Huguenot

Sounds a bit odd, and I can see you were upset. Just to offer a balancing view: reading your description I'm confused about a few things. You say you were mid-transaction but in order for him to put his card in the machine, does that mean that yours wasn't? It seems like you weren't doing any transactions, you were doing paperwork? I mean, it sounds like, as you described, that this was a packed and busy bank with big queues and only one teller. It sounds like you went and blocked everybody's access to the only machine whilst you did a load of paperwork using the machine as a desk? It might even appear to others that having finished with your paperwork, you then started texting on your phone whilst still blocking the machine (even if you were actually using the calculator). It also looks like having been asked to stop blocking the machine with your paperwork, instead of trying to accommodate your fellow customers, you starting to pick an argument whilst still blocking the machine. It must have been exasperating for others who didn't understand why you couldn't do your paperwork and mobile phoning elsewhere? Whilst it doesn't excuse his boorish behaviour, it doesn't seem to cast you in a particularly generous light either? Rereading your account, it's also contradictory: if he was a little man, how did he lean over the top of you? I notice that 'leaning', becomes 'pushing' which them becomes 'thumping'. I mean, thumping is simply assault - which no sane bank employee would ignore (and very few customers either). If he had really thumped you, wouldn't this thread read 'Assault in HSBC'? You'll forgive me for suggesting this doesn't ring true? I mean, it sounds just a little bit, just a little bit, as if there's two sides to this story? Is this possibly the reason why the guys in the bank didn't offer you too much support? (Edited for clarity)

Any non-entertainment ones - Yellowstone looks cool, and just finished Coast 2?

How do you mean Mockers - the public votes on every policy?

I quote.... Does Stern feel angry with sceptics - or, as he calls them, irrational optimists? "Well, they're marginal now," he says with rather withering indifference. When he finds himself sitting next to one at a dinner party, does he even bother to argue? "I still believe in rational argument and communication. It's our duty to try. But it is an area in which people can be deliberately destructive," he says disdainfully. "There's a kind of yah boo argument: 'Don't believe it, don't believe it, don't believe it.' Or using language that's slightly more colourful, like that Paul Whitehouse character who said bollocks to everything. That's the kind of thing. It's yah boo stuff." Stern suspects their perversity is ultimately down to political prejudice. He has no patience with those on the right who assume climate change is just a Trojan horse - an excuse for the left to interfere in the market. "This is about trying to help markets work. This isn't anti-market, this is about making markets work well. My position is pro-markets and pro-growth - not anti-growth. Indeed, it's ignoring the problem that will kill off the growth. High carbon growth kills itself. First on very high hydrocarbon prices, but second and, of course, much more fundamentally, on the very hostile physical environment it would create."

Lol! Piersy as a religious type! :D Nicholas Stern interview - I love his phrase 'reckless'

Apparently nothing to do with the Scottish or farmers. Instead it was implemented to lower demands on fuel for lighting and heating during wartime. It was invented by one of those English whackos who thought everybody was wasting the best part of the day in bed, but only enacted initially by the Prussians with their teutonic quest for economic efficiency. Then we thought it was a smart idea, so copied them copying us.

Okay, I bagged series 1

In fact, I just added Lovejoy ;-)

BBW do you have a fetish you're not telling us about? Das Boot, Saw (hacksawing feet off), Dead Men's Shoes?

Mad Men was and is brilliant - just finished it! Highly recommended to others!

That Sing and Sign thing's a bit highbrow for me. The Shield and Carnival both look groovy. Curb your Enthisasm's a brilliant idea. Dexter's intriguing... Does Oz have any good looking ladies in it? Not that I'm shallow of course. Isn't Deadwood a Western with Lovejoy? Always had this downer on Westerns since beeing forced to watch them at the age of thirteen on Saturday afternoons by my best mate.

The telly out here in Asia's appalling, so mostly we watch boxsets. I've been on Amazon, refilling the coffers and snapped up The Wire, Peep Show, Silent Witness 1, Flight of the Conchords and Prime Suspect 7. We're through the BBC's (rather limited) collection. What else should we be getting our teeth into? Stuff from ITV / Ch.4 / Ch. 5 and Sky?

Sorry Jeremy, my mistake. The 37,000 cars are incoming to the borough from outside. They're additional to the 60,000 registered locally, and the God knows how many untaxed and unlicensed vehicles. When the rozzers did Oakhurst Grove a couple of years back they must have clamped a third of the cars.

I remember Millet's running an in-store promotion around the time of the miner's strike announcing 'Now is the Winter of our Discount Tents' Whilst highly humourous, I think it reflects the fact that the general population wanted some come-back after the parlous events of the seventies. You could argue that Labour had indulged the coal miners, but they didn't have much choice after the oil crisis in '73. The miner's strike was going to happen anyway, and any government would have had to go all steely. I don't reckon it was party political.

Piersy would probably know better than me, but I think the Argies argued that they had been 'sent messages' that they could have the Falklands if they wanted them. If these messages were sent, deliberately, in order to create a war that would win Thatcher an election and a mandate against the unions, then that would mark a new low in Tory cynicism that the Iraq conflict couldn't even sniff at. At least the Iraq war had an objective even if we pretend we don't know what it was. Had the messages been sent by the civil service, then it wouldn't have mattered which party was in power.

I agree with you, motoring is critical for some. (As it happens I just don't think the same thing applies to ED, and I don't think it applies to most motorists. Apparently there are 60,000+ cars registered in Southwark and 37,000 cars come in each day with commuters. I reckon 'essential' would be lucky to cover 10,000 of them. The rest of them, well, you know.... easy innit. Just imagine what a beautiful, beautiful place Southwark would be if 9 in 10 cars simply didn't exist.) The budget issue was addressing early posts in this thread that suggested that parking fee was profiteering, or racketeering. It would be a very poor racket that derives only 10% of outlay. I'd sack the Spiv.

And I apologise again, I was quite rude. :-$

You were disappointed? Huh. Unlike Sir Alex Ferguson, I've never stooped to lambasting the opposition for the same crimes my own team commit. Where's the arms folded smiley? Fisking is the reproduction of another persons posts word by word, and then pursing 'line by line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff' rather than rational debate or coherent arguments. I find it essentially destructive rather than creative, and establishes argumentative position by listing your dislikes rather than your enthusiasms. Load of old poo. You weren't really doing it, just a little bit, on another thread. It was a habit of right-wing bloggers attacking left wing ideologues such as Robert Fisk. Hence Fisking. Hackerage is the act of being a hack. It's a word I just made up in my moment of madness. I was being a little bit rude and unnecessary, and I apologise. I do stand by my point, that you pilloried a giant amongst men as a disabled nitwit, flippantly and hypocritically dismissed your opposition as 'undemocratic' when Major had his own fingers in the pie, and seemed to suggest that Labour's 1970's tragedy was that they didn't cheat when they could have.

What a great idea! Last street party we had was '77. It was fab. Since then everyone stopped talking to each other! I hope my enthusiasm doesn't limit your support base ;-)

For sure, and I haven't mentioned the 'hidden' costs of motoring that aren't in my maths either. They seem to cost the planet, not a measly administration fee ;-) I understand that [email protected] is responsible for communicating transport planning. I think we should ask him! I, of course, just have, and anticipate his detailed budget breakdown!

Great word curtilage, I had to look it up! That's an education for you ;-)

:)

ermmm... note what? Note that the council currently spends close to 10m on traffic issues, and motorists only deliver 1m in revenue? Note that every council tax payer who DOESN'T drive, is paying for motorists? Note that motorists are so vain that they think driving is a right?

Jeez, MM took me to task for name-calling a couple of days ago. In one short note he referred to Labour as sub-optimal without any reference to 15% interest under Conservatives, he took the piss out of an intelligent man's speech impediment, and questioned the legality of our legal government. Twice. A stupid comment from someone who I'm sure will recognise that Thatcher's dismissal was equally 'undemocratic'. Idiot. Piers didn't take you to task because he agrees with your political objectives, not because you're right. Piers is a (scarcely) closet anarchist. Tw@ttishness. Of the highest stupid b@stard degree. What a disappointment. On the substance of your inquiry... Mob psychology would have it that it wasn't Thatcher that took on the unions, it was whoever was in power at that time. It would have happened anyway. As, technically, would most of the other things you refer to. Dallas wasn't watched or written by the British Government, it was the zeitgeist. The people were going to put in power anyone who gave them that dream. Likewise G Brown (what, not Gordon? or just another pointless frickin' insult?) will lose power not because of himself, but because of the lack of imagination that poisons a party of 10 years+. Just like it did for the Tories. At some point people have to get a grip that it is them who creates the country, that votes, that consumes oil, that thinks dead foreigners are cheaper than dead locals. France is France, Germany is Germany because of the culture, not the government. We blame governments because it's a get-out, not because it's true. Even after having written this, which took me 10 minutes, I'm still so f*cking disappointed that you thought you were clever by focusing on speech impediments instead of rationale. You cheap hack. I've also noticed that you've got into Fisking, also hackerage, with the boon of being witless. Never post when angry they say. But Woy? Woy? Woy? Two f*cking years of Major?

I'm loving Tacqui too. It needs to stick. Also agreeing with cdonline. Apart from Tories.