Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you

veronese68

surrey_commuter said:

pblakeney said:

Before I bought my current car I took it for a test drive and upon returning reversed parked into a tight space. This wasn't a revelation but maybe all potential buyers should have to complete a basic driving skill test? I can see the objections already but if you can't drive it you shouldn't be able to buy it.

I agree with the concept but a more realistic test would be to stay on your side of the road when turning left.

I'd say when turning right, the majority cut the corner with a significant number getting all 4 wheels on the wrong side of the road. The look of incredulity if anyone should have the audacity to be driving towards them on their side of the road causing them to stop and reverse or maybe even adjust their line a little is quite incredible. This has got so bad there's a T junction near me with a traffic island on the side road, cars often take the corner on the wrong side of the island rather than make the huge effort of slowing down and turning the steering a bit more. Conveniently there's a pub on the corner with tables outside to watch the fun.

webboo

The Lloyds advert with the wild swimming were the women goes in after the black horses have just gone in the river. Why would you be smiling when swimming in horse p!ss and sh!t.

orraloon

veronese68 said:

surrey_commuter said:

pblakeney said:

Before I bought my current car I took it for a test drive and upon returning reversed parked into a tight space. This wasn't a revelation but maybe all potential buyers should have to complete a basic driving skill test? I can see the objections already but if you can't drive it you shouldn't be able to buy it.

I agree with the concept but a more realistic test would be to stay on your side of the road when turning left.

I'd say when turning right, the majority cut the corner with a significant number getting all 4 wheels on the wrong side of the road. The look of incredulity if anyone should have the audacity to be driving towards them on their side of the road causing them to stop and reverse or maybe even adjust their line a little is quite incredible. This has got so bad there's a T junction near me with a traffic island on the side road, cars often take the corner on the wrong side of the island rather than make the huge effort of slowing down and turning the steering a bit more. Conveniently there's a pub on the corner with tables outside to watch the fun.

I'm at the end of the street / road, field gate there sometimes open, sometimes closed. The number of muppet drivers that come up to the end then realise they'll have to turn around! Far too many 15 point, rev rev, turn no can't turn jokers, do they have licences? Today's example: I'm walking back home from watching the soap box derby, is a straight line along the street, I see a vehicle up the far end by mine, reversing lights on. Takes a few minutes to walk up, the car is still there though it has moved back and forward. It's a straight line reverse, wossamatter. As I pass the car, there's a wumman in the back seat, window down, looking out trying and obvs failing to guide the driver. FFS.

pangolin

webboo said:

The Lloyds advert with the wild swimming were the women goes in after the black horses have just gone in the river. Why would you be smiling when swimming in horse p!ss and sh!t.

And then later on in the swim she's swimming alongside the horses as they gallop along. That's a hell of a swim.

Stevo_666

I like the idea in principle, but how would all the school run Mums get their kids to school?

webboo

pangolin said:

webboo said:

The Lloyds advert with the wild swimming were the women goes in after the black horses have just gone in the river. Why would you be smiling when swimming in horse p!ss and sh!t.

And then later on in the swim she's swimming alongside the horses as they gallop along. That's a hell of a swim.

Especially as they seem to be swimming up stream.

Pross

Why someone with a successful and lucrative acting career decides they want to be a musician and is happy to humiliate themselves singing the national anthem to a worldwide audience.

rick_chasey

Stevo_666 said:

I like the idea in principle, but how would all the school run Mums get their kids to school?

They could all agree not to drive their Tarquins to school and so they can all cycle safely instead.

👍🏻

rjsterry

Pross said:

Why someone with a successful and lucrative acting career decides they want to be a musician and is happy to humiliate themselves singing the national anthem to a worldwide audience.

Have you met actors?

I thought it was ridiculous but one of the less boring things about F1.

rjsterry

The Evening Standard getting confused between reality and TV: in a story about the 1952 smog, they attribute Churchill's actions to the death of an aide... who was in fact a fictional character crested by the writers of The Crown.

webboo

Watching an advert for Garmin on ITV 4 shown on a bike with rim brakes and external cables. Are we about to have a reversal in the current technology.

rjsterry

Jeez. The people losing their minds over Farage being dumped by a bank famous for being sniffy about who it's customers are. It's not an abuse of his human rights, it's a private company deciding they don't want him as a customer because he's a loudmouth who is more trouble than he's worth. Said loudmouth then goes on to prove their point.

Stevo_666

rjsterry said:

Jeez. The people losing their minds over Farage being dumped by a bank famous for being sniffy about who it's customers are. It's not an abuse of his human rights, it's a private company deciding they don't want him as a customer because he's a loudmouth who is more trouble than he's worth. Said loudmouth then goes on to prove their point.

I'm intrigued as who ypu think are losing their minds here.

Putting aside for a minute that it is Farage, this is starting starting to look like a PR own goal by Coutts. Can you imagine the reaction if (say) Waitose started turning people away from their stores if they were known to have voted for UKIP?

Anyhow, quite interesting that Coutts weren't sniffy about some other clients of theirs, some of whom make Farage look positively cuddly:
https://telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/19/coutts-clients-mafia-bosses-dictators-russian-oligarchs/

rjsterry

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeez. The people losing their minds over Farage being dumped by a bank famous for being sniffy about who it's customers are. It's not an abuse of his human rights, it's a private company deciding they don't want him as a customer because he's a loudmouth who is more trouble than he's worth. Said loudmouth then goes on to prove their point.

I'm intrigued as who ypu think are losing their minds here.

Putting aside for a minute that it is Farage, this is starting starting to look like a PR own goal by Coutts. Can you imagine the reaction if (say) Waitose started turning people away from their stores if they were known to have voted for UKIP?

Anyhow, quite interesting that Coutts weren't sniffy about some other clients of theirs, some of whom make Farage look positively cuddly:
https://telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/19/coutts-clients-mafia-bosses-dictators-russian-oligarchs/

My own silly fault for reading Twitter I guess. Everything's an outrage 🙂.

Would agree that they should probably have been straight with him if they needed more deposits to 'offset' the association with his politics. One of the Saudi royal family seems to understand this point and that keeping lower profile makes life easier.

rick_chasey

Well the Saudi royal family also have enough money to make worth their while.

Not having enough cash or interest payments to Coutts and being a politician is more hastle than it's worth, though perhaps they hadn't accounted for quite how much Farage wanted to make a false political point out of it.

He's not doing anything to persuade other private banks that his proclivity to being a massive gobsh!te is less of a risk for them.

Why on earth would any private bank ever have him as a customer again? Not worth the hassle.

rick_chasey

When he started just shouting "woke agenda" in newsnight it was obvious what his game was.

Stevo_666

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

rjsterry

Stevo_666 said:

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

That's not really what happened. They're clearly happy to have controversial clients if the price is right. He's controversial AND didn't bank much money with them.

I think businesses should be able to choose their customers, yes. Clearly there are better and worse ways of easing a bad customer out of the door.

Otherwise we are effectively making political views a protected characteristic, which really is political correctness gone mad.

surrey_commuter

Stevo_666 said:

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

I imagine it happens all of the time but most have the sense not to say it

First.Aspect

Give the guy a break? How else is Farage supposed to get himself in the news?

orraloon

Niggly Fartrage CBE (as in Colossal) is a yesterday / last decade figurine. All about him trying to self promote. If he's so unhappy with dUK, why doesn't he just F off to Germany courtesy his German wife?

Stevo_666

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

That's not really what happened. They're clearly happy to have controversial clients if the price is right. He's controversial AND didn't bank much money with them.

I think businesses should be able to choose their customers, yes. Clearly there are better and worse ways of easing a bad customer out of the door.

Otherwise we are effectively making political views a protected characteristic, which really is political correctness gone mad.

If he was simply below their threshold for banking with them then fine, but their report on him shows it was more than just that. As for Coutts taking business from undesirables because they have enough money to make it worthwhile doing so, they have just destroyed their own stance about 'values'.

rjsterry

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

That's not really what happened. They're clearly happy to have controversial clients if the price is right. He's controversial AND didn't bank much money with them.

I think businesses should be able to choose their customers, yes. Clearly there are better and worse ways of easing a bad customer out of the door.

Otherwise we are effectively making political views a protected characteristic, which really is political correctness gone mad.

If he was simply below their threshold for banking with them then fine, but their report on him shows it was more than just that. As for Coutts taking business from undesirables because they have enough money to make it worthwhile doing so, they have just destroyed their own stance about 'values'.

Surely you didn't seriously think that was anything more than PR gloss?

As someone posted further up, banks close accounts all the time for a variety of reasons. This one just happens to be more gobby.

TheBigBean

There's two factors to this that need to be considered.
1. Having a bank account has become almost a human right. It would be very hard to survive without
2. A lot of the burden of preventing money laundering and the like falls on the private sector.

At some point, these two points may become incompatible. Farage is probably not the case though.

Wheelspinner

Back a few years, I took a contract job over in "The Farm" (New Zealand). Given the terms of the contract, I looked like being liable to pay income tax there, which was a PITA. That meant I had to have a NZ bank account open. It turned out to be a paperwork nightmare to get that organised, just for the privilege of a tax account number there. As it turned out, the contract finished sooner than expected and the tax component was pretty negligible.

Seven years later the bank still sends me twice-yearly statements to remind me my balance is.... zero.

Pross

I would have thought the whole thing having an account with a bank like Coutts is that it is about discretion and that being a two way thing? I don't go shouting about my account with them and so far I haven't had an account closed.

rjsterry

TheBigBean said:

There's two factors to this that need to be considered.
1. Having a bank account has become almost a human right. It would be very hard to survive without
2. A lot of the burden of preventing money laundering and the like falls on the private sector.

At some point, these two points may become incompatible. Farage is probably not the case though.

1.2million don't have a bank account in the UK. I've known of at least one contractor effectively closed down by their bank. It's difficult but I think a human right is a stretch.

And Farage was offered a transfer to a NatWest account, I believe.

TheBigBean

rjsterry said:

TheBigBean said:

There's two factors to this that need to be considered.
1. Having a bank account has become almost a human right. It would be very hard to survive without
2. A lot of the burden of preventing money laundering and the like falls on the private sector.

At some point, these two points may become incompatible. Farage is probably not the case though.

1.2million don't have a bank account in the UK. I've known of at least one contractor effectively closed down by their bank. It's difficult but I think a human right is a stretch.

And Farage was offered a transfer to a NatWest account, I believe.

I don't think I said anything to the contrary.

TheBigBean

Also, I don't think I could do my work with payment in cash as it would trip money laundering rules. I think that would be found to be a breach of my human rights in the ECHR.

Stevo_666

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

Clearly Farage is milking for what it's worth, but I would be pretty hacked off if my bank closed my accounts on the basis of my political views.

There is a valid point here - should businesses be making moral and political judgments on their customers and refusing their business on that basis?

That's not really what happened. They're clearly happy to have controversial clients if the price is right. He's controversial AND didn't bank much money with them.

I think businesses should be able to choose their customers, yes. Clearly there are better and worse ways of easing a bad customer out of the door.

Otherwise we are effectively making political views a protected characteristic, which really is political correctness gone mad.

If he was simply below their threshold for banking with them then fine, but their report on him shows it was more than just that. As for Coutts taking business from undesirables because they have enough money to make it worthwhile doing so, they have just destroyed their own stance about 'values'.

Surely you didn't seriously think that was anything more than PR gloss?

As someone posted further up, banks close accounts all the time for a variety of reasons. This one just happens to be more gobby.

Call it right on hypocrisy then. And in a bizarre turn of events, the Guardian agrees with me:
https://theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/jul/19/nigel-farage-has-a-point-coutts-should-explain-itself

Quote:
Farage makes a difficult case because so many other people understandably regard him as objectionable. But Coutts’ position here is odd. It seems to amount to this: if we find your views lawful but offensive, we’ll do nothing if you’ve got £1m on deposit; but we may dump you without explanation if you’ve got less. How does that align with those fluffy corporate values?