Watching last night eggheads the team were all from / linked to Soho and I was so wishing them to say they were a pimp / escort / madam or something similar, just to see the look on Vine’s face and raised eyebrow from Chris.
The non story that pops up every so often, about getting rid of 1p and 2p.
Inflation would be rampant, as you can’t see *9p being rounded down to be *5p. Although the only reason for *9p is to ensure items go through the till, so they might round down. Also counter charity tins wouldn’t get the odd coppers put in them.
it would also mean I couldn’t fill auto tills with 1s and 2s.
not to mention a rebranding of the 99p shop!
I think it’s not as crazy as it sounds… I know a number of banks are pushing towards a cashless society - counting, distributing, and storing cash costs a lot, and creates risk. For consumers, contactless payment often makes buying something easier and quicker when using a card than using actual cash.
I read a story the other day about a charity that had installed a contactless payment sensor as an alternative to giving cash to homeless people. Maybe the stand alone charity tins will be replaced by something similar…?
London Underground are slowly moving towards a cashless system.
The ticket offices are already gone, Oyster and Contactless will soon be only option (they want to get rid of paper tickets) the long term goal is to get rid of Oyster too so that the only way to pay will be by contactless payment.
The only issue is the US as they haven’t even found chip and pin yet let alone contactless.
A cashless society is a disaster in managing personal finances waiting to happen. There is also the charges for card use to businesses, which bring about you can pay by card as long as you spend a certain amount.
In my first job I was paid in cash, collected from the pay office. You knew that you had that amount of money to use each week. I had mates who went on the lash and by Tuesday were on the ponce. I set myself an amount each week and always had spare. My next job was paid into the bank as it has been ever since, but I got and still get money out each week to pay for petrol and other bits. I think this is why I paid my mortgage off years in advance. It would be very easy to lose control of your money paying by card for everything. My wife does more online shopping etc than I do, but she writes everything down and reconciles against her monthly statement.
I’ve never seen paying by card as being much quicker than cash, not that fast that I’d find myself with hours to play with each week. If saving a few seconds a day gets them off, so be it. I need a bit more than that.
The RBL are trying to go down cashless collections, but I think they’d lose out on the people who stick 10s and 20s in the box for a normal poppy. Never fails to amaze cadets. Would we be able to leave cadets with a machine, like we do with a tin? A donation should be a donation, not a fixed amount pre-determined by someone or other. Like those poxy “text 12345” to give £3 a month adverts. If someone stuck a machine in front of me and said the minimum is £x I’d walk away. The RBL set up a shop last year in a local shopping centre and that was card only for over-priced poppy items only. People went to the local branch stand.
Banks want a cashless system so that they can close branches and as Daws says with LT and other rail and bus firms means they can close ticket offices and just to get rid of people. There is probably a benefit to bus drivers. My local Barclays changed to one which is more automated, it’s still got 2 tills. They tried to convince me to have mobile/online banking. I said to the woman, well if you don’t want a job that’s your outlook, but at the moment you need people like me who want to use a branch. The bill paying machines take ages compared to the girl at the till.
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three things…
Lambing is now done. i stink, i’ve had about an hours sleep in the last month, but it went better than i feared it would given the weather. we’ve lost some lambs, and two ewes, to the snow, but its been another flag racing up the pole of the decision to move from Shropshires and Kerry Hill to Scottish Blackface. you can never compare winters and loss rates completely, but i’d say our losses have halved. the Belted Galloways have sailed through and we’ve already sold all of our meat for the next year…
new dog. he’s working out well - possibly an idiot time to get a puppy, but the kids love him, and he’s been great fun.
best of all, my wifes cousins - who are also hill farmers - have finally and spectacularly rid themselves of the hangers on and leaches who have plagued them (but never around lambing time, or in the snow, or when the barn blew down, or when the fences needed fixing…), but who were always on hand when a free farm holiday was in the offing…
full on formal disinheritance. delicious.
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I did a bag pack over Christmas and raised over £2000. Went to pay the cash into the bank (all bagged up and correctly counted). The cashier said 10 bag maximum. I said charity fundraising and they took the money.
You get the feeling with banks and getting rid of the cashiers and installing automatic machines, cash is becoming a burden to banks.
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I don’t think it’s just cash it’s anything to do with actually having to interact with customers in branches. We have seen banks, locally, move to only machines in what they call a branch, the nearest Barclays doesn’t open on Saturdays, an HSBC doesn’t do cheque cashing on a weekend, Nationwide that has shut its people tills, not to mention those that have gone completely these things affect older people who aren’t (IMO quite rightly) trusting of online, transactions and like interacting with people. The problem has been that because people who like to think they are too busy to go to banks, shops etc and people wanting to sell things from their garage and not actually have a shop, did the online thing take off.
What makes me laugh is the irony that only since we started moving to buying things online, online banking and holding information electronically that have there been concerns about what we now call data protection and (easier for those who want to do it) identity fraud and financial fiddling electronically. Then there is buying something online and because you’ve handled it, looked at it or tried it on it has to go back as it turns out to be a crock.
You only have to look at the ATC, for 60 odd years of forms in a drawer and no concerns about security of information held, but as soon as we move to an online system data protection ya di ya da becomes something that becomes something, as scare stories are circulated by people who should know better. You sometimes have to wonder if what we have now is better than what we had for years and years. At best in the old days two people on a squadron would be bothered or able to get hold of information, but now any Tom, Dick or Harry can, so is it better? It wasn’t until I ran a squadron did I ever It is amusing that I’ve worked in schools and access to much more info about kids than I ever would in the ATC, yet I’ve never had anyone mention data protection in quite the same way the ATC does. I don’t say anything.
How many times do we see stories that some company or other has been hacked and people’s personal details are at risk?
The (internal) move to an online system and the concern about data protection are not a causal relationship. One was based on practicality, the other was mostly just because of the DPA.
Just because we did something for a long time doesn’t make it right.
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Not a matter of right or wrong, just an observation that only when in society in general, personal information started to be held electronically “data protection” became a ‘thing’. Only yesterday a report said that the National Lottery had told online players to change passwords after a ‘hack’.
It does seem that information holding was safer before electronic storage. Just in our case on a squadron there would be 50-60 forms with personal info on, but now someone determined enough could access 40000+ records and have them away and not go anywhere near a squadron building. Similarly a bank branch would hold a couple of thousand records, but now, again, someone determined enough could get away with quite lot more.
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Essentially a fundamental issue with making things easier though - unless you include proper safeguards then making legitimate use easier will also make illegitimate use easier. Imagine you have a fleet of vehicles - it’s generally more convenient to hold them in a big warehouse and keep the keys in one place; but that does mean that if someone gets in then it’s easier to steal the whole lot.
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A report in the paper at the weekend that the BBC isn’t going to switch off the FM signal in favour of digital.
Our kids bought me a DAB radio for the shed and garden it is rubbish. The batteries last no time at all and the signal isn’t all that. My old radio cassette which I’ve had for years and years still goes on and on and the batteries last for ages.
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which is something I have questioned regarding the move for Credit/debit cards moving from a signature to PIN and now Contactless.
its gone from something which needs forging to just having possession of the card
Except in reality how often were signatures checked properly for low value transactions like those you can use contactless for?
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Exactly.
However, I don’t use contactless cards as they’re too easy to scam (I use a phone-based system with an extra authentication on it)
If stories are to be believed you don’t even need the card and can with contactless cards just take money in up £30, by waving a machine near the card. If someone did that 10 times a day that’s £300 in their bin.
The comments about fraud when it comes to online etc payments are valid, even if it hasn’t happened on a large scale. Several years ago I had apparently taken £90 something from a cash til in Munich. The fact I was in work that day verified by my manager and numerous emails sent/received meant I got the money back. I had a week or do beforehand used an outdoor ATM at a supermarket and it seemed apparent someone had done something. I now only use ATMs indoors.
We seem to be on an move to cashless as it’s easy, but I’m not convinced about the contactless. It seems to be far too easy.
Essentially, yes - they would need to modify the machine though as it’s unlikely you could get close enough to surreptitiously use a normally-powered one.
It’s a good idea to be vigilant of anything that might have modified an ATM, but I’m not sure that being indoors makes the machine much less vulnerable.
Once bitten twice shy though. You have to do the best you can. I tend to use the village post office as much as possible for banking, unless I can get to the bank.
It seems we’re going to be without that talentless duo Anthony and Declan for a while and hopefully ever after Anthony’s inability to refuse chemical assistance for life and as it seems a bevvy before driving, no doubt thinking because he’s a celeb can get away with it.
The irritating thing is he’ll do interviews and maybe write a book, (if he has enough crayons) and make a mint out of his stupidity.
If this finally rids us of these, good times.
This is probably the funniest thing they’ve done, although it still doesn’t rank alongside ‘Four Candles’ and the Andre Previn sketch.
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