Yesterday my wife received a letter to say that her hospital appointment next week has been moved another hospital. Although not much further than the hospital she was due to attend, parking at and around the hospital is a nightmare plus the hospital itself is a maze of buildings added over the decades to an original building dating from the mid 1800s. I drove across today to check access due to her limited mobility. Turned into the road signposted for the building she needs only to discover building work and the road closed! I ended up parking at the other end of the hospital and finding a route through involving lifts and a very long walk, long for her at least. No sign of any staff and certainly no wheelchairs. I'm sure she'll make it because she is extremely stubborn which for once will be a positive trait.
Thousands of people do have their Bank accounts cleared out. There was a program on a couple of months back, about folk having their mobile phones stolen, unless you have the appropriate security safeguard in place and a hell of a lot of people don't, they have access to your bank account details. Dove,I'm definitely not going to the post office after all their mistakes. We've lost our village one. Post office and bank quite near each other. I've got 6 months to pay in the cheque. Only went into town because the blasted woman at the DVLA told me to claim a refund. Obviously, the left hand doesn't work with the right. I ironically, went into the bank while I was in town.
There are still people in banks here @B3. OH does all our banking online but we can see a real person if we need it.
@Liriodendron I did make mint jelly in our first year here and it was fine but Possum wants "the real thing". Given the price of "real" mint jelly she's not going to have the choice once the last lot of jars is scoffed. They'll not last long as she does tend to have lamb with her mint jelly rather than the other way round
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Would you trust any of the people who are spending their energy on bringing AI to 'life'? How and why do they think they can ever control the goals of an intelligent 'form' that is more intelligent than them? How many parents control their children - the whole point is that each new 'life' has and sets its own goals - that may/may not agree with their parents'.
Why on earth would anybody construct a public building whose materials have a 30 year lifespan? Yeh I know cost, short termism, backhanders ..... I would expect my garage to last longer than that - if I ever get around to replacing it.
When I started work, my first job was as a trainee Quantity Surveyor. My boss told me a story of a building which had been constructed using a new technique (new at the time of construction) which involved concrete beams with a slight upward curve toward the centre, with reinforcement rods which were put under more and more tension as the building grew floor by floor. The technique worked perfectly, until the time came for the building to be demolished. Only then did anybody ask how they could take the building down without coming to a point where the tension would be so great that the concrete beams would bend up and potentially send lumps of building flying through the air. Tension in the beams couldn't be reduced so they ended up using explosives to bring the building down. Moral of the story? Architects and designers are only interested in what a building looks like when it goes up. They couldn't care less about the future.
And most politicians are only interested in the future life of their projects as they coincide with the future of their careers. Once they’ve left politics they’re not going to give a tinker’s cuss whether their projects continue to meet the needs of the country they were supposed to serve.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
When I worked at DWP we had a visit from the Pensions Minister, I don't remember his name. At the end of his visit he had a Q&A session which was actually quite informative. He was fairly newly appointed and was asked his priorities and responded that sorting the mess around ESA, which was new at the time and the systems were riddled with bugs. He qualified that by saying he didn't know how much he would be able to achieve as it was rare to stay more than 3 years in any role. He went on to explain that in the first year you are really learning the job and where problems lie, along with prioritising those problems. Second year you feel you may actually be achieving something, but in the third year you will probably already have been told where you will be moving to but you can't do anything to prepare for that because you have the current job to do. Then the roundabout starts all over again. To hear a minister speak so openly was really a surprise.
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@Liriodendron I did make mint jelly in our first year here and it was fine but Possum wants "the real thing". Given the price of "real" mint jelly she's not going to have the choice once the last lot of jars is scoffed. They'll not last long as she does tend to have lamb with her mint jelly rather than the other way round
I would expect my garage to last longer than that - if I ever get around to replacing it.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.