Further evidence of the UK becoming a cashless society – politicalbetting.com
Further evidence of the UK becoming a cashless society – politicalbetting.com
How often do Britons visit a branch of their bank in person?At least once a month: 8%At least once very three months: 12%At least once a year: 20%Less than once a year: 35%Never: 23%yougov.co.uk/topics/econo…
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We have a banking hub, organised by our (now departed by the voters) Conservative MP. That gets a lot of use. Can take out a sizeable wedge from there as required.
Misha Glenny isn’t perfect but he’s good enough for the show to survive
Angus Colwell" (£)
https://spectator.com/article/our-verdict-on-the-new-in-our-time-presenter
I'm not prone to exaggeration but this is probably the biggest scoop I've ever been involved in
Mandelson's partner took £10,000 from Epstein to pay for his osteopath course while Mandelson was de facto UK deputy prime minister, according to new files
https://bsky.app/profile/pickardje.bsky.social/post/3mdnqajjk722b
We had to beg a penny off someone at the weekend as we simply don't have coins (oddly we DID have a pound - parking bag in case the Ap doesn't work).
Have now resolved to carry a bag of pennies just in case.
It's either Bank Transfer or cash nowadays, drawn from the ATM or the Post Office.
DOJ releases final tranche (3 million) of Epstein documents but there seems to be no evidence within ....
“But I don’t think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women, unfortunately.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5715028-epstein-documents-publicly-available/
After a 3 weeks in China were there is no cash used in Tier 1 cities anywhere, I had a very awkward situation when when I was in Hong Kong where cash is still widely used and I had absolutely no cash, only Chinese was spoken by the owners, in the end I ended up Ali-paying somebody in Chinese mainland otherwise I think I was going to be taken out back and dealt with.
#Competition
1) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the House? 24
2) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the Senate? 3
3) Number of MSPs won by the SNP at the Holyrood election? 57
4) Number of AMs won by Plaid Cymru at the Senedd election? 42
5) UK Party recording the largest poll lead during 2026 and by what percentage? (British Polling Council registered pollsters only). Ref +14
6) Labour’s Projected National Share of the vote based on the 2026 local elections according to the BBC? 21%
7) Number of Reform MPs on the 31st December 2026? 9
8) The name of the UK Prime Minister on 31st December 2026? Keir Starmer
9) Will Andy Burnham will be an MP on 31st December 2026? No
10) UK borrowing in the financial year to November 2026 (£132.3bn to November 2025). £136bn
11) UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2026 (1.1% to October 2025). 1.6%
12) Winners of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Spain
@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
BIG news from @bloomberg.com, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* multiple commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps.
This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — literal warehousing of people.
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3mdnqx56xck2v
Seriously considering changing most of my banking to Nationwide now based on that experience.
98% of banking I can do online. But I appreciate having humans there for the other 2%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/illegal-working-raids-reach-highest-level-in-uk-history
emails show da Silva emailing Epstein...asking for money to fund an osteopathy course and other related expenses. “I will wire your loan amount immediated’y [sic],” Epstein replied. A few days later, da Silva sent Epstein email: “thank you for the money which arrived in my account this morning”.
I do not see the connection unless ATMs are withdrawn
You can also get cash from supermarket check outs
Bill Gates slept with Russian girls and caught a sexually transmitted infection, Jeffrey Epstein claimed in emails.
In emails he sent to himself in July 2013, the disgraced financier lashed out at the founder of Microsoft for ending their friendship.
“TO add insult to the injury you them (sic) implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std,” he said, referring to a sexually transmitted disease, also known as an STI.
Epstein then claimed that Gates asked for antibiotics to slip to his then-wife Melinda. “Your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis.”
Belper is one of those towns which has a banking hub rather than each bank having its own branch and it seems to work well. I have heard the roll out of the hubs isn't progressing as quickly as some hoped and that's something which needs to be accelerated particularly for communities where the main banks are gone and there are no alternatives.
Taking the demutualisation money and then being surprised at how the new owners would act is very human.
But they very carefully manage not to interfere* with the big employers, such as Deliveroo. Who have a whole business plan based on not knowing their employees.
*Yes, every now and again they catch a few of the subcontractors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr579mdv4m7o
The United Nations is at risk of "imminent financial collapse" due to member states not paying their fees, the body's head has warned.
António Guterres said the UN faced a financial crisis which was "deepening, threatening programme delivery", and that money could run out by July.
There’s a clear strategy the longer Badenoch’s leadership continues, is there not? Abandon the UK’s political centre, match all Farage’s commitments word for word.
Is Kemi a full u-turn type of person? The only down ramp I see for the Party to junk this policy, is change of leader.
So who the fuck knows?
Literally no one uses Bluesky apart from a tiny tiny hardcore of wanker weirdos, now
Some lefties recently stormed off X coz of some Grok horror. It was very noticeable how they didn’t say “I’m going to Bluesky” - indeed several explicitly said “I won’t be on Bluesky, either, it’s dead”. Which it is
{Miracle Max has entered the chat}
Drat, drat and double drat.
If you need a loan, branch staff will help you fill in a form or give you the details of how to apply, but won't be able to process it themselves.
Loss of a bank branch is a big thing in rural areas, particularly for elderly users. I feel sorry for them, its just a society change we need to get used to. Also feel sorry for small business who incur large percentage processing fees for small value transactions. The upside should be to make working with card payments much easier and cheaper than depositing cash in a bank several times a week
I think cash will still be around for a while yet but cheques will disappear in a few years time, the decline in use is more than 15% year on year
How did the regular punster miss that one?
Trump is laying the predicate for claiming not just massive domestic fraud but foreign interference in our elections, requiring dramatic intervention by the national security apparatus of the federal government.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/defang-ice-save-the-midterms-georgia-senate-spending-gabbard-fbi-justice-trump-2026-2028-minnesota-homan?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
CASH!
As an aside, it is also interesting that the decline in cash and the increasing reliance on electronic money is coinciding with a big increase in barter as a means of trade in the UK.
I see bondegezou has bemoaned that as many as 24% of Britons have a favourable view of Tommy Robinson. We are limited to what we can say here but might I suggest that if some of the people who loathe Tommy Tommy Tommy had shown rather more concern about the issue upon which he has built his entire reputation he probably wouldn't enjoy the level of support he does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'esprit_de_l'escalier
All this will cost and will require robust legislation to ensure there's no repetition of what happened when the previous Government tried to implement the Rwanda solution.
And they give me £100 a year as well.
Jaffna Cakes.
RefUK: 31% (+2)
CON: 20% (+1)
LAB: 18% (-3)
LD: 12% (+1)
Green: 12% (+1)
Fieldwork 28-29 Jan, changes from 10-14 January.
I might be supportive of a similar requirement from the parts of the high street you could reasonably describe as 'utilities' such a supermarkets. A cardless person should be able to buy groceries.
But extending that requirement to every business? Strikes me as adding regulatory burden for businesses where in many cases there is no demand for using cash. For example, an upmarket coffee shop in the city of London is going to have practically zero customers who don't have cards or digital payments. Why force them to add risk and cost for the 1 in 100 customers who want to?
Equally I have no issues with businesses being cash only, even if it means I'm unable to buy from them as I don't even carry a debit card with me to get cash. In practice, that's no longer an issue where I live outside fruit stands at the local market.
I took him to a branch because he couldn't hear people properly on the phone. In the branch he could hear them fine, but they couldn't deal with the problem, so handed him a phone to talk to operations. Operations were in India and he still couldn't hear a thing.
Nobody could actually do anything, despite him standing there in the branch with ID.
Eventually I got PoA and sorted it out.
Nationwide are at least vaguely helpful.
BlueSky activity stats have ticked up a little bit recently, but still way down from the peak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4NnGWHEhIA
AAAAH-AAAAAAAH! SAVIOUR OF THE UNIVERSE!
The Joker, for instance, quite categorically won't work with Fascists.
It should be up to each business to determine what risks they want to take and if they want to take cash, or electronic payments, or both.
And taking cash is a huge security risk.
Anyway…..
In less than 2 minutes he is showing how the NY budget is created https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3mdni4jxkqs2v
Oh and there is a clearly separated budget for long term investment and day to day expenses - that's something we really, really could do with here.
Am I the only one now utterly in the couldn’t give a fig anymore camp .