Looking Backwards
I took this video this morning backwards from a New Bus for London.
On the way home, I got another of the new buses. The driver/conductor said that they are debriefed about road safety and the incidents they see. Now that’s a good idea.
Red Bull Strike At A New Bus for London
Or that’s what it looked like!
Red Bull Strike At A New Bus for London
The bus made a quick turn and got away safety down the Essex Road.
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.
Politicians interfere Too Much In Health Care
Not me that said that, but the view of Dame Ruth Carnall in this article about stroke care in London. This is an extract.
She went on to criticise politicians for interfering too much in health changes.
She said: “Politicians too often reduce complex medical arguments to soundbites.
“Compromise is a mistake but is hard to resist. There is a political aversion to major changes as we’ve seen with the debate over A&Es.”
But then politicians love to interfere and the sooner we get more politicians who are caring people first and politicians second, the better.
The trouble with healthcare is that for serious problems, there just isn’t the money to have super-duper unit for that problem at every hospital. So especially in places like London, cutting the number of units for each speciality is a good thing.
I would also say do we want to go back to the 1950s and 1960s, where there were loads of local general hospitals, which did everything and usually did it in a less than perfect way. I can’t remember anyone in those days, who was totally pleased with the service they got from the local hospitals in Barnet and Enfield. I, myself, have a gammy arm, which may well have been caused by substandard treatment when it was broken by the school bully.
Surely, the wonderful outcome of the Fabrice Muamba case, should be a lesson to everybody. He was probably saved by the absolutely top-class emergency treatment he revived on the pitch by a cardiologist who happened to be in the crowd and a swift removal to a cardiac hospital.
According to Dame Ruth, London now has eight major stroke units and the political delays cost seven hundred lives.
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.
A Classic Phish
I received this today, purportedly from Vodafone.
Dear Customer,
You have a pending security update on your Vodafone account to protect you against online theft.
Kindly visit http://www.vodafone.co.uk/new_security/update/account.html
Regards
The Vodafone Team
It’s been well setup, but it does exactly what you think. It points to a fake site and probably steals all of your details.
It actually points to a site called eadecom.net which is registered by Jose Canyellas Vila, who gave details of.
josep@senyal.com
LLuis Companys, 1 8-2 Lleida 25003
It wouldn’t make any difference to me, as I’ve never had any account with Vodafone.
Nice one, Jose. All it meant that was your details are now with the guys with heavy boots and even heavier truncheons. You better get the toilet paper ready. You’re going to need lots of it.
I’m not the first person to find Jose. He’s mentioned on PhishTank.
Two Parcels From Roche
I thought the Softclix device had failed so Roche sent me a new one. I also needed some lancets, so Roche sent me some of those.
They both arrived the same day as expected, but one was by courier and the other by Royal Mail.
You’d think they’d use one company!
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.
Marie Stopes
Marie Stopes are rather having a problem with opening a branch in Northern Ireland.
I once met a senior guy from the organisation. He told me, that they do a lot of work in the field of sexual health that doesn’t get talked about for good political reasons. It’s probably wise, as some of the work they do is not at all controversial here, but in some parts of the world where they work, their workers would probably be attacked.
The Anonymous Widower 