The Furrowed Brow
The place to raise serious subjects of your choice.
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The blog for the afternoon news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
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A clean, fresh furrow to plough.
Okay, to open up discussions today: Why does it always rain on Bank Holidays? Can somebody explain this phenomena to me? ;o)
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Is this really the best way to dispose of a broken bicycle?
This happened on May 14th during the 5th stage of Giro d'Italia.
Dave Millar's frustration is understandable, perhaps, because he was about 1 km from the finish and could have won. But should this sort of behaviour be condoned?
The crowd cheered him when he eventually crossed the line.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIW1MAvyPD4&NR=1
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Glorious sunshine in some parts of the Union BS.
Although some of us have to work :o(
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UTT: I'll trade your weather for your job. It's frustrating wanting to get on with things outside when you are condemned to either stay inside or don waterproofs to get out.
I think it'll have to be an 'indoor' day.
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It's surprisingly dry here, Big Sis - at the moment ;o)
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BS1 It's natures way of reducing our carbon emmissions by not taking the family to the seaside
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There was flooding here yesterday (well, not in the Big Sister House, but just up the road). I'll bet we still get a hosepipe ban next month, though!
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Trying to ignore the weather, as being too horrible to deserve any attention -- like a naughty child whinging about the place...
Someone I know raised a thought that I felt worth considering. He was in Birmingham on Saturday for a real-ale-pub get-together, and found that his group had coincided with the Gay Pride event -- not that this made a ha'porth of difference to his event, but New Street was much fuller than expected, and he got to wondering how he and his friends could have known in advance not about that GP in particular, but about what was planned for any given weekend in any given city. On the way in to London on the motorways it often says something like 'Event in Central London starting noon' or 'Possible congestion at Wembley 1200-2100', but never what the event is because there isn't room on the motorway boards, too.
He wishes there were a website where all that sort of information was put up, so that people who are not fervent newt-fanciers or horticulturalists would know to avoid Trafalgar Square area or Chelsea embankment, say, if there were likely to be a big crowd gathering there to talk about Great Crestedness or visit the Flower Show.
But does such a comprehensive events-website in fact already exist, and if so where? And if it doesn't, how *does* Ordinary Joe Public planning a day out find out what's going on in Leeds or Leomister on the weekend of 31st May, if he doesn't already know that this is the weekend of the Quilter's Jamboree or the County Show?
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Re. the British couple rescued in Oz - how did they become separated from their boat?
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Chris Ghoti (8) thebigeventguide dot com is a good place to start - it would certainly have told you about the Gay Pride gathering.
Failing that just do a search for ''What's on in ........''
I always take a look at the local or regional tourist office sites too - visitlichfield dot co dot uk for example, where you find suggestions for days out, accommodation, and so on.
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Thanks, Gillianian! I'll pass that on.
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Up to an inch of flood water at home today. Plumber call-out tomorrow - it's the drains.
Antone who wants it - clean, fresh rainwayet - is welcome to come round and collect it.
Free.
Frances Eau.
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Or even rainwater. The rainwayet isn't so clean.
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Big Sis: sorry I'm late - I've been busy. But the weather thing works like this:
Friday afternoon, millions of people breath a huge sigh of relief -"Thank goodness it's the weekend!" etc. Those warm, slightly damp breaths rise gently through Saturday and Sunday, and by Monday they turn to rain. OK?
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Somehow, that makes sense, Sid.
I once heard a very sensible explanation of why it tends to rain at weekends and get better during the working week.
It's all to do with us humans and our energy use.
Can't remember the exact details.
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But but but - we use more energy at the weekend than during the week, surely?
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Excuse me please while I rant:
My friend died 6 weeks ago. The death was registered and all the utilities informed in the usual way. As she's both numerophobic and computerophobic, she arranged to transfer the joint-name on her bank account from her late husband to her daughter who lives an hour's drive away.
Then 2 weeks ago, my friend's widow's credit card wouldn't work at the supermarket, so she paid cash. When she went to the ATM for more cash, her debit card was declined.
She visited her bank branch, who let her have cash over the counter.
Meanwhile the daughter ceased to be able to operate the e-banking. She visited HER local branch, to be told: 'No, access has been stopped because your MOTHER is deceased.'
Round about this time, my friend started receiving letters from suppliers saying her Direct Debits had been cancelled. And the first of the cheques bounced.
The bank branch continued to be understanding, and she paid her bills and extracted cash over the counter every day. (What fun!) But nobody could persuade anybody to take the block off her accessing her own money outside of the branch.
Payments were, it transpires, going into the account. She just couldn't get it out again. And what would happen when the cash in the current account ran out? With no means of transferring cash from any other account, either, they all being locked too.
Repeated calls to the Bereavement Department went unanswered. If you were lucky you got music the whole time; if not, you were simply cut off. Nobody would take ownership and sort things out.
So, today, after a half-hour with the solicitor, she and her son and I (as a local friend) paid a visit to the bank manager.
He only offered us 2 seats, so the son had to stand. His apology was: '..Yeah well, this shouldn't happen and obviously we're sorry...' and that came after more than an hour. His first gambit was to get no reply from the same number his customers had tried.
Two and a half hours later we had forced-marched him through picking out all the errors and putting them right; checking the Direct Debits; checking the state of the Debit Card (and the new PIN which still hadn't come after 6 weeks... no doubt because someone somewhere thought my friend had also died); re-re-ordering the new PIN, since the 2nd one ordered by the branch still hadn't come; checking that the cheque book was blocked and ordering a new one; putting my friend's daughter's details on to a duplicate application form (the first one having got bogged down in the whole 'she's dead too' thing) for her to sign when she's here next weekend.
When the bank manager sat with my friend to register her with her own passwords for the e-banking (which the son can use meantime) he asked the manager to let him use his seat while he typed in the secret details. The manager never moved. So I snapped shut the notebook I'd been scribbling and said: "I'll give you MY seat!"
Another 1/2 hour later, bank manager suddenly thinks of fetching that extra chair.
On departing, he didn't apologise on behalf of the bank, didn't offer to shake my friend's hand (or any of us) and didn't even stand up as she took her leave.
The solicitor informs us this sort of thing is not unusual. The banks claim it's about added security because of the threat of ID theft and/or money laundering, whichever is the excuse du jour. Actually, it's about big business taking away local accountability, and nobody having ownership of the customer's actual problem - which in this case is not having access to their own money.
Once this is resolved, and my friend starts feeling angry rather than tearful about it, I will be suggesting this as a story for iPM, Ewan Ures, Money Box, Watchdog, The One Show.......
* takes deep breath *
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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17. It seems like a nightmare, Fifi. I hope all bloggers who know about these things are rallying to help.
16. Big Sister.
Can I ask a follow up question to the wise and the good who blog here (yourself of course included :-)!)?
Al the energy we use - of course the side effects cause the havoc of global warming.
But does the heat emission ITSELF cause problems? All those hot cities and cars etc?
Sorry about not knowing this. but if the answer (that I have been given in the past) is 'No' may I mention nuclear radiation from Nevada, Hiroshima, Bikini, Oz etc which was held, years ago, to have zero effect on anything. Nowadays one would look closely at the stats for cancers (using Fearless Fred's methods) before one would say a dickie bird.
Lastly, anyone been out and about this weekend to see the may in May? Plenty of it, but nary a dickie bird or an insect in miles and miles of blossom laden hedgerows. My paranoia (I should consult a nature calendar?) or real trouble?
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17
I bet I know which bank it was.
Check my 'previouses' for how htey usually are.
I got as far as complaining about the way my Complaints were ignored.
Isn't there a banking ombudsman? And there IS the FSA. But I gave up before that 'cos like so many 'public complaints' mechanisms I found it needed a real expert to understand what to do to bellyache.
Bankers! Every major bank thinks all the others are keeping their dodgy liabilities quiet. I.e. the overwhelming majority of bankers think all banks dishonest.
Their profits are laughable. (What are they doing with all that money?)
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17. Sorry, got Submitted somehow. Must be an Update facility.
Anyway.
Any time we're in a bank queue, remember the cost of waiting is on us, and the profit (from not providing extra staff) goes to the bank.
The worse they treat their customers the more money they make. I think the banks must train their people up in hard headed unconcern for customers.
Surely by now bankers are in lower public esteem than estate agents, politicians and journalists (the ones we don't have truck with).
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Leader - I'm sure you have guessed correctly. Either that or it doesn't work like that.
;o)
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Why do all the threads claim to have (0) comments in them? I noticed it for the umpteenth time when I was going to the Furrowed Brow just now via the bit at the side instead of by 'previous' from another thread.
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Dunno Chris. It's one of the blog updates I think.
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Chris (22) It is because the PM/iPM blogs are the poor relations of the Beeb's News Blog network. Go to other blogs on the network, such as "The Editors" on the right hand side, and you will find a working Comment counter, posts in "the correct order" and marked in British Summer Time - in fact many of the things that we used to have here before the 502 beast reared its ugly head.
A few weeks ago I sent an e-mail to PM to ask if there was any hope of us getting all these delights. Sadly, apart from the computer generated "we got your e-mail", I have not heard anything from them since.
H.
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Humph @ 24, WAINS? I did once get a reply from Marc the Blog Prince, at a time when I thought he'd been retired, telling me that he had been told something by the mods -- but what he had been told was untrue and didn't answer the question, which was a bit of a shame.
And if we complain on the Blog itself, sooner or later David McNickle gets upset and reckons we are 'whingeing', and it's boring anyway.
So far I have received zero, nil, zilch in the way of feedback apart from email by Marc, who is clearly a gent even if he gets told lies, and I have written several times in order to try for anything more meaningful than a computer-generated 'we have modded you for one of the fifteen reasons listed here but we won't say which one' or 'we have received your mail'.
Bah, humbug, or something.
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