How Good Are The Companies You Deal with?
I found this on a financial forum, but it applies in so many fields. The guy is talking about where he invests his hard-earned money.
One criteria for me was to Google Maps the address of each company (a crazy idea maybe but try it). put the yellow man on and walk past the firm
Is it a big corporate office or is it above a pizza take away (as one is).
Whilst offices might not mean a lot (Equitable Life,Alba,Northern Rock,Icelandic banks etc)
it is one yardstickI aren’t giving my money to a firm that is not filthy rich.
I’ve tried it with a few people I deal with in various areas. In one case the results surprised me.
Would You Buy A Bank Branch?
You’re a very rich man and you are the CEO of a bank that you feel is reputable, so would you buy one bank branch let alone 316 as Santander tried to do from RBS, as is reported here?
I think the answer is no. Three hundred and sixteen times no!
They would have been transferring 1,800,000 customers to Santander. I used to have my account at the Woolwich Building Society and when it was taken over by Barclays, I didn’t feel that I wanted to bank there, so I moved to Nationwide, where I bank on-line.
So how many of these nearly two million accounts will move somewhere else, like one of the new banks being started by such as Tesco or Marks and Spencer?
I’m not affected, but I choose which bank I’m with! Not some faceless man in Spain!
I wonder also how many people adhere to one of my friend David’s rules of banking, which is to bank with a bank headquartered in the UK and preferably England.
I think too, that five thousand staff will be transferred with the branches and the accounts too. How many of the good ones will jump ship and join someone else.
But these days with more and more people banking sans branch, like I do, surely the best thing to do would be to convert these 316 branches into places of hospitality?
They could perhaps be converted into burlesque bars , offering good food and drink, with a couple of cash machines to emphasise their heritage. It would certainly do wonders for the image of bankers. They wouldn’t even have to change the signage, if they called them Royal Burlesque Shows.
Don’t-Get-Mad-Get-Even-Charities
There has been a sprouting of charities lately, where people who have lost a near and dear one have setup an appropriate charity.
I came across the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust, some months ago. In the last few days, three more charities of this type, have been the subject of lengthy reports on BBC Television.
It can’t be anything but a good thing, as obviously the money is properly targeted to help write the awful wrong, they have suffered.
Margate’s Roller Coaster
According to news reports, it’s now on English Heritage’s At Risk Register. Read about it in the Telegraph here.
It’s funny, but it’s the only roller coaster I’ve ever been on.
The Self-Filling Bath
I am refitting my bathroom in the next few weeks, as the current bath is one of Gerry’s El Cheapo specials, which is actually dangerous to get in and out of. It also has taps that work on a hot-one way, cold the other basis. There’s a video here.
I’m fitting a whirlpool bath and whilst talking to the saleslady, I thought it would be nice to have an self-filling option. I was told she’d never seen one. On the other hand you can get taps that set the temperature.
I searched the Internet and haven’t found a system.
I wonder why not! It’s a dream for a farmer, a builder or someone who works outside in the cold, wet and filth. Imagine you’re just coming to the end of a hard working day and are walking home or just about to get in your vehicle to drive there. You bring up an app on your smart phone or send a text from your Nokia 6310i to tell the bath to get itself ready in fifteen minutes say. It then fills itself to your required level and temperature, a couple of minutes before you get home.
The logic for the self filling bath is overwhelming. Even in my situation here, I would love to be able to set it off and then perhaps finish a post on my blog or a bit of cooking, whilst it was filling. After all,most of us just hang around in the bathroom, whilst waiting for the water to get to the required level and temperature.
It’s not that the technology is at all difficult. In my view, you wouldn’t actually measure the depth of water directly, but probably by weighing the bath with a simple load cell.
It’s just straightforward automation, that’s been around for years.
What I can’t understand, is why it is not commonplace? But then there are other simple pieces of automation that aren’t either.
An Interesting Take On American Sports
I just found this article entitled US Sports Going The Way Of The Gladiator, on CNN’s web site.
These are the first two paragraphs.
Are American sports fans turning into the citizens of ancient Rome, turning up to sports events to see mayhem akin to gladiators fighting for their very lives?
Stars in two of the country’s most prominent sports were asking those kinds of questions Sunday.
Here in the UK, we’ve made our sports a lot safer. Cricketers now wear helmets and even our footballers wear protection on their lower legs.
But after reading the article on CNN, it might appear that the United States is going the other way. Read the article and the comments and draw your own conclusions.
A Cafe For Legal Henrys
I saw this cafe in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
A Cafe For Legal Henrys
What is the plural of Henry, by the way?
A Fountain In Primrose Hill
I saw this fountain in Primrose Hill yesterday.
Sadly, I don’t think it was working. My dietician told me I must drink more water.
Best Turkish Barber In
This sign made me laugh!
Best Turkish Barber In
It also reminded me of the limerick.
There was a man called Lime
Who tried to make up a rhyme
Things all went fine
To the very last line
Where he had far far too many words to fit into the space available.
What’s Happened To Me?
This is not a bad post, but I’ve changed over the last few weeks.
I think it is actually that I have got much more confident. Why I don’t know, but my confidence seemed to improve greatly, when I changed my doctor. Perhaps, it was the decisive act of changing or it could be that the new doctor has actually fixed a couple of my problems. I don’t know and I don’t care why!
But take today! I went for a lunchtime drink with my financial advisor and normally, I just have a drink and go. But today for some reason, I made the decision to stay behind and have the kedgeree. It was almost, as if I’ve got some sort of fear of the unknown and generally only eat in the same places.
Before and after lunch, I also found it easy to post to my blog and I wrote several complicated e-mails to people. It was almost as though something had unlocked in my brain. Strangely, this has happened before and also it happened before I had any stroke. I remember coming home after a glorious holiday in Malaysia and virtually vegetating for several months.
And then this afternoon, I felt I ought to see a show of some sort this evening. So I went up to the Angel to get a paper and checked what was on at the cinemas there. I noticed that Untouchable was on at 20:10 at the Vue. I didn’t expect I would go, so I bought myself a supper in Waitrose.
But I did go in the end and bought a Senior ticket for £7.10. It was in a new screen and a lot better than last time, I went to that cinema.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Coming out I also solved my friend’s dress problem. Or at least in my mind, I got a plan of action! She will hate my solution, but it has to be tried.
In some ways this extreme decisiveness started on Saturday, when my son told me to go down to John Lewis and check out carpets. But I’d already gone to Primrose Hill to sort out bathroom suites, as requested by my builder.
I might have a theory that works.
I think by nature I’m a man who likes to be ordered around and people have always used that to get the best of my brain. There’s nothing more I like, than to be presented with a problem and told to go and solve it. Living alone, I don’t get that stimulus!
C didn’t take advantage of me, but would get into a flap all the time, knowing that I’d rescue her from her predicament, often with an unusual solution. I remember one day, she was in a very sour mood, as she was doing a very difficult and disturbing case for the local County Council, where the other side was represented by a QC. What made her angry as well, was that she had the difficult side and the QC was getting three or four times she was. So I asked, what would happen if they got a QC on their side? She said that the Council wouldn’t pay. I said why not and all her barrister’s insecurities kicked in and she said they were mean and wouldn’t. But I said you had a good argument as the other side had a big gun and surely fairness should prevail, so I told her to ask. The Council capitulated and she was led by a real gentleman of a QC, who used all the work she had done and eventually won the case. Her clerk put in for the largest fee she ever earned and we had two weeks holiday on the result.
My problem now, if I have one, is to sustain this mood, which is not unlike the one I had that night in the Star at Lidgate, as we trawled through her problem.
It’s now just after midnight and I’m not tired. I’ve also only had one drink of half of cider all day, other than tea, coffee, milk and orange juice.
So it’s not the alcohol talking, as that’s long gone from my system.
The Anonymous Widower 