The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Why do electrons in the employment of banks only travel on working days do you think? Gits.

My theory is that the 'back-end server' is some low-paid oik frantically copying and pasting data between some vintage COBOL that nobody understands and a hacky mess of Perl and Excel that nobody understands.  Pretty much every conversation I've ever had with anyone who works with financial systems has only reinforced this view.

Actually, my experiences over a career of managing the integration of disparate back end systems rather reinforces this suggestion and I’m embarrassed not to have come to the same conclusion in my own. 

The real reason is that between leaving your account and arriving in another account, funds sit in the bank's account (actually in a special account). Add up all the transactions, and that special account has a heck of a balance.

Which the bank uses to make more money.

So they deliberately delay the completion of transactions as long as possible.

[T42]

Why do electrons in the employment of banks only travel on working days do you think? Gits.

My theory is that the 'back-end server' is some low-paid oik frantically copying and pasting data between some vintage COBOL that nobody understands and a hacky mess of Perl and Excel that nobody understands.  Pretty much every conversation I've ever had with anyone who works with financial systems has only reinforced this view.

Actually, my experiences over a career of managing the integration of disparate back end systems rather reinforces this suggestion and I’m embarrassed not to have come to the same conclusion in my own. 

The real reason is that between leaving your account and arriving in another account, funds sit in the bank's account (actually in a special account). Add up all the transactions, and that special account has a heck of a balance.

Which the bank uses to make more money.

So they deliberately delay the completion of transactions as long as possible.

Yes.  Back when we first came to France we set up an account with a French bank and transferred the money we gained on selling our house in Scotland to it.  It took over a month to arrive, probably going via several intermediate handlers that all embezzled their own whack under the cover of "legitimate" delays.  Another phunny with that account was how every so often a significant amount would be debited for no reason, to be re-credited again in a few days.  They weren't above charging interest if this put you into overdraft in the meantime, either.

I remember being told in history class at school that back in Pepys's time, First Lords of the Admiralty etc. were entrusted with vast sums by the Treasury, with the sole obligations of keeping strict accounts and returning the balance at the end of their tenure.  In the meantime they were free to invest whatever they liked and keep the interest.

[Mrs Pingu]

I left 1st Direct when I was with my previous employer because my pay never turned up in my account until the day after I'd been paid. When I queried this with 1st Direct they said it was their SOP so I took my business elsewhere on principle.

[Mr Larrington]

• Perfectly Good Gentleman’s Mountain Bicycle
• B0rked spoke
• Rear wheel
• Drive side
• Bollocks
• Bollocks
• Bollocks

[T42]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

[Kim]

The BRITISH solution would be for you to keep them at home until bin day, when they may or may not bother to collect them.

[Regulator]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

What was noticeable in Portugal is that bins were communal, rather than for individual houses.  One or two locations per village/hamlet (depending on the size of the village/hamlet) or one or two locations per street in larger towns.  Different bins for different types of waste.

They also seemed to be collected more frequently than in the UK - two or three times a week or, in some cases, daily.  Which I suppose is easier if you've got fewer bins to empty.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm reasonably sure that in Bristol the communal bins in tower blocks, which are just big wheeled skips, are emptied daily or every couple or days, as opposed to fortnightly for streets of houses. But food waste and other recycling, for houses, gets collected weekly – I'm not sure what happens with recycling there.

[grams]

Once you see the how the Forruns do it, door-to-door collection looks ridiculously inefficient and not even particularly convenient.

(communal recycling locations also means you can easily have separate recycling bins for different materials, a crucial step towards the wokerati's dream of 7 Different Bins)

[robgul]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

What was noticeable in Portugal is that bins were communal, rather than for individual houses.  One or two locations per village/hamlet (depending on the size of the village/hamlet) or one or two locations per street in larger towns.  Different bins for different types of waste.

They also seemed to be collected more frequently than in the UK - two or three times a week or, in some cases, daily.  Which I suppose is easier if you've got fewer bins to empty.

That was standard practice when we had a place in Spain - a few giant wheelie bins ("Dumpster" in the USA) - and collected every day (at least they were in the summer, don't know about the winter.

Here in SuA we've had waste food caddies for about 18 months now - one small for in the house and another larger one outside (presumably to load from the inside one?) - collected every week by a very PC electric truck.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Once you see the how the Forruns do it, door-to-door collection looks ridiculously inefficient and not even particularly convenient.

(communal recycling locations also means you can easily have separate recycling bins for different materials, a crucial step towards the wokerati's dream of 7 Different Bins)

"We want eight and we won't wait!"

[T42]

The collective bins here are to have levers on the sides to open a hatch on the top, which will give access to what sounds like a rolling-cylinder airlock. I'm wondering how fool/weatherproof that will be.

Saw a great plastic-bottle shredder down at Super U today. Might take a few down there for the entertainment value.  I'm wondering if anyone's tried it with a full one yet.

[TheLurker]

I'm wondering if anyone's tried it with a full one yet.

Tell us how you get on.

[Mrs Pingu]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

I guess the answer to that is to change your habits and don't be leaving yourself with out of date meat?
We all throw too much food away, as a society.

[T42]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

I guess the answer to that is to change your habits and don't be leaving yourself with out of date meat?
We all throw too much food away, as a society.

Trouble is that it'll take a while to fill the damn things with chicken bones, prawn heads & the trimmed-off inedible bits from steaks. You wouldn't keep a 5L bag in the fridge and the rain'd play Old Harry with it so it'll have to stink it in a corner of the kitchen until full enough to cart down to the municipal fly-factory.  It's about as well thought through as a chocolate teapot.

[Beardy]

Given tha bags are paper, I’m wondering how well they’ll maintain their integrity after a few decomposing items have oozed their fluids.

[rafletcher]

We get the small caddy (Kitchen) / large caddy (Bin collection) combo for food waste. Except we compost most of ours. Some meat scraps go out for the corvids and magpies to enjoy.

[Flite]

I guess the answer to that is to change your habits and don't be leaving yourself with out of date meat?

Easier still, don't buy/eat meat, fish etc
Plant material goes on the compost heap, a bit goes in the under-sink waste cruncher and onward to the treatment unit in the garden.

Our council doesn't do any waste food collection.
If it did, we would just use it for the allegedly bio-degradeable/compostable food wrappings that are actually not home-compostable.

[Beardy]

Marketing people! I ordered an item from M&S on Sunday, whereafter I received two emails the same day. The first was an order confirmation, nd the second, n hour or so later, was a Despatch notice. The reported an expected delivery date of Friday. Ok, but others can do it quicker.

This afternoon I received an additional email telling me that it had now been received by their courier and the item’s status changed from Despatched to In Transit.

I’ve just had a heated discussion with Sarah about the use of language, and how the words they are using do not describe what is going on. I suspect that the product managers and marketeers have redefined internally what the words mean when used in the order status, and have bent them so that it appears progress is being made greater than the actuality,  but it irritates me that they can’t just be open and honest about stuff.

I’m sure this makes me a grumpy old man, then I suspect that the only real change in my status over the years is the age 

[Mrs Pingu]

We just received a lidded plastic basket full of 5-litre paper recycling bags from the bunch that handle the trash in this fair city.  Apparently we're supposed to use them for all food waste from now on. When full we're to cart them to collection points, whereof there will be two in the village.

I can just imagine how pleasant that's going to be when it's 40°C and full of festering out-of-date meat.

I guess the answer to that is to change your habits and don't be leaving yourself with out of date meat?
We all throw too much food away, as a society.

Trouble is that it'll take a while to fill the damn things with chicken bones, prawn heads & the trimmed-off inedible bits from steaks. You wouldn't keep a 5L bag in the fridge and the rain'd play Old Harry with it so it'll have to stink it in a corner of the kitchen until full enough to cart down to the municipal fly-factory.  It's about as well thought through as a chocolate teapot.

Our caddy is mostly full of my daily orange peel, onion, garlic skins and leek trimmings so it's rare that much stinky stuff gets in there, though it can get a bit bothered with vinegar flies in the summer.

[jsabine]

I’ve just had a heated discussion with Sarah about the use of language, and how the words they are using do not describe what is going on. I suspect that the product managers and marketeers have redefined internally what the words mean when used in the order status, and have bent them so that it appears progress is being made greater than the actuality,  but it irritates me that they can’t just be open and honest about stuff.

Given that they're all at it, I think the path of least resistance has to be to accept that the language used reflects order status in their systems, rather than the physical location of the parcel.

But then I don't think it's *too* much of a stretch to say that an order's status may be 'despatched' when all the picking and packing and addressing and courier booking stuff has been done, and it's waiting in the outgoing goods bay for the courier to stick it in their van.

After all, I consider a letter 'posted' when it's waiting in a postbox for the postperson to stick it in *their* van - it would cause me grief to try and get it back, and similarly it would cause systemic grief to try to undespatch the parcel, cancel the courier, put the goods back on the shelf ...

(But no, there wouldn't be anything wrong with calling that status 'Waiting for Collection' either)

[Mr Larrington]

Run out of Brown Drink. Bah.

[Beardy]

Run out of Brown Drink. Bah.

Youll have to drink coffee instead.

[CAMRAMan]

Whitehouse and Mortimer: If you really were in Vesterålen and the Lofotens at Christmas, you would be in darkness nearly all the time, not hours of daylight.

[Giraffe]

Like a fillum set in the Scottish Highlands: time of day 16:50h, broad daylight - a week before Christmas!