Talking about spelling and pronunciation,my dear youngest daughter, asked Google what is the Welsh for 100, I apologize in advance to the Welsh, because I don't know how to spell it,I understand the word was CAN'T but er, sounded rather different!!!
Pronunciation locally here is famously odd but yes 'can' is pronounced 'cun'. If I ask if I can do something someone will answer 'yes you cun' but if I can't it's much funnier.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I hate how the onus for 'things' has been pushed back on the consumer. From banking to shopping, it's been a case of increasingly rapid change.
I semi understood when they tried to push the move from cash to plastic, and because computing power/storage wasn't that advanced at the time, away from signatures (hard to store and verify - then) to pins (easy to store and veify, but harder to prove who used it). Now plastic is old and payments are going more online/phone and security also then changes to suit.
Shopping - my local SM has been seriously pushing scan and shop for months - with the obvious reduction in manned tills.
If I apply for anything now, forms tend to be online and are filled out and entered onto the target system by the consumer - me.
If I need support on some product or service I have bought, the larger companies use so called intelligent online knowledge bases OR have self help community forums. Contact a person? Have you tried to do that?
Odd how it's all changed eh? For the best? Hmmmm. The companies push that it's done for the benefit of the consumer, but all I see is the reduction in both jobs and human interaction.
Remember the 'I promise to pay the bearer' on bank notes as the notes themselves were worthless so the banks had to get across that a £1 note was the same as having a £ of gold or silver (which in itself is notional anyway eh? Was a pig worth a silver coin or two?) in your pocket. Now we just have numbers on a screen. If I type £1 here is that worth a pound of gold or is that £1 counterfeit? From barter to the exchange of bits,bytes and nibbles in 100 years.
Covid has been a shock as it wasn't necessarily under human control, but the biggest threat by far to man will be something that is totally under our control, that we seem only to happy to ignore - the seemingly inexorable march towards AI. But will man control AI, or AI man? What would be the benefit of man to AI?
All that brought on by Britbox and Panasonic...they released a version of their product that didn't work on my TV class. Spent months trying to get it fixed. Now they have a fix but apparently I have to contact my TV manufacturer to sort out the release of their product.
Panasonic - had a SC-All05 'smart' speaker given to me for Christmas a couple of years back. Brill. Has presets for internet radio stations, can connect via DLNA to my music server and has other 'music' services avallable. Grand. Then Panasonic stopped using their radio service provider - and hey presto the presets no longer work. So physical buttons - part of the selling points of the device - don't work because of software service changes. Do Panasonic care? Rhetorical.
But, it's sunny outside and I saw my daughter for the first time in 4+ months yesterday for a walk in the country - even though I'm not sure I can or should be making unnecessary trips. But who knows anymore. .... just googled it:
'...
You should continue to minimise the amount you travel where possible.
This means you should avoid making unnecessary trips and combine trips
where possible.
...so what I did was wrong. But presumably all those people travelling to Primark and town centre pubs and cafes had some form of dispensastion - or a Covid vaccination passport?
The numbers are frightening but required in some areas of London just to get onto the bottom rung of the property ladder.
Maybe London prices NEED to fall, rather than fuel house price inflation?
I wouldn't argue with that sentiment but it's not likely to happen. Mortgage lenders really can't lose. Either people pay a fortune for god knows how many years to live in overpriced houses, or they fail to keep up the payments and the bank repossesses and sells the property to somebody else who wants to give it a go.
When we bought our first home the most we were permitted to borrow was 2.5 times joint income and I wasn't prepared to stretch our finances that far. How people manage now I have no idea. When my nephew purchase his first house the mortgage was at least 4 times joint income. His wife has since had a baby and reduced her hours. He is now constantly looking to work overtime. That's no life.
Will London prices drop? With more people able to work from home perhaps the need to be in London for a London based employer might decrease. People then move to nicer places to live where property is cheap compared to London so demand drops and anyone left there is on negative equity because prices have tanked!
Meanwhile us Northerners have to get our shotguns, flaming torches and pitchforks out to stop the londoners from buying houses up here and turning the slightly less nice than the lake district parts into London House price areas. I think the previous owner of our house left a pitchfork I could use for that!!!
I hope that London house prices become more reasonable. It's a nice place round here without a load of Essex types taking over. Have you even seen that Essex reality TV show? Jeez! Locals wouldn't know what to make of them!
Seriously though, I am completely happy with the fact I've managed to make a living in the North West of England. I went to London last time at 19 years of age as part of a University and professional Institute arranged event. I was never so glad to be back. I've not been back since!!! South lakes is possibly one of the best places to live in the UK. All at house prices exactly as they were 14 years ago.
Apparently there was a bit of an exodus from the cities to the countryside between lockdowns. I guess it all depends on what businesses decide to do long term. Some offices are gone altogether but others are back as they were (ours haven't decided what they're going to do yet which is very irritating). I know there is a lot of kickback from some of the big banks wanting everyone tied to their little desks again
Posts
"The policy, announced in the Budget, is designed to help more first-time buyers secure a home."
"The new scheme will be available to anyone buying a home costing up to £600,000, unless they are buy-to-let or second homes."
"first time buyers" borrowing £600,000 ! Well no problems lying ahead there then eh? I'm sure none of those will default on payments.
You should continue to minimise the amount you travel where possible. This means you should avoid making unnecessary trips and combine trips where possible.
...'
from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-coronavirus-restrictions-what-you-can-and-cannot-do#travelling-within-england
...so what I did was wrong. But presumably all those people travelling to Primark and town centre pubs and cafes had some form of dispensastion - or a Covid vaccination passport?
Grumpy or what?Meanwhile us Northerners have to get our shotguns, flaming torches and pitchforks out to stop the londoners from buying houses up here and turning the slightly less nice than the lake district parts into London House price areas. I think the previous owner of our house left a pitchfork I could use for that!!!
I hope that London house prices become more reasonable. It's a nice place round here without a load of Essex types taking over.
Seriously though, I am completely happy with the fact I've managed to make a living in the North West of England. I went to London last time at 19 years of age as part of a University and professional Institute arranged event. I was never so glad to be back. I've not been back since!!! South lakes is possibly one of the best places to live in the UK. All at house prices exactly as they were 14 years ago.