You just can’t get good staff (or grandchildren) anymore

While catching up on my reading, I gasped when I read this copy of the Ombudsman News.

The first case is the type of scenario at work that leaves me asking the question ‘why?’  A bank employee changes a customer’s name and lists his occupation as ‘professional shoplifter’  You can only imagine what the name was changed to… While you may feel an initial sense of pleasure of mocking someone while changing their name and occupation, it is only a matter of time before it catches up with you - is it worth it?

The second case always makes me sad and I know that I can never work in complaint handling full time as I would pay out on cases like this.  A grandson (who has now gone to jail) stole his gran’s cashline card and pin number.  He had found the well-hidden card during a number of visits to house and stole the card just after she had suffered a stroke and while the family were waiting for the ambulance to arrive.  He took the money while she was in hospital.  The bank said she had acted negligently.  It is difficult to defend this, the grandson is jailed for theft but the bank blames a stroke-affected pensioner. 

People behave in a funny way.

Booking a holiday

Mr Tosh is away in the US at the moment.  While he is away, we have agreed that I can book a holiday for us.

Well, the Guardian today decided it for me.  Motivated by this, we are off to Tokyo.

I sooo want one.

What would the Ginster think?

A story in today’s Guardian made me think of my own home life. 

A woman in Florida came home to find an alligator in the kitchen, it may have been chasing the cat…

Here is a picture of Ginny in her kitchen

While Ginny is a lover of wildlife…

… I am not sure it would extend to an alligator in the kitchen.

 

 

It’s a question of trust

In the FT earlier on this week I was amused by, Andrew Hill’s piece ‘For Gord’s sake, why won’t banks lend to each other?’  In this article Andrew sets out the what he believes Gordon Brown is thinking about banks at the moment. 

In a more serious piece, it is clear that the Government wants banks to ‘fess up on ‘inadequate credit-rating procedures and failure to disclose writeoffs’ as this had reduced confidence in the global economy. 

The problem is not in relation to interest rates but in the fact the banks don’t trust each other.  In some cases, different parts of one bank will not trust each other either.

Perhaps it is time for confessions and wiping the slate clean so we can start to rebuild.

Election fever?

Things are hotting up in London as Boris seems to be taking the lead over Ken.  But Londoners are generous people and are keen to share this excitement with the rest of the UK, especially it seems Scotland.

I was amused to see the poster campaign being run by the English Democrats in Edinburgh. 

I suspect this is in part driven by the fact that neither Scotland or England have got through to the European cup and we need something to keep us going!

Relative worlds

I was given one of our client’s internal staff magazines today and was fascinated by an article featuring the work of world mapper.  Firstly, here is the world with no distotion to it

 

While I recommend for everyone to go and have a look, I was particularly interested in two maps.  Firstly, my own role of working in the financial services industry and the export strength in Europe:

Interesting how little the US export in terms of financial services.

Secondly a sad contrast to the wealth generated by financial services.  The next graph looks at the first Millennium Development Goal which is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who live on the equivalent of US$1 a day, or less.

The largest population living on US$1 a day is in Southern Asia, most of whom live in India - one of the big outsourcing hubs for european financial services…