How To Complain
This guy got angry in a Manchester mobile phone store over a high phone bill.
Free Newspapers From Councils
Eric Pickles wants to ban these. Read about it here.
I get one from Hackney and it goes straight in the recycling.
If I want to find out what is going on, I use the Internet or read the local neighbourhood news, I get by e-mail.
I haven’t yet, but I might read a proper local newspaper, as I always did on Saturday in Suffolk. but that was only for the football and the small ads.
Good Riddance!
I’ve just had a message through the ether from my late friend, David. He says, that he is pleased that Bob Diamond has resigned. Most of the other things he said were a touch garbled and until I get the proper message, I’ll not put any more of his thoughts.
I do know, that bankers of David’s era, will be happy with the splitting of retail and investment banking. After all the first is just computer processing on the back of decisions made by talking to your customers and the second is just gambling.
Incidentally, thinking about Zopa, it may not be a bank, but it is computer processing on the back of decisions made by talking to customers, with a bit of help from computerised credit scoring.
Brian Cox on Libel Reform
Brian Cox, the particle physicist or celebrity scientist, depending on your view has a piece published in today’s Evening Standard about libel law reform in the UK.
It is a well-written piece that deserves to be read. As does Libel Law Reform’s web site.
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.
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.
Beware The Essex Girl
This story in the Daily Mail, shows that not all Essex Girls live up to their stereotype of being thick and have liking for Ford Capris, sex, fake tan, silicon breast implants, booze and white stilettos in no particular order.
Certainly, Georgina Blackwell doesn’t follow the stereotype. although, she is trained as a beautician.
I remember in the early days of BBC Breakfast television, they had a female legal expert, with long bleached blonde hair, a job at one of the job law firms, a penchant for very short skirts and an accent forged in Dagenham.
I think she was too much for Northern inferiorities, so she was quietly dropped.
Police Use London Bus For Disguise
London has been having trouble with Eastern European con artists, so they used the obvious solution of how do you get lots of boys in blue to the area, without the con-artists knowing. You use a big red London bus and cram it full of police. The story is here in the Evening Standard. More than 25 were detained and a dozen or so were charged.
Surely though, the choice of a Number 2 bus was wrong. Perhaps it should have been a 49 or 99, or perhaps one that went past a convenient prison like Wandsworth, Pentonville or Wormwood Scrubs. That would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “Go Directly To Jail”
The Anonymous Widower 