Humour

Oct 1, 2010

Beware the Faster Payment

Now I get faster payments. Reason: I made one and screwed it up. The other day I was online, doing banking stuff and, as Her Majesty Revenue & Customs (HMRC) Tax Office is forcing all of us to start doing things online, I sent in my VAT declaration electronically. No big deal and, after a…

Aug 23, 2010

Something wicked this way comes

I guess it's the role of citizens of any country to suffer their supposedly democratically voted leaders, and the role of the media to take the mickey out of them. Now I'm not especially political, but was a little concerned to see this photograph of our esteemed Chancellor George Osborne in last week's papers: …

Aug 11, 2010

Dear Mr. Hurd, how to avoid being an asshole (UPDATE)

For much of my professional life I’ve worked for large American corporations. It wasn’t until last weekend that I realised why these corporations were so dysfunctional. The realisation came about because of Mark Hurd’s resignation as CEO of Hewlett Packard, and it just so happened that I used to work with Mark at his previous…

Aug 6, 2010

Swiss bank implements major austerity measures

Walking through the City yesterday, I stumbled across a real jamboree of people just by Liverpool Street. Really weird. Lots of stalls selling food and loads of people queuing for what seemed like hours to get some of it. What's going on? This is not normal. Ahhhh … it's just UBS deciding that their canteen…

Aug 3, 2010

The Girl Who Messed Up The Bank

We've been lucky enough to receive the outline opening pages of the fourth instalment of the Millennium series. These are the books about Lisbeth Salander, the Girl with the Dragon Tatto who Played with Fire and Kicked the Hornet's Nest. The pages from the fourth book are only a little of the remaining book, released…

Jul 27, 2010

“I’ve just dropped a Santander”

That's the new refrain reverberating along the tweets of the twitterati, after Mark Webber's celebrations were marred by the unfortunate placement of the sponsor's logo: Thanks to Tabloid Prodigy for the piccie, and Jack Schofield for pointing this one out.

Jul 2, 2010

The ginger whingers

ANZ in Australia has been subjected to an assault over their latest ads being anti-bank staff. The ads use Gingis Khan Barbara as a role model of bank service. Having watched the ads four or five times now, they're just very funny. Here's my favourite: Having said that, they do remind me a lot of…

Jun 29, 2010

Why Spanish banks are risky

Walking around the lovely city of Santander, I was pleased to find a Santander bank branch in Santander. Isn't it just a lovely looking branch? Now Santander (the bank) is a bank that heavily promotes taking risks in this branch, which surprised me. Admittedly, it's taking calculated risks but, if you look at the front…

Jun 23, 2010

The post-holiday reality blues

So, it’s just a couple of days since returning to work and I’m already fed up. My PC’s decided not to load licensed and paid for Adobe apps. It tells me to reload and then won’t accept the paid for licence number. Then my iPhone fell on the floor and broke, the crown on my…

Jun 14, 2010

Pay me nothing or I’ll take you to court

A true story … A man received a bill for his as yet unused credit card stating that he owed £0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another and threw that one away too. The following month the credit card company sent him a very nasty note stating they were…