The Grumpy Old Blog

The wild and wacky world of banking. I have been a "happy" customer of Halifax for some 20 years now. However, the nearest branch (local cherry, oak and chestnut trees excepted!) to me is either a 40-minute walk in one direction (no, not walking there surrounded by the five tah-ood X-Factor irritations!), or a bus journey in the other. However, there is a Lloyds Bank, which owns Halifax, within five minutes' walk. So I phoned up my own bank to enquire if it would be possible to chuck some cash I'd received into my account via the Lloyds branch. "Yes" came the helpful reply, from a UK-based call centre operative, "it will be credited no later than within two hours". Fabulous, I thought. Trotted off to Lloyds. But lo, they cannot accept cash (or cheques etc). I need a Lloyds debit card. I did my best to explain I was a Halifax customer and that Halifax is part of Lloyds. But to no avail. I suggested the use of a Bank Giro slip. Nada. The cashier said...

"Terribly good" or "Awfully good".   I do not understand these. The wonderfully erudite Stephen Fry uses them with alarming regularity. He's a national treasure, so it is said, which presumably means you can pay an admission fee to inspect his vowels. I thought a national treasure was the likes of Stonehenge, where much to the Swedish Angy Bird's anger, as she jet-sets around the world from one environmental march to another, they have since brought in a hefty team of diesel JCB's to set the henges back one hour until spring. Thunberg, like Gary Crisps (for those not familiar, the appalling Linekar of the BBC -  he has extracted millions of pounds out of Walker's (Lay's throughout the world) to become their ambassador for obesity and cholesterol), seems to have also become a latter-day expert on Gazan affairs.  They both seem to hae a death wish by becoming involved in things they know less than absolutely nothing about, while at the same time de...