High Buildings And High Winds
This tragic story from Leeds about high winds round a high building is a cautionary tale.
All too often we don’t fully test a building’s affect on the environment properly, before it is actually built. Look at the problems of the Walkie-Talkie in the sun.
I tend to not linger in the bus station at London Bridge, as sometimes the downdraught from The Shard is more than too much for me.
The only thing that would make architects think more, is if one of these troublesome buildings had to be demolished.
Will Peer-To-Peer Lending Be Allowed In ISAs?
According to this article in the Telegraph, it looks like it might happen. Here’s the first bit from the article.
Savers will be able to earn tax-free returns on peer-to-peer lending websites under plans to allow this type of investment within an Isa, The Telegraph understands.
Industry sources said a consultation on opening up Isas to peer-to-peer lending – sometimes referred to as “crowdfunding” – is expected to be unveiled by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on Thursday.
At present my total losses from my Zopa lending is £708.93. That should be judged against total earnings of £16,009.32.
But if they allow losses to be set against tax in ISAs, then I suspect, we may see peer-to-peer losses to be set against your tax bill. So on that basis, I will be a couple of hundred pounds or so better off.
Zopa at present is lending a small amount less per day, than it was a month or so ago. So allowing losses to be set against tax, may well get more people to put their savings there.
The only losers in this case, will be the banks and building societies, who pay a derisory rate of interest.
Passwords
The BBC has an article on their web site today about passwords for Internet sites.
I go in to lots of sites and there are some I never use as their security doesn’t suit me.
If a site insists, I use a shift to enter a password, then that company doesn’t get my business. I think that Verified by Visa insists on this, so I never use my Visa card on-line. So if I see an on-line transaction, when I check my Visa account, I know it’s fraud.
Incidentally, I think it’s a good idea to only use one card for on-line transactions and keep that secure in a close place by your computer.
My passwords are generally based on phone numbers, that I remember from my childhood, which were like the classic Whitehall 1212, which was Scotland Yard. You can check your password here. They say, that it would take a PC a thousand years to crack one of my passwords. But even my immediate family wouldn’t probably have known the number.
And all it was was an old London phone number.
Even the last phone number I had in Suffolk, which was Thurlow 789, would take a computer 10 days. The previous phone number at Debach, which was on a small exchange called Charsfield and was just three digits, would take a thousand years. Unless of course you had my details from the 1970s.
Incidentally, if I translate my current phone number, back to the exchange name that would take 27 years. If you want to translate your London number, there’s a list here.
So it would appear you can be both lazy and secure!
What Did The Pope Say To Putin?
Obviously,no-one knows exactly, but The Sunday Times has a picture of their meeting, with an added speech bubble for the Pope saying.
So what’s it like, being infallible?
I hope Pope Francis gave Putin some sound advice!
nPower’s Job Losses
There is a story today about job losses at nPower.
I have just left the company after good service for three years.
I read about Ovo and moved there mainly because they would save me over a hundred pounds a year, as I wouldn’t have to pay the Green Levy.
Since their customer service has been very good, something I couldn’t complain about for nPower.
The biggest difference though, is that the literature and web site of Ovo is a lot better than nPower. As I said in this post, I have a single A4 sheet of paper, which summarises everything. It’s only a small point, but it just shows how large companies don’t think.
Perhaps this is why nPower is getting rid of so many expensive customer support staff.
After all in a few years time, virtually all of us will be managing our energy suppliers through the Internet. So support is all about design of the web site.
It would be interesting to see a league table of the ratings of web sites of energy companies!
The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
I remember a BBC television comedy series called Citizen Smith, which starred Robert Lindsay as Wolfie Smith. This sums up the theme of the series.
Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are “Power to the People” and “Freedom for Tooting”. In reality, he is an unemployed dreamer and petty criminal whose plans fall through because of laziness and disorganisation.
But today, I was watching the BBC News and they were discussing the Lambeth slavery case.
Later in the article on Citizen Smith, this paragraph appears.
The Tooting Popular Front was inspired by the numerous minuscule leftist political groups active in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. One model may have been the then somewhat well-known “Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought”, a particularly far-left group led by Aravindan Balakrishnan, who became a suspect in the Lambeth slavery case of 2013.
Sadly John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools and Horses, in addition to Citizen Smith, died in 2011, so he can’t tell us if his fictional revolutionaries were based on Balakrishnan’s group.
A Must Read Opinion In The Sunday Times
Camilla Caendish’s opinion in the Sunday Ties today is very much worth reading. The title says a lot.
Tribal tensions on the ward are putting patients at risk
And it starts like this.
Managers bullying staff into fiddling cancer figures. Whistleblowers gagged with pay-offs. A&E doctors coping with patients who should have been seen by the GP. And that’s just last week’s headlines. With so many of the staff at loggerheads, it’s not surprising the National Health Service sometimes seems to forget about the patients.
It is full of nuggets that apply to any company or organisation. Like this one!
Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridge has borrowed a programme from Toyota called Stop the Line. This lets any member of staff halt a procedure if they think the patient may be at risk. In one recent case, a patient was about to be stitched up after surgery when two theatre nurses found a swab was missing and “stopped the line”. An x-ray showed the swab in the patient’s abdomen. It was removed, saving the patient from harm and the hospital from heaven knows what kind of negligence claim.
If you can find the article, read it!
The Scandal Of 084x And 087x Numbers
The BBC is reporting today about expensive calls to financial companies and other institutions like the Inland Revenue and the NHS. It’s here on their web site.
For the first time, since I moved to BT in 2010, to save myself some money compared to Virgin, I decided to check my bills.
I have a tariff that allows me to call any landline at any time, for a flat fee of seven pounds a month. As I have some long landline calls, I suspect, I’m quids in on this.
But what surprised me was a fairly long call to the Netherlands cost me just twenty-eight pence. Most of the call charges were calls to mobile numbers.
As to my bank, Nationwide and my two credit/charge cards, all are on 0845 numbers, which under my calling plan are free. Not that I ever call them, as most seem to respond well to queries sent on-line.
In fact the only higher rate number I have rung in the last few months was a short call to my doctor, to book an appointment, as it’s an 0844 number. But whether, I’m charged for it, I don’t know. You shouldn’t be charged for calls to your doctor. Booking an appointment, is something, that should be done on-line.
There is an interesting point here. How many of us have calling plans, on which some or all of our landline calls free. So as we realise what we get, if companies published their actual numbers, they might get a few less customers, angry at hanging on at high cost. After all, if you do call direct, you probably get in the same queue. So you will probably wait as long, but at no expense.
The real problem is calling these numbers on a mobile phone, as I’ve found several instances of people like benefit claimants being fleeced.
More Hot Air For Bunhill
During Open House in September, I visited the Bunhill Energy Centre, which provides heat and power for homes in Islington.
There are now reports like this one on ITV, that they will be taking in the waste heat from the Underground and an electricity sub-station. I would assume the latter is the massive one between the Regent’s Canal and City Road, that provides power to the City of London.
Perhaps they should build a centre like Bunhill close to the Houses of Parliament to heat homes n Westminster!
IKEA Gives More To The Philippines Than China
Hard to believe, but it’s true, and is fully reported in the Guardian.
China has given $2m, whilst IKEA has given $2.7m.
Japan, the United States and Australia have given a lot more.
The Anonymous Widower 