pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday was the day of the listening bank, in this case HSBC. The man in the off-license discovers that my plastic is slightly split and is not working in his machine. Luckily, there is a plastic 2 which is still in one peice and which works. But in town, so off to the bank to ask them to get me a new one. Yes sir, three bags full sir. Why don't you go and talk to that nice red telephone over there. Red telephone connects me to a talking computer which starts interrogating me. After a while, it sez, key in your security number. So I turn the card over and key that in, like one does when buying something over the phone. Not that one, silly, it sez. The security number I want is not printed anywhere on your card. I want your internet security number. That very long number which you are not supposed to write down. Umm. If you do not key in your security number now I am going to suspend your account. Well, I can no longer memorise numbers of that sort and I certainly don't carry it around with me. So, account suspended. Back to the lady at the front desk. Oh dear. Perhaps you would like to wait for someone to attend to you. I start to get irritated by the piped music. After a few minutes, I am led off to a cubby hole where I explain what has happened. Oh dear, he sez. We can't get any further unless you produce some photo id. What have you got? Well, in the same way that I don't carry secret numbers when I go to the offy, I don't carry photo ids. Sorry sir, but that is the way it is. Stuck until you produce some photo id. Luckily, nothing better to do that afternoon, so I cycle off home, dig my passport out of its very safe place and then back to the bank. After a few more minutes I get led back to the cubby hole. Cursory glance at passport. Rather oddly, he tells me what my address is and asks whether he has got it right. None of this mother's maiden name stuff. He phones up the central bunker and get them to do something to the account. Asks them to send a new card to the address we have just agreed on. Assures me that the account is now fully unblocked and we are back where we started, except that in up to 7 working days I should be getting a new card.

All in all, rather long winded. Why could the lady at the front desk not just have asked her computer to send me a new card? What would have been insecure about that? Why did neither she or the telephone explain that once you started on the telephone without your secret number you were stuffed?

Slightly scary how cross I got when invited to produce some photo id. Luckily I stopped short of abuse - for which I understand from TB that there is now a standard charge. We will see if anything appears on my statement. Wasting red telephone time or something.

I also learnt of a new problem from the TB. Supposing two brothers having been living in a house for forty years. Now around seventy apeice. Once a council house, now a housing association house. Just one of the brothers appears on the rent book. That brother is very ill. Might pop off at any moment. It seems that the housing association have told the other brother that, in that event, he would have to be out the week after. This seems to me to be quite wrong; one can only hope the story is untrue or materially incomplete. But, on the face of it, one would have thought that as a state-subsidised-not-for-profit-provider of social housing, the housing association should simply transfer the tenacy to the surviving brother. Perhaps, in the course of time, gently suggest that perhaps he would like to live in a smaller property to make room for a bigger family. But that could be done in slow time. Out in a week seems oddly brutal. What on earth is going on?