Skip to main content

Dear Bankers...

I seem to have posted a string of rants lately. Perhaps it's something to do with it being half term this week (parents will understand). So here we are, fresh and revitalized(ish) on a Monday morning, and I think it's time to take on the bankers.

No, not about the ridiculous bonuses earned by those in certain sectors of the business. Nor even about their abysmal handling of world finances leading to the recession. This is more practical everyday stuff. When will banks learn that weekends are trading days?

The high street banks make a pretence of being open on Saturdays. Some even open their branches on Sundays (though not many). But this is a zombie-like facade. Underneath everything is dead. Can anyone explain to me why it is that electronic transactions made over the weekend don't go through until Monday? Is there something special about banks' computers that mean they have to rest over the weekend? Despite all the so-called modernization and the ability to put through transfers almost instantly during the week, at the weekend everything grinds to a halt. If I make a transaction on Friday evening, it won't appear until Monday.

I think this ridiculous lapse in service is only acceptable if banks agree to stop charging interest over weekends. After all, if they aren't working for us, why should we pay? The most bizarre thing is that in computing terms it must be harder to delay things over the weekend than just to put them through. They have gone out of their way to give us bad service. And that seems inexcusable.

Photo from Freefoto.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope