Is Nationwide Being High-Handed?
On my on-line bank summary from Nationwide, there is a button saying Upgrade Now against my Current Account.
It doesn’t say any more and I suspect, it would put me on one of their pay-ten-pounds-a-month accounts, which give me a right to useless interest rates.
Surely, I demand something a bit more informative!
A Trip On The Island Line
The Island Line on the Isle of Wight, is a unique train line, as these pictures show.
It was just like going back to my childhood and be transported in one of the old 1938 Stock, London Underground trains, that I can just about remember on the Piccadilly line in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Class 483, as they are now called, still have all the same noises and a lot of the wooden features, although the seats and a few other internal features had been updated.
I do wonder whether old London Underground trains, which generally have been immaculately maintained could be used on some of the far flung parts of the network to re-instate old lines.
One of the reasons, they ended up on the Isle of Wight, was that this line has gauge clearance problems and London’s redundant tube trains fit the space available. And of course, third-rail electric trains are easier to install than those with overhead wires.
There is a lot of talk about using new trams or tram-trains on some branch lines, but surely some retired tube trains, would be a lot more affordable and a tourist attraction as well. Over the next few years, there is going to be a lot of these trains, that will be replaced in London.
They deserve better than being scrapped!
Tuna, Red Onion And White Bean Salad
I’m not a great lover of salads, as I suppose most have masses of rabbit food, but I will have occasional had a nicoise in somewhere like Carluccio’s or Pizza Express or bought one in a supermarket.
On the side in my kitchen was a pack of red onions and a couple of weeks ago, I searched for something I might make and found this recipe on the BBC web site.
I made it tonight.
The ingredients were very simple and this makes two portions.
2 tbsp of olive oil. I used Carluccio’s lemon oil, that I use a lot on fish.
1 tsp of mustard. I used Tiptree. Not Dijon, but East Anglian
A splash of lemon juice.
1 x 200g can tuna, drained and flaked into chunks.
400g tin cannellini beans, rinsed and drained.
Half of red onion, finely sliced.
50g rocket
This is all the ingredients, after combining the oil, mustard and lemon juice in my Little Chopper.
The Ingredients
Note the Estrella Damm Daura, which is the only gluten-free beer I have at the moment.
As I said, I started by comibining the oil, mustard and lemon juice, which was then tossed with the tuna, beans and onion, and seasoned.
Finally, I tossed in the rocket and served one portion.
My Very Quick Supper
The other will be my lunch tomorrow.
Variations In Daily INR
To illustrate the changes you get in INR, I’ve made a graph of my last fourteen readings.
INR 1-14 August
As you can see the level goes up and down, but stays within the limits of 2 and 3, with an average of about 2.5.
Tumblr News Give Me A Plug
I don’t read Tumblr News but they must sometimes read my blog, as this article entitled, Former OFT boss: regulation can be a bridge to new customers, has a link to this post of mine. In that post from August 29th, 2009, I said I had over £30,000 invested in Zopa and now nearly four yeas later it is just a shade under £140,000, with total interest of nearly £140,000 and bad debts of just £650.
I think I’ll accept that!
My investment in Zopa has certainly performed better than pudence’s investment in the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers and Lloyds TSBleed.
An Unseen Advantage Of Peer-To-Peer Lenders
There are three main peer-to-peer lenders in the UK; Funding Circle, Ratesetter and Zopa and I have extensive filters and Google alerts that look for any fraudulent activity concerning these companies.
Have I just not found them, but I haven’t seen or heard of anybody trying to get access to any of their web-sites for illegal purposes. I’ve not even heard of anybody trying to hack Wonga either.
On the other hand I’ve had over thirty phishing attempts in the last few weeks to try to get into my non-existent Barclays account.
So are you at an advantage if you keep your savings with a peer-to-peer lender?
Certainly at present you are! But phishing attempts will come, even though I think they would be a very difficult scam to setup and target successfully.
All London Underground Ticket Offices To Close
This claim is being made by the trade unions in London and it’s reported here on the BBC.
Except for main line stations, you rarely see anybody at the ticket offices. But then they can be busy, as this post shows.
So just on my personal observation, there seems to be a need for some reorganisation of the ticket offices.
One of these could be making sure that passengers arrive in London with a ticket for the Underground.
Modern Railways this month also had an editorial about the rows that are about to happen, when trains in London go for driver-only operation.
I think there is going to be a lot of argument in the next few years.
But honestly, when was the last time you visited a ticket office on the Underground to buy a ticket?
I think I bought an Oystercard about four years ago. I’ve bought one since and that was from a machine.
The Times Gets Serious About Free From Foods
The Times today has a piece about the growing market for foods free from various allergens. They state that the market grew eleven percent last year to £340 million.
In the piece, they have a box describing the success of Genius bread. This says that one of the investors in the company was Bill Gammell, a former Scottish rugby union player and founder of Cairn Energy. They also state that he is a coeliac. We need more to say they are coeliacs and also for newspapers to avoid the dreaded D-word.
Felixstowe v. London Gateway
With London Gateway receiving its first ship in November, the war of words between the port and its rivals is hotting up.
There’s a report here from the Daily Telegraph, which says that Felixstowe will be a cheaper port to use. But it was produced by the port’s owners, so we should probably add a shovel of sea salt.
As a man of Suffolk, who has seen Felixstowe rise from a small dock to the giant port it is today, London Gateway should probably look at the lessons of history, where Suffolk has a proud record of taking on invaders. Boadicea’s descendents will give London Gateway a very strong and probably dirty fight.
london Gateway makes a lot about having the land for a large logistics park by the port, but then you’ve still got to get the containers to the market and can London’s roads, the M25 and the railways cope with getting the boxes away? The Gospel Oak to Barking line may be being electrified, but will the residents of North London put up with container trains at all hours? Felixstowe is at the end of the line and electrifying the line to Peterborough and beyond, with a certain amount of double-tracking would help that port cut costs further.
We live in interesting times!
Bottoms And Alcohol Shouldn’t Mix
I thought this story about a nudist hotel wanting an alcohol licence, was typical of some of the narrow-minded attitudes that still prevail in parts of the UK. Here’s a flavour.
But the application has been met with a bevy of objections that people living nearby are already copping an eyeful from guests who haven’t been drinking.
Councillor Robert Alden fears that an alcohol licence would turn the spa into a strip club and that it would attract “local youths and trouble makers”.
I suppose that summers like this are rare, so the venture will probably be killed by the British weather anyway.
The Anonymous Widower 