Super Squabble Champ IV: This game consists of nothing but petty relationship squabbles in which your character is endowed with the mystical ability to zip back in time and record footage of your partner being a massive bloody hypocrite, then zoom back into the present to play it all back on a giant screen in front of their eyes until they quiver and break down and confess that you were 100% right all along. Then you get a million points and it plays a little song.
…it is still a matter of pride that, in Britain, one is never required to discuss one’s political beliefs. Unless, that is, you want to do a certain type of business with the state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland.
Damn it, there it was a lovely clear blue morning and the warm spring day spread out before me. Then I read this by Fraser Nash in the Spectator,and the grey blanket of clouds over Noord-Holland redescended.
It’s bad enough for some of us RBS customers, what with the trillion pound RBS Labour-licensed theft from the taxpayers and sterling’s virtual parity (93p today)with the euro, which is affecting anyone on a fixed income who lives abroad pretty drastically.
Now it appears that the great clunking fist is using his shares in the bank to meddle politically in people’s intimate financial affairs – and he, via RBS, may also be giving enhanced bank services to his political friends and fellow travellers.
Geoff Robbins, a Cheshire-based computer consultant, recently approached RBS to ask for a credit-card processing facility for his business. After the usual bankers’ inquisition, he was asked a question that knocked him for six: did he have any political affiliation? Did he know any MPs, councillors or mayors? It was a new question, the lady explained to him, which had been introduced soon after the government took control of RBS. She said, in his paraphrase, that ‘political influences may be used for corrupt purposes’.
Might’n’t they just.
NB: this is the Spectator and Nelson so consider the source. But I’m inclined to believe every word; as Nelson himself says:
When I first heard Mr Robbins’s story, it seemed hard to believe. But the more I considered the context of this government’s apparently irrepressible desire to pry into every aspect of out lives, the more it had the awful ring of truth. I decided to investigate further and called RBS, who issued an outright denial. ‘We would never ask such a question, nor would we dream of doing so,’ said its spokeswoman. So Mr Robbins had concocted his story? Unconvinced, I called RBS Streamline, posing as an employee for my mother-in-law’s (real) company and asking for the same service.
Sure enough, the chilling question came at the end: ‘Is she a member of any political party?’ I asked why this was relevant. ‘I presume we ask because there is a high volume of fraud in that sector. Because people who are of that sort of [party political] nature, maybe, are inclined to commit fraud.’ The question, I was told, is ‘thrust upon us by the Financial Services Authority’. The FSA says this is untrue. Banks can check clients’ backgrounds, but no one is required to talk politics.
That the bank is being so open about its political intimidation is what’ss truly scary; it’s yet another in-your-face move by Labour to douse potential opposition and is all of a piece with ACPO’s shrill warning of a ‘summer of rage’ and recent clampdowns on peaceful protest.
But what can you do? Unfortunately I’m in the same invidious position as so many other RBS customers: disgusted and scared but unable to move because we need banking services. Try changing banks in the current financial climate, particularly if your income is low or fixed and your credit history not all it might be.
The personal is indeed political, but expressing political disgust? Not affordable.
From news in the NY Post that Bristol Palin and erstwhile fiance Levi Johnson, the father of her illegitimate son Tripp, have split (because she described his criminally-accused family as ‘white trash’) comes this comment epitomising the female wingnut’s gymnastic ability to backflip midthought and blame their own gobsmacking hypocrisy on liberals:
LimoBarbie Mar 12, 2009 8:10:18 AM fault
I wouldn’t let my baby go to the house of a drug dealer either–I don’t blame Bristol a bit for that. White trash is a compliment compared to “accused felon drug dealer” and I’m surprised they didn’t split up when she was originally arrested–which probably was the case. The governor of Alaska cannot associate with drug dealers–she’s a Republican. Only the Obamasiah can get away with associating with known felons like Ayres and Rezko–the communist biased media would crucify a Republican for the behavior they ignore in the Obamasiah.
Ooh, a Tsukahara with a twist! 0 for style, but full marks for execution.
If anyone I almost feel sorry for Johnson. He never hid who he is, apart from his missing qualifications for the apprenticeship he was given so that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be shamed by having a high school dropout son-in-law; and he did describe himself as a redneck, after all.
Ignore the headlines in today’s papers and there are some damn good reads out there, perfectly sized for your coffee break. Grab a nice cup of tea and a sit down and take your mind off it all…
Goth weddings – cool or just horribly tacky? I think we can all agree on which this is:
Click image for more hideous gothery, camo weddings and the ugliest cakes on the planet.
Saltwater Power Could Supply Energy for Most Dutch Homes
A new proposal to improve a 75-year-old dike, the Afsluitdijk, in The Netherlands could make it the world’s leading site for generating saltwater power— a clean, renewable energy source which is 30-40% more efficient than burning coal.
The breakthrough process, which is called reverse electrodialysis, captures the energy created when freshwater becomes saltier by mixing with seawater. Although scientists in the 1950s discovered that electricity could be generated this way, no one knew just how efficient the process could be until a recent study proved that a remarkable 80% of the energy could be recovered.
Unexpected French blogging literary success and supermarket worker Anna Sam speaks up for women checkout operators all over Europe in The Times:
“Something like 400 students graduate with literature degrees every year in Rennes and they pretty much all want to become teachers,†says Sam. “But there just aren’t that many teaching jobs.†Some become postmen, others live off welfare benefit. Many – mainly women – join France’s 170,000 checkout workers.
“Are you in prison?†a six-year-old girl, peering over the till, asked Sam one day.
Not quite. On Mondays Sam would work from 9am to 2.30pm with a 16-minute break. A typical Wednesday shift would be from 3pm to 8.45pm with a 17-minute break. On Saturdays she would work from 9am to 1pm and from 3.30pm to 9.15pm, with 12 minutes off in the morning and 17 minutes in the afternoon. She would scan up to 21,000 products a week, lift 800kg an hour and ask customers for their loyalty cards 200 times a day. At night the beeping of her till filled her dreams.
“There are a lot of health problems in this job – tendonitis, lumbago, that sort of thing. There is a lot of depression as well because you’re completely ignored by everyone: by your managers and by the customers. After a while you become convinced that you’re less than nothing.â€
Sam’s no anticapitalist firebrand – her book’s not Nickel and Dimed, from the extract, but the article’s a great read. I hope the book’s translated into English. I’ll read it.
I’ve been fascinated by ants ever since reading a science fiction short story about an ant-like creature in a despoiled colony desperately trying to write the history of his civilisation in pheromones – I wish I could remember the title – and subsequently discovering Edmund O Wilson’s books in the natural history section of my local library. He explained so much about biodiversity and how the planet actually works; it’s run by and for ants. (This of course was before the hundred-odd years worth of books were sold to finance a ‘learning centre’, or was it an ‘access hub’?) For those who have yet to discover Wilson’s work, there’s an excellent article on ants in today’s Guardian:
What makes ants far more than a scientific curiosity is that this extraordinary collective behaviour from what are, at heart, chemical-sensing automatons, hints at lessons for similar systems in humans too. Neurons are individually relatively dumb but, with billions of them working together in our brains reacting to levels of neurotransmitter chemicals, something creative and remarkable emerges. “Maybe our own brains are using these thresholds,” says Franks. “When you model ants and when you model the brain, there are some great similarities. When our brains are deciding, from visual input, whether to move our eyes to the right or the left, populations of neurons and thresholds are obviously involved.”
So anyway — in 2003, I met a woman online. She was from Western Australia, I was living in Richmond, VA. I ended up selling all my stuff and flying over there to meet her in person. Here’s the story.
