Sorry to hear about your Grandad

Thanks all. The earliest the funeral can be held is Friday unfortunately.

That's quite quick. I hope it goes well.

Over here that's positively slow... The funeral place covers an entire chunk of Belfast too.

Why is it that when you actually do the right thing and make a back-up that that's when things get difficult? Can't copy this or that file, do you wish to overwrite/replace/etc even though they're patently different files etc

[LIFTED]ing Arse [LIFTED]ing mother [LIFTED]ing sons of [LIFTED]ing [LIFTED]ing [LIFTED]ers!

The forecast was for snow tonight round these parts and indeed it has. It has been the forecast that this would happen for about a week. My local council have not bothered to grit one damn single solitary road. Not one. Not even in the town centre. Not even bus routes. It has just taken me AN HOUR to drive home from the gym, which is roughly three miles - by road, not as the crow flies. A couple of times, I was basically going sideways. There were at least two occasions I was at the point of thinking 'If I don't start moving this go, I'm just going to have to abandon it and walk home in a blizzard'. Luckily I did manage to crawl home. I did see quite a few cars abandoned on the way.

People will have been injured tonight. It's possible people will have been killed. Bolton [LIFTED]ing Council have done absolutely nothing to make any of that at all less likely. What a bunch of total, utter [LIFTED]s.

Indeed!

If Manchester are doing the same as North Yorkshire councils, they're probably not using much salt even when the "gritters" are doing the rounds.

I have it on good authority, because my sister's boyfriend works for the council and speaks to the guys in that department, that even when they send the gritters out, most of the "salt" isn't actually salt, it's mainly sand.

They send the gritters out, up and down the Yorkshire Dales, but it's just for show - hardly any salt (as we would know it) ends up on the road, it's just to fool the public into thinking they're spreading salt when in fact it's 99% sand. Such a dangerous practice, I'm surprised no one's been killed to be honest.

Like I say, this is in North Yorkshire, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if most other councils are doing the same to save money.

Indeed.

A few years ago Rossendale Borough Council (where I lived then) was rightly recognised as the worst performing local council in England. They were so bad that the only thing they got good marks for was the quality of their gritting - they were excellent at that and nothing else.

So they got put into special measures such that Lancashire County Council took over most of their functions...

... Nothing improved and the gritting got worse.

Using salt is pretty much banned over here. It can contaminate the water table.

When we clear our paths and drives, we are supposed to use grit or sand.

This is why I like living in Derby. The council is well organised and is always gritting in plenty of time, and in the spring they're out in force fixing the potholes.

Right, I'm perfectly willing to accept I'm being a curmudgeonly old git about this but I didn't ask for a contactless debit card so don't bloody give me one.

Bit of back story - my exisiting bank debit card has been dying. The chip is on it's way out in such a way that it becomes a bit hit and miss if I can take money out of an ATM or even use the online banking card reader deely. So I phone up, they check recent attempted ATM usage and agree that the chip is on its way out so they'll send me a new card. All good so far.
Card arrives and it's contactless. In fairness, it didn't occur to me at the time to ask what I would be getting.

Bah.

Nationwide gave me one in November to replace my expired debit card. I messaged them to say I didn't want contactless as I thought them insecure.
They replied saying they didn't currently have the option to disable that feature, but they should do by the end of January and I should contact them again then.
Thanks for reminding me.

That's interesting as it was a Nationwide debit card.

what equally interesting is I have a Nationwide Debit card (aquired last March) and a Nationwide credit card (aquirred in November last year) and neither of them have the 'contactless' symbol on them and as far as I know can't do them.

I got a new Nationwide credit card even more recently (this month) and that isn't contactless. I think they just do it for debit cards. My debit card was issued in November.

I've just sent them another message online about the contactless debit card. When they get back to me I'll let you know.