On Line Loan Applications
Someone just tried to put a link to an on-line payday loan company in this post on my blog. As you can see the post is about wind power, so why would someone interested in wind power and Ireland, click away from the page to some dubious on-line loan provider?
I deleted the comment, as I always do with those that aren’t constructive to the blog.
But it got me thinking!
So I typed.
online loan application
Into Google to see what turned up.
The first page had about twenty links, of which only half were for legitimate sources in my view. The rest were in my view the on-line providers, that I find dubious.
I’ve also looked at my spam and note, there are quite a few payday loan companies trying to advertise using my site, but they have been stopped by the spam filter in WordPress.
A Million Items Short Of A Full Search
A new search engine called Million Short has arrived on the Internet.
You search, just as you would with Google or your preferred search engine, but it cuts out a required number of results, like a million or a thousand, from the most used web sites.
Click here to try the search.
It might tell you something useful, but on the other hand it’s fun!
Is It The Time To Put RBS Down?
RBS looks like it will be facing large fines from both the UK and US authorities according to this report on the BBC web site. The report starts with this paragraph.
Any fines by US authorities on Royal Bank of Scotland over the Libor scandal should be met by bankers not taxpayers, Chancellor George Osborne has insisted.
But even if it finds this the money to pay the fine from bankers bonuses, the saga of this worthless company just goes on. They still don’t seem to have managed to get rid of the 316 branches, that they tried to offload to Santander.
If the bank were to be put into administration, customers would do the thing, that they should be doing now and that is move their accounts to another bank.
I do wonder how many people still bank with RBS or its subsidiaries?
At the moment the bank is just a zombie, whose only use for most of us is to get cash out of their cash machines.
Would anybody except the employees miss it, if it was put down? I doubt it. But I suspect most of the good employees have already left the bank.
Where To Park In Edinburgh
This article is the second most popular on the BBC’s web site.
I just wonder how many of the viewers are from Glasgow!
Surprisingly, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Edinburgh tram.
Railways In Afghanistan
In Modern Railways this month, there is an informative article about how they are starting to build railways from scratch in that trouble country.
Apparently, they never developed a railway system, like neighbouring countries, and only now, with the need to remove vast amounts of natural resources around and out of the country, that the railways are being proposed.
It is a daunting task, made worse by the mountainous terrain and the fact that surrounding countries have a variety of different gauges.
Let’s hope the engineers succeed in their aims, as it might bring some wealth, prosperity and freedom to the country. There is a Wikipedia article, which gives more details.
What’s This All About?
I went to lunch at Leon in Kings Cross station today and saw this small crowd afterwards on the concourse.
Does J K Rowling realise what she’s started? I suspect her bank account does!
My Father Was A Real Cockney
My father was born in Islington and although he had all the rhyming slang and other knowledge, he never called himself a real Cockney, who was born within the sound of Bow Bells. Today, he wouldn’t have been, but when he was born in 1904, he would probably have been born inside the area, as indicated by this map.
I went past the church of St. Mary-le-Bow today and took some pictures.
According to the map, I think that both my maternal grandparents and possibly my paternal grandfather, were all born in the required area. So I could be three-quarter Cockney.
Twenty Three Celias
I’ve now unpacked all the beer and they’re sitting on the kitchen worktop.
Twenty Three Celias
There was twenty four, but one got drunk.
The Man Who Didn’t Know How To Use The Buses
Whilst waiting at the Angel for a bus, I was approached by a guy, who asked if he could buy a ticket on the bus to get to Stoke Newington. I told him he could, but as he looked to be in his sixties, I asked him, if he was eligible for a Freedom Pass. He was 65 and lived in Hackney, so he was!
But he said he’d never used the buses, as he was a mini-cab driver.
Perhaps major bus stops like the Angel, need instructions on how to use the buses.
Are The English Arrogant?
This post was selected by the phone-in on BBC Radio 5.
I don’t think arrogance is the word. But there is a class of the English, that has extreme self-confidence, which means they do things that are exceptional.
David Beckham is a classic modern example, as there are few people, who have achieved what he has done by pushing themselves to the limit.
Throughout history, we have had English leaders who could probably have been considered by some to be arrogant, but they just had this amazing self-confidence. Just look at Churchill, Nelson, Hawke and Thatcher for a start. In sport, there have been quite a few with it too like Bradley Wiggins, David Hemery, Stanley Matthews, Fred Perry, Nick Faldo, Will Carling, Geoffrey Boycott.
and then there’s the arts and the media, with people like David Hockney, Laurence Olivier, Henry Moore and David Attenborough.
You might think that I’m being very male and white oriented here, but I am tending to pick people, whose careers started and in most cases finished many years ago. In a few years time, the list will probably be different. But even now, you can pick many women and those from the broad non-white community, who owe their success to a supreme self-confidence.
So why are the English like this?
It’s difficult to find a definitive reason.
The Anonymous Widower 
