWorst or a reputable execution-only bank came along.
I also keep my savings in Zopa and if I needed to, I would probably borrow from there to.
A Title For Your Civil Partner?
The Sunday Times is saying that the civil partners of those with titles, like Sir Elton John’s partner, David Furnish, will be given courtesy titles.
I have no view one way or the other, but I doubt there will be any objection, as the article states the courtesy title will apply to everyone who is in a legal partnership or marriage, no matter what their sexuality.
I do have a vaguely interesting story. A couple of years before she died, C did a very big child case, where she was led by a QC. It turned out that he was married to a lady who had been given a peerage and sat in the House of Lords. On one holiday in this very smart Italian hotel, he started to get fed up with the staff, who kept referring to him as Count. They just coulddn’t get it round their minds, that he was just Mister and the title was his wife’s.
Reasons To Go To Liverpool
I’m always being asked by people, why they should go to Liverpool.
Here’s a few reasons.
- St. George’s Hall, which Nikolaus Pevsner described as one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world.
- Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, which is a superb neo-Gothic creation by Giles Gilbert Scott, an architect, who also created Britain’s red telephone box.
- The Victoria Building of Liverpool University, which gives red-brick university its name and has some good art in its gallery and museum, including some by Freud, Turner, Frink and Epstein. I saw an excellent special exhibition there of art by Stuart Sutcliffe, the so-called “fifth Beatle”
- St.. Luke’s Church or as Liverpudlian’s call it the bombed-out church, which has been left as a memorial to the Second World War. This church was my late wife’s, C’s, favourite building in the city.
- Oriel Chambers, which is the first modern building in the world.
- The Walker Art Gallery or the National Gallery of the North. It is administered by central government, although many of the paintings came from local sources. It also has one of the largest collections of pre-Raphaelite painting in the UK and the Liverpool School of the movement is well-represented.
- Liverpool has more street statuary than any city in England with the exception of London. I particularly like Eleanor Rigby by Tommy Steele.
- Superlambananas are fairly numerous.
- The Pier Head, the Three Graces and the Mersey Ferries. Do remember that when a lady walks in front of the Liver Birds on the Royal Liver Building, and they flap their wings, she’s a virgin. They also flap their wings for honest men.
- The Albert Dock, the Tate Liverpool and the other museums in that area.
- Goodison Park. The home of Everton along with Craven Cottage in London, is one of the most complete works of Archibald Leitch, the architect of many sports grounds in the UK.
- Hope Street that connects the two cathedrals and also contains the most amazing pub in the world, the Philhamonic Dining Rooms.
I could add a few more, but I won’t.
The Down-River View From the Emirates Air-Line
Previously on my three trips on the Emirates Air-Line, I’ve always sat so I could see up-river. Today, I sat the other side and looked down-river.
As you can see there was a bit of rain about, so it might be worth checking the wind direction, if there is, so that your side windows are clear.
On a day with good visibility, you’d get a superb view of the Thames Barrier.
Note that up-river for me is one of those titter-words. The fictional cast list of Beyond Our Ken in the 1950s and 1960s, often included a lady called Maud Upriver.
Never Pick A Fight With Small Irishmen
It’s an old maxim amongst experienced police officers, but the smaller the guy you’re trying to arrest, the more backup you need.
Australia forgot this yesterday and Eoin Morgan and England put another team from down-under on the barbie,
So Australia mpve on the Oval one match down to England, and a man short too, as Cummins is going home.
The Affect of NatWorst on My Zopa Account
I track what is in my Zopa account every morning.
Since the 12th of June, I have had 28 accounts in arrears. On the 27th, this number rose by four. I thought it would have been worse as probably between a quarter and a third of all UK personal bank accounts are eight RBS, NatWorst or Ulster Bank.
It will be interesting to see, if this was a NatWorst effect or just natural in the scheme of things. I think it’s a mixture of both, as after all the turn of the month, is always a time of large numbers of payments. My number of bad debts hasn’t moved since the 7th of June.
They’ll Nick Anything These Days
If you watched BBC Breakfast last week, you might have seen the harris hawk, used to frighten pigeons from the courts. So now someone has nicked it. It’s here in the Mail. It appears to have been a family pet as well, so I suspect that they may have stolen something they can’t handle. I hope so, because most birds have a strong homing instinct.
They could always borrow the eagle from Crystal Palace.
Why Does He Do It?
I gave up on Andy Murray, as I could see his stop-start performance getting him out of Wimbledon last night. So I went to bed. But at least he pulled the match out of the fire!
He seems to make so many mental mistakes.
At least with Tim Henman and Greg Rusedjski, you got what it said on the tin, even if they were inferior tennis players. Rarely did they not play to their level.
The Anonymous Widower 