ejstubbs

Read what I said before telling me that I am wrong: nothing in my post is contradicted by yours. Scottish banknotes are legal currency in the UK, not legal tender - which, as the BoE explains, has only a very specialised, limited meaning. Legal currency means that the UK parliament has approved their use in general circulation. Legal tender means, specifically, that you can't be sued for non-payment of a debt if you settle it using one of the forms of money defined as legal tender. Not the same thing as currency. https://www.scotbanks.org.uk/banknotes/legal-position.html

There are at least two previous RMWeb threads about prototype examples of the use a turntable for loco release: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/91783-turntable-at-a-terminal-station/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/57454-small-turntable-as-part-of-the-run-round-loop/

What about this stuff I'm carrying around in my wallet, then? Admittedly it's not really a tangible asset: it's just a token of value - as are the 1s & 0s, really. I'm not sure that BOS issuing their own banknotes is that much of an issue, really. They have the legal right to do so, and they choose to, but they don't have to. They're not the only issuer of banknotes in Scotland, either: RBS and Clydesdale issue notes as well. If all three banks stopped issuing notes the Bank of England would simply step in to fill the shortfall in paper money. The Scottish Banks are required by law to hold a sum of Bank of England banknotes, UK coin or gold equivalent to the total value of notes they have issued. (IIRC, technically they are allowed to issue a small amount of banknotes without that security, as a hangover from the capital put in to in the original incorporation of each institution, but the sums involved are trivial these days - and that historical oddity may well have been eradicated by modern legislation anyway). It might have upset some nationalists and traditionalists had BOS lost the right to issue banknotes, which would likely have happened if its headquarters had been centralised with the rest of LBG south of the border, but BOS still has its own headquarters (albeit as a subsidiary of LBG) in Edinburgh, so no anguished outcry ensued. Scottish banknotes are legal currency throughout the UK, but they are not legal tender in Scotland - in fact no banknotes qualify for the term "legal tender" in Scotland, not even English ones; only Royal Mint coins are legal tender in Scotland. But it doesn't really matter. The Bank of England explains it as follows: The term legal tender does not in itself govern the acceptability of banknotes in transactions. Whether or not notes have legal tender status, their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved. Legal tender has a very narrow technical meaning in relation to the settlement of debt. If a debtor pays in legal tender the exact amount he owes under the terms of a contract, he has good defence in law if he is subsequently sued for non-payment of the debt. In ordinary everyday transactions, the term ‘legal tender’ has very little practical application.

I was able to log in through the login link on the normal TSB home page just now. However, once logged in there was no link or button to click on in order to log out on the account summary page. I was able to close the tab, go to "recently closed" and get straight back in. That's a pretty major fail IMO. (If I click on a particular account to look at the recent transactions, there is a log off button there.) I get the impression that the general ledger systems (ie those that actually look after people's accounts - where "the money" is, if you like) were running OK fairly early last week. Certainly both my debit card and my PayPal direct debits were working on Wednesday (I'd not had occasion to use either earlier in the week than that). What does seem to have been significantly broken was the online & mobile banking. And I don't think they're working properly yet, per my observations above. It feels to me like they're having to rebuild the customer interaction functions from a fairly shattered wreck, based on the way that odd bits of functionality - including pretty pivotal things like log off buttons, or killing a session when the tab closes - aren't there yet. It still doesn't remember my user ID on the log on screen, despite me clicking the "remember me" checkbox every time I log on. I wonder, given that the online banking interface (the bits of it that do work) looks identical to what it did prior to the migration*, whether Sabadell acquired the code for it (and maybe other parts of the customer interface) from Lloyds, and it's running that on the Sabadell platform that's causing most of the problems that are still evident. * And still has the 'look and feel' similarities that it always used to share with Halifax' online banking - Halifax still being part of Lloyds Banking Group, of course.

I'm going to be keeping an interested eye on this locally. We've had a Sainsbury's "superstore" at the nearest retail shed park ever since I've lived here. About ten (?) years ago an Asda (slighty-less-super-but-still-bl00dy-big) store was built less than half a mile away. I can't see both surviving following the merger. The last time an "anchor store" in the park closed, the building was demolished and a replacement one built for the new site tenant. They have cut some other prices, though: I noticed a fair few red "new lower price" labels on the shelves when I was there Saturday just gone. As does having the time available. (Though if I had that much time spare I think I'd prefer to spend it doing something I enjoy like hillwalking or playing trains. But each to his own.) Asda is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walmart, so Walmart don't have to share "Asda customers' money" (by which I assume you mean Asda's profits) with anyone else before they take their cut from the UK business. Post the 'merger' Walmart will have a ~42% stake in the combined business (source). That seems to be roughly how the revenues of the two retailers balance out as well, so overall I suspect the difference to either party will be fairly minimal - all other things, like overall performance of and in the market etc, being equal (which they are unlikely to be for long, given how retail is evolving).

This worked once for me, but the second time I tried it the log on link threw an error at the server end. I suspect they'd just forgotten that there was a log on link on the legal page, so didn't have it disabled. Regarding diesel generators, I know of one major bank's data centre that ran 24x7 on the gennies, using the National Grid as backup in case the gennies failed. At my previous employer the gennie was on the roof* and we in IT were on the top floor, just below it. Every time there was a mains power outage everyone on the IT team held their breath listening out to hear if the gennie would auto-start. Fortunately, every time we had a power failure while I was working there, the failover worked first time - otherwise it would have been a mad scramble to get everything shut down cleanly before the UPS ran out of battery. * The building manager pointed out to me that they had to hand carry fuel to the generator up the stairs in jerry cans - they weren't allowed to take it in the lifts. On the plus side, we had a Sainsbury's filling station next door where we could get all the City Diesel we needed!

Which rules Aldi and Lidl out for me. No point in going to one shop to save a few pence if you still have to go (ie drive = fuel costs) to another to get everything you want. I was not impressed by Lidl's advertising campaign a few years back in which they compared a basket of Lidl own brand goods vs a basket of branded goods from one of their competitors. I don't know whether they were ever called out on it but it was certainly misleading in not comparing apples to apples. Round my way Asda is consistently 0.2p per litre cheaper than Sainsbury's. I worked out once that diverting to the local Asda filling station on my way home wouldn't save me any money because of the extra distance I'd drive to get there. My normal route took me past the front of the store, but the filling station was at the back of the site. Most people won't bother to check minutiae like that, but when you do you realise that a lot of these fractional savings in sticker price often end up being worthless.

To clarify: TSB was "re-launched" specifically in order to be sold. It was Lloyds' way of meeting the European Commission's requirement for it to divest itself of a chunk of its business as a penalty for receiving a large amount of state aid (when it nearly went under following the HBOS merger/acquisition). And, as jonny777 pointed out, TSB was bought by Sabadell, not Santander. The Co-op Bank signed heads of agreement to buy TSB for £750 million in July 2012, but had to pull out of the deal in April 2013 when its own finances turned out to be a mess - primarily arising from the purchase of Britannia in 2009. (It subsequently transpired that Co-op Bank's corporate governance was pretty much of a shambles.) Lloyds then floated TSB in 2104, in two tranches which took Lloyds shareholding in TSB down to 50% by September that year. Sabadell launched a takeover bid for the publicly quoted TSB in March 2015, which was agreed to by TSB, the takeover being completed in July 2015.

Anyone else think, when they first came across this thread, that it was going to be a follow-on from this one?

The eighth of May is Motörhead Day! I'm struggling to derive any railway-related connection from that, though...

You don't need to be able to speak Russian, so long as you can read the Cyrillic alphabet - a lot of the place and street names are simply transliterations from Roman in to Cyrillic (they seem to have had fun transliterating Regents Park!) Although a bit of general knowledge comes in handy too, like knowing that part of Copenhagen is called Christianshavn (which is also potentially confusing, since Christiania is an old name for Oslo - and gives its name to the stem christie ski turn, allegedly). The quiz was actually published a while ago. When I clicked on the link in the OP, it still had my original answers highlighted! 10/11 in case you were wondering: I got the last one wrong, which is daft because the main railway station is clearly marked "ТОКИО" (although using the "u" form of the "И" character).

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/26/tsb-rift-with-spanish-owner-emerges-as-it-crisis-drags-on The bank’s boss, Paul Pester, said TSB will waive £10m in overdraft fees and pay extra interest on current accounts. He has hired a new team of IT experts from IBM who have been told the problems must be fixed by Saturday. Jaime Guardiola, the chief executive of TSB’s Spanish owner, Banco Sabadell, said customers may have to wait until next week before normal service returns. This is not a minor glitch. It's going to end up costing TSB a sizeable chunk of money in staff overtime and IBM consultants, plus financial sweeteners to try to stop customers from jumping ship. The reputational damage is going to be non-trivial, and the FCA is going to be all over them and may yet end up imposing a regulatory fine. I have been able to access my account more reliably so far today, although I did notice that I didn't get my weekly current account balance text this morning. That latter suggests to me that they're still flat out implementing and verifying a robust fix (in the broadest sense of the term) for the core problem, and peripheral functions will have to wait to get fixed later. (There are some dubious statements in the article linked above, though. For example, it states: "TSB customers have spent their seventh successive day battling to access their accounts as the bank admitted the crisis could run into next week." Given that the article is datelined yesterday, the 26th, and TSB didn't start the upgrade until 4pm on Friday 20th, then that assertion at the very least is questionable in its accuracy. If anyone was 'battling' to access their account between 4pm last Friday and 6pm Sunday then they simply hadn't read the e-mails, or the advanced notices posted on the TSB web site.)

I think you are vastly underestimating the scale of the problem. The fact that everything seemed to be operating normally for you is probably of little comfort to those who may be facing real problems on account of not being able to pay bills or complete major transactions on time. Online banking is telling me that it's unavailable again just now, so the problem is still ongoing. This is not just a few people creating a fuss on social media: TSB and Sabadell screwed up royally and will have created non-trivial problems for a fair few folks. To suggest that a few journos trying to log on were responsible for overloading the system is bordering on the farcical IMO. There's a strong whiff of I'm-all-right-Jack in your posting, to be frank.

It was the European Commission that required Lloyds to divest itself of TSB, as recompense for the billions of pounds of state aid it received in 2009. Same idea as NatWest being forced to divest itself of a good chunk of its branch network, and other parts of its business (including Direct Line and Worldpay). In RBS' case the divestment of the branches has been abandoned after trying and failing twice. The first time the branches were going to be bought by Santander, which then pulled out of the deal at the last minute (after RBS had already spent a shedload of cash equipping the branches to be switched over to the Santander network). The second time RBS tried to do what Lloyds basically did with TSB, by creating a separate bank (using the old Williams ands Glyn name in RBS' case) which they could then sell. They gave up on that idea in the end because...well, I was there and it wasn't pretty, but I should probably leave it at that on a public forum. Since then RBS has probably just closed as many branches as it was told to divest itself of, so in one way the end result for RBS has been the same. It still kept the actual business, of course - less all the customers it lost as a result of its near failure in 2008, and the various scandals and IT failures that have occurred since. It did agree some kind of quid pro quo instead of the branch divestment but I think it was largely a figleaf to cover the fact that the bank is so damaged there isn't really anything left that anyone with half a brain would want to buy, with any supposed benefit from the state aid long since evaporated. I don't know whether there is any significance in the fact that the two foreign banks involved in thing going awry at RBS and TSB are both domiciled in the same country...

It happened to RBS back in 2012. TSB was actually being migrated off the Lloyds Banking Group platform that had been hosting it since it had been resurrected as a standalone bank, on to the platform run by the bank that bought TSB from Lloyds, Sabadell. I think Tesco Bank was actually one of the first to move off a legacy platform, must have been back in the noughties sometime IIRC. They had problems with their migration (off the RBS platform as it happens), but they didn't have as many current a/c customers at the time as TSB does so it didn't create half as much noise - although the FSA took a keen interest. I don't know whether Sabadell's platform has legacy technology foundations or is all new. I did find it amusing the way that they talked up their ability to integrate acquired banks - just like RBS used to do...

I was able to log in this afternoon. It has undoubtedly been a catastrophic shambles, no question. Fortunately for me I am not in any way out of pocket. Others will not have been so lucky. And the communication has been appalling : glibly announcing on Tuesday that services were back online, blithely ignoring the fact that most customers still couldn't get logged in. I did actually get a login screen at one point on Tuesday or Wednesday. It then told me that I had got my login credentials wrong. Three times. Which I hadn't - they were the same ones I used successfully today. (I had been under the impression that it was supposed to lock my online banking account if I got my login wrong three times in a row. It didn't do that, either.)

There's a thread about Osborn's Models in the Model Shop Guide here. Feedback seems mixed at best, and customer communications post receipt of order seems to be their weakest point. * Not Osbourns, or Osbornes, or any other variation. It does make it more difficult than it ought to be to search for existing threads when people don't spel fings wright!

You're never alone with Strand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjBHUQEiTPw (Hmm...why isn't YouTube embedding working for me today? I blame the TSB...) The TV ad was directed by Carol Reed, best known for The Third Man and Oliver!

Don't forget the classic (and occasionally just weird) Benson & Hedges billboard and magazine ads: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/images/bensons.htm - those started in 1977.

The Double O Gauge Association published the NEM pocket standard for OO gauge stock, in English, in 2007: http://www.doubleogauge.com/standards/couplings.htm It does say: "This pocket corresponds to that described in MOROP’s datasheet NEM362, and in case of any conflict, the values and measurements given in that document for HO should be considered as also definitive for 4mm stock"

A couple of not-very-good photos of HSTs at Haymarket depot, taken on a mobile phone last week from a passing Helensburgh-Edinburgh service. First up is power car 43148 in the new ScotRail livery: Second is what I think is a de-branded FGW HST set (the coach still seems to have the First "dynamic lines") which I'd hazard a guess is the training set referred to by westie7 above. Sorry, the last digit of the power car's number is obscured by a bit of lineside infrastructure!

Setrack 3rd radius (19.875") would barely fit. I suspect, from looking at the photos, that there's 1st radius in the 180° curve off the end of the station and past the goods sidings in the station yard, and at the other end of the layout (though it might be that the Setrack track spacing makes it look worse than it is). If that's the case then I'd wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of larger modern RTR locos wouldn't get round those curves without at least flinching a bit. Which doesn't, of course, solve the riddle of the points...

Another myth: Five health myths reinvestigated - second one down, after five portions of fruit & veg.

It's single-use plastics that are going to be banned, not cotton buds per se. My experience is that you can't buy plastic-shafted cotton buds any more anyway: all the ones I've bought recently seem to have some kind of cardboard shaft (which does seem to have a tendency to bend rather more easily than the plastic variety IME). Assuming that the "cotton" on the end is actually a natural fibre then it looks to me as if the manufacturers are ahead of the law makers on this one. (The lids of the Johnson's pots are still plastic, though, come to think. The Sainsbury's ones come in all-plastic pots. So, maybe 8/10 for effort but still needs more work.) I've no objection to banning single-use plastics, in fact it's a long overdue move IMO. I just hope that manufacturers are gong to be prepared to put in adequate time, effort and ingenuity to come up alternatives that are (a) properly equivalent in terms of capability and functionality, and (b) don't just create another, different environmental problem. The human race has put men on the moon (and, more impressively IMO, built an unmanned spacecraft which has successfully flown for forty years from its launch and reached interstellar space) and invented a computer that you can carry in your pocket and make video calls with. Finding appropriate replacements for single-use plastics should not beyond the capabilities of mankind, provided that people set about if for the right reasons, not purely greed and avarice. To put it another way: what Kris said.

Could you fit a bathroom/toilet door handle like this one? It needs to be paired with a bathroom-type mortice lock, such as one of these. The knob to bolt the door goes on the inside but it can be released from the outside in emergencies using a screwdriver on the slotted end of the lock spindle. The acceptability of such a solution to your Director of Domestic Decor might depend on being able to source replacement hardware that matches the existing door furniture.