DaveG38

Good advice regarding the RM. I'll give them a try. Many thanks for the suggestion.

Almost certainly. Back in the 1970s, when I first joined BT (Post Office then), billing payments were always deposited twice a day, with an extra 1/2 day interest for the morning banking. Mind you interest rates were much higher then, so it was probably well worth while, but even now it is a simple and easy way to earn money without doing much.

Got mine from Dave Craddock for £100 in VF, so you've done pretty well at £85.

It is for this reason that I always advise people to avoid Specsavers. Who knows what other conditions they may be missing when they carry out and examination?

Thank you for those kind words. She is doing OK, but it is a slow process.

My wife started to experience some vision loss in one side of one eye. Went to Specsavers, her normal opticians, for an eye exam, who told here there was nothing wrong. A day or two later the darkness in the eye advanced further and so she took matters into her own hand, went to the GP, got an urgent referral and was diagnosed as having a full retinal detachment. She had a 72 hour window to get it fixed before loss became permanent. Rapid trips to London and in less than 48 hours, she had major eye surgery, retina re-attached, lasered and eye full of silicone oil. That was a coupkle of months ago, and vision is now coming slowly back - it may never be perfect, but it's much better than being blind in one eye. Now, we don't completely blame Specsavers for failing to spot the detachment, although it is stretching credibility that there were no signs of it at all. What is unforgiveable is that they failed to refer her on to her GP, since she made it crystal clear thats he was losing vision. Instead they sent her away with false optimism and the idea that she should go back if things got worse. We will never go near them again. Total amateurs, only interested in selling their glasses. Eye health is secondary if it even exists in their minds.

If you value your eyesight, NEVER go to Specsavers. My wife is recovering from a full retinal detachment following their failure - I'll say no more.

I love an optimist! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393332025924?hash=item5b946a6a44:g:4tsAAOSw2dJgkRBN

Picture??

For what it is worth, I haven't received a paper catalogue for several years now, yet I regularly buy from them, albeit I'm not a big spender, so the decision to send or not to send is not based on regular purchases or not.

I'm sorry you have had problems with BT, though knowing how the company has been changing recently, I'm maybe not surprised. In my time, I saw pretty much all the major disasters in the UK: Deal bombing, Zeebrugge Ferry, Dunblane, Lockerbie, Hurricane 1987, 9/11, 7/7 etc. plus a blur of internal incidents affecting exchanges and cable systems. You'd be surprised how many exchanges caught fire, got flooded, exploded or got struck by vehicles. And how the operators of thrust borers manage to unerringly find a major cable system is amazing. Back in those days though we were pretty well organised, but also well resourced. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. As to your last point, I was pleased to leave the endless reorganisation behind. I missed the people, and to some extent the work, which was incredibly varied and interesting, but not the politics and the ridiculous decisions that were regularly made. Having said this, there is a limit to how many emergency plans can be written and re-written before it becomes tedious, and how many exercises and training courses that can be run, before there is nothing new to say or do. By the time I got to this point I tended to rely on experience rather than original thinking, but once you have a system in place that works, my view is that you change it at your peril. Review the process and documentation by all means, but don't make wholesale changes. Unfortunately, new brooms rarely understand this, which is frustrating for us old gits. Hey ho, I've been gone a while now and no longer really miss it.

My comments were only intended to address the factual matter of attending the COBR meetings, a situation where many people misunderstand the realities of responding to emergencies, and think that the PM should be involved at the outset. Those comments were based on my 30 years in the disaster management business with BT and my interactions with goverment, and have no political motivation whatsoever. The rest of the comments in the opening post made were political opinion, which I happen to disagree with on many levels, but I really don't want to get into a political debate. Mainly, this is because people tend to allow their dislike of a politician or party cloud their judgment about what that person or party is actually doing, to the point where their generalisations can be easily shown to be biased. Unfortunately, this often leads to unjustified acrimony, something I have no desire to engage with. If people want a civilised debate based around facts not personal opinions then I'm fine with that, but otherwise not. Life's too short, and it won't change anything. However, if people have a reasoned argument about a subject then make it to the relevant politician. If its any good it will be adopted.

Sorry, but the issue of the COBR meetings is a complete red herring. In any emergency, unless it needs an immediate response, there is an initial planning and organisation phase. At this point it is unnecessary to directly include the boss in the planning, since he usually lacks the knowledge and expertise to contribute very much in the early stages. The people who are included need to have sufficient seniority to be able to make decisions and to direct the planning, and in the case of the pandemic this would be the Health Secretary, who did attend these meetings. Also, of course, he will have briefed the PM/Cabinet on what was happening, and will have sought any decisions he wasn't able to take for himself. It would have been a complete waste of the PM's time for him to sit through all the detailed material and briefings in those early stages. If anybody wants to understand the depth of detail, go the the Cabinet Office website and search for the SAGE Meeting minutes. You will quickly see exactly what I mean.

At age 16 or so, I served Bernie with a cup of tea in J Lyons teashop Western Road, Brighton. Its about the nearest I've ever been to celebrity, apart from shaking hands with Frankie Vaughan at my school prizegiving.

Aardhawk, This would be the basis for an interesting article in Coin News. John Mussell is always interested in articles that go into the sort of details you have with this series. Dave Groom

No, not mine, I don't collect errors. I just looked it up in the 1997 Coincraft book.

It is a 1966, described as an error obverse, designated obverse M which was designed by Cecil Thomas for the Mauritius quater rupee.

I was surprised as the coin is a decent but not top grade farthing type coin, from Jersey - not the most collected country for coins in the world. I've just been slowly collecting a date run of all pre-decimal Jersey coins, and this one would have filled a gap. I'm not bothered about missing it, but I did think that £25 was about right for it - maybe go to £30, but that's it. I would have thought the seller might have liked to see it gone, as these coins are not easy to sell. As I type this, I've just had a message from ebay suggesting I might like to mak an offer on it!!!

Thanks Rob, it just seemed a bit weird to counter offer at a higher price than the original BIN. Hey ho. Whatever the reason, I'm not interested at the higher price.

Just had a novel experience on ebay, one that I can't quite get my head round. A coin I was reasonably interested in was on a BIN for £34.99, with a 'make an offer button.' So, I made an offer of £25, which in my view is about right for it. Maybe a shade more, but not at the asking price. Seller has come back with a counter-offer higher than the original BIN price!!!! Admittedly, not by much, but even so...... The only thought I have is that I've insulted him with the offer and he's so pissed he's counter-offered as he has. Any ideas?

Mmm. Sense of humour bypass carried out I see.

The correct term is 'overwhelmed with indifference.'

Ok, but Mart specifically said that he can't do this as his bank doesn't order them from the RM.

The number of sellers of themed 50p pieces that have come 'from sealed bags' suggest that there is a mechanism for obtaining sealed bags of particular coins - maybe direct from the RM. It sounds to me that this is what the opening poster is referring to?

Thanks for this. £150 in 1988 was a pretty tidy sum, so I'd guess it would go for a decent price now, despite its apparently poor grade. I've occasionally bought Thames mud finds from a guy who goes detecting (got my first 1689 from him) so I'll have to hope he can dredge one up!!!