Grifters - Or as they prefer to be known, Bankers

There is a really good programme on TV called Hustle in which a group of grifters set about pulling off amazing con tricks on all sorts of people. They make a very good living out of these high value scams and always seems to be one step ahead of the law. The programme is fiction, but hold on is it.....

Move on to a subject I have touched on before, possibly a few times, the City Bankers.
These people have grifting off to an art way ahead of the team depicted on the Hustle. They continue to take millions of pounds from all of us every day and although now and again there is a rumble in the papers no one goes to prison and no one is stopping them.

If anyone dares to suggest that a certain banker isn't worth his £6million bonus they trot out the same old grifters cry, "you need to pay me this because otherwise Ill leave". OK leave, we won't miss you.
And if that doesn't do it they say " you have to pay me millions or you will get someone who doesn't do this job as well as me", really?  Aren't all the overpaid bankers in the main the same ones we were paying millions to when they let the financial system around the world crash. "Oh yes but you have to remember that wasn't our fault, no one saw that coming".... and so they drone on.

The amazing thing is the number of people who are falling for the grifting clap trap they spout and continue to pay million to someone who is doing a job that is no more difficult than any other but who have built themselves up in the imagination as being super human beings, people who are preventing the entire financial system, and therefore the planet, from crumbling down.

Why isn't anyone able to knock these people down to size. Its not difficult to see through them to the fact that they are holding the entire country to ransom, blackmailing the country and making millions for doing very little.

I suggest that not a single one of them could not be replaced with someone equally as good who would be more than happy to do it for a fraction of the cost of these self appointed gods of finance. Yet for some reason no one has the bottle to tell them to go.

How people have let themselves be fooled by these grifters and continue to do so is amazing and as they laugh at us from their multi-million pound life styles we can only hope that one day they will be exposed for the people they are.
Bankers are nothing special, just grifters who rather than scamming individuals are managing to take whole countries for billions.

grift (grft) Slang

n.

1. Money made dishonestly, as in a swindle.

2. A swindle or confidence game.

v. grift·ed, grift·ing, grifts

v.intr.

To engage in swindling or cheating.

v.tr.

To obtain by swindling or cheating.

National Saving and Investiments - Security gone mad!

We are all pleased when the people looking after our money are making sure it is secure but sometimes the security they use is not only over complicated but pretty much useless too.

Take for example NS&I, otherwise known as the UK National Savings and Investments.

I bought some premium bonds the other month and when  I did this they registered me for on line management of my account. While doing this they sent me a form to complete and sign requesting a password for the account they had set up for me.
I completed the form and sent it off, but, silly me in the meantime I have shredded the letter they sent me with the number to log in with.
So I went on the website and hit "forgotten customer number", expecting it to be like every other banking organisation that I either fill in a form or complete an on line contact form, nope it says ring them to request they resend the number.

I phoned, a lad called Kevin answered and in between calling me sir every second word told me that they can't send me the number unless I write to them. But its the 21st century no one writes letters this is crazy you sent me the number in the first place, I just want it sent again to the same address as last time.

He transferred me to a lady who thankfully didn't feel the need to say sir every other word, but oh, this is not what I expected she wants to re-set my password. OK, maybe we do this first so it has to be letters including one uppercase also numbers and also non-numeric, and I have to remember this, no chance.

So she sets up my password as HowtheF***ingHelldo1rememberth15 and then says is there anything else I can do for you, Um yes, I need my customer number, its great having the password changed for no reason but I can't log in without the number which is why I phoned.

We cant send that to you unless you write to us because you could be anyone at that address who has happened to find the password. Um, OK I am now laughing insanely down the phone at her.

So I am supposed to go on line print off a form and send it in so they can send me a form with my customer number which actually would be no use to anyone but me because its me who has changed the password now in any case.

Quite how that is more secure than them just sending me the bloody number now I have asked for it is beyond me and I really can't be asked to bother.

But this is a government organisation so why I was expecting sensible I don't know.

The rich continue to screw us .....

I have blogged about solar panels before but they continue to annoy me as more and more of them are going up. Every time I see one I realise that's another increase in my electricity bill for at least 25yrs and there is the other side to them, they look really ugly.

Look at the picture above of a local house, there is nothing attractive about the one on the right it just looks a mess. And its not as if people fitting all these panels are going to ensure we all have electricity in the future is it, I mean when do people need electricity most, yep that's right at night.

All this is bad enough but the latest thing that is really annoying is the super rich who are putting hundreds of these things in spare fields.
A friend said to me the other day that one of their friends is now earning "£25,000" a year from the government for the power from his cells in a spare field". NO!  Its not from the government mate its from the rest of us consumers who are at the moment paying £1each a month to these people and at this rate it will be paying £20.

The government, seeing that there will be a problem if this continues, tried to change the 43p a unit that people are given to a more sensible level but all their  rich mates are jumping up and down saying it will cause job losses if people don't get to make a stonking profit from their cells.

Even the super rich Deborah  Meaden intends to cash in on it and is also complaining that the government needs to leave the tariff at the unrealistic level.

It seems that not content with being rich some people who are not lucky enough to be bankers so they screw the country directly are now happy to screw each and every one of us under the disguise of being "green".

May the rich get richer and the rest of us pay, nothing new there then.

Thanks for the plant ! How lovely.......

I open the door and there they are, "Its great to see you, come in"  But what is this, they have a large black pot containing a .....

"They had these reduced at the garden centre and we thought one would look lovely in a pot growing up an obelisk on your decking"

Oh did you.... "Oh how lovely, thank you so much! ...... so where is the pot and obelisk then. "I'll just put in out on the patio" .... not sure I wanted a muddy pot on the worktop where I am about to prepare your dinner.

As I put it on the patio I am already thinking sod them why not just bring chocolates or wine!

You think me ungrateful don't you, that's OK, let me explain something then you might change your mind.

Two weeks later, the pot containing the Might-flower-for-a-day-in-july-opsis is still on the patio so its time to take action. Strangely there isn't an empty pot with a spare obelisk anywhere to be found in the garden so its off to the garden centre.
First £4 gone just in petrol.

At the garden centre yipee they have a pot sale, don't they always wonder why that is, and after 10 minutes of deciding I have a suitable pot, fantastic its reduced from £Stupidamount to just £19.99.

Now I need some form of structure for the plant to climb up. A mix of flimsy canes or metal, looking at the canes I better get metal and one that fits the pot and doesn't look like it will rust away in the first drizzle is a mere £15.99.
Great nearly there, just a bag of compost now £4.99

So that's a grand total of  £44.97 and oh look there are the plants they bought me, reduced to £7.99.

Now you still want to  tell me I am being ungrateful?

Keeping Records!

I was sat/sitting in the sauna at the gym the other day where two people were talking, they obviously worked at the same place and I got the impression that the man was the woman's boss. Um, don't go there with that thought.

The point was the conversation was brilliant and went something roughly like this :-

Woman - Well I always input the figures for the target predictions and end of month figures
Man - Yes
Woman - Evon (can't remember the actual name so that will do) never keeps them but I always think its best to keep them all and update the zepha-blinkin-hell-wot-not-thing chart every week I think thats best don't you agree.
Man - yes
Woman - I also keep the fiddled-made-up-data too, I know the computer doesn't want it but I've always kept it, its easy enough to keep a note of them after all, and well if they are written down then if anyone should ask I have them.
Man- yes
Woman - I think its best, Evon never keeps that so I think that even though the computer doesn't ask for it its best to have it, don't you. I often wonder why the computer doesn't ask for them, its something I would have thought it would want.
Man - yes
Woman - well sometimes when we get the figures back they don't tally straight away but then if I have the others recorded then if anyone wants them they are there aren't they.
Man - Yes

And so it went on. I so really wanted the man to stop saying "yes" and to say something like this :-

So you keep a load of unnecessary figures do you, whats the point of that.
Have you ever been asked for them, no, and do you know why they are not stored on the computer, yes thats right because someone decided they were not needed, but your keeping them anyway, plonker.
Oh and the Computer doesn't ask for anything, its a computer you input what we the managers have had the computer set up to record.
And why are you so belittling of Evon.
For goodness sake when I brought you to this spar for the afternoon I was just after a shag, stop boring me to death with work.