Some things never change
Regular visitors to the pages of this organ will be all too familiar with some of our “running” campaigns and/or attitudes to occasional aspects of developing modern life in the 21st Century that – despite becoming part of the fabric of human society – do not seem to our contributors to be necessarily advances or improvements.
It would be a truism to point out that to a degree (and inevitably) this state of affairs stems from the fact that a sizeable proportion of our followers are – shall we say – “beyond the first flush of youth”.
As a result, many aspects of “life as it was lived then” that would horrify and/or adversely amaze any representative group of today’s 18 to 24 year olds suddenly transported back to (say) 1981 – for all their primitive technologies, absurd practices and attitudes, inequalities and indeed lack of political correctness, “diversity” and/or wokery – would for the most part probably be looked back upon with fond nostalgia by the average Ruster.
The fact is that – wherever any human being is randomly “placed” within human history from pre-historic times to 2021 – he or she learns to adapt and live their life to the standard and conventions of their “time” … and just gets on with it.
Because that’s what every species that has ever evolved upon the Earth has always done.
The above occurred to me this week as I reviewed some of the themes that have been touched upon in recent contributions to the Rust which have since been picked up by the mainstream media.
Richard Littlejohn
Following on the heels of John Humphreys’ article in the Daily Mail this week pointing our some of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the stances of modern “Climate Change” campaigners comes this opinion piece by Richard Littlejohn putting the boot into some of the absurdities of the fashionable 21st Century drives towards supposed “diversity” and also the debunking (and/or “cancelling” of) such as colonialism, any historical figure ever involved in some way with the slave trade and, of course, anyone who tries to point out that biologically – despite the modern notion that “anyone can declare themselves anywhere on the spectrum from male to female of their choice – the world is essentially divided into male and female.
See here – as appears today upon the website of (again) the – DAILY MAIL
Lastly today – and here I apologise in advance for the triteness of this item – I thought I would bring to Rusters’ attention a personal example of the ludicrous manner in which from time to time hallowed and respected British institutions treat their customers.
As with many such examples, this one comes under the heading “You just couldn’t make it up”.
[To protect the innocent – including myself – in what follows I am not naming either the institution concerned or its location.]
I have been with the same British bank for over fifty years. With it I have two bank accounts – one what I would call my “current” account and the other I would call my “reserve” account.
Between them, matters are arranged thus:
The “current” account retains a permanent ‘float’ of £500.
Every time I buy something, e.g. £50’s worth of food from a store, the money leaves my “current” account … and then (by automatic draw down) the equivalent amount leaves my ”reserve” account and arrives in the “current” account in order to restore the ‘float’ to its £500 amount.
Similar would happen e.g. if I made a payment of £1,000 from my “current” account.
However, for the past two years and more – as I type I cannot recall exactly when it started – every month without fail this bank has sent me a text warning me that I am about to go into overdraft on my “current” account. (And this is not intended as a preening self-boast on my part, on one occasion I even received such a text when my “reserve account” had over £600,000 sitting in it).
Here follows the entire text that I most recently received:
“You’re about to go into your arranged overdraft on account ending “XXX” [for readers’ info – that’s my “current account”] today, 5th November. You may incur charges if you do not pay in cleared funds.”
Here I would just remind readers of my arrangement – or rather, the arrangement the bank set me up with (i.e. that, every time my “current” account parts company with even £1, the “automatic drawdown” system is triggered and £1 immediately drops from my “reserve” account into my “current” account).
Logically – assuming I have sufficient funds in my “reserve” account, of course – I should never go into overdraft by definition.
I have lost count of the times that I have rung my bank – or visited my local branch of it – and protested vigorously about these “You’re about to go into overdraft” texts.
Every time I have done this I have been assured that this message does not apply to me – to which my response has been “If so, then why do I keep getting these texts every month?! If I was a little old lady of say 92 who didn’t know any better – and I received one of these texts – I might be moved to put my head in my oven and end it all …”
It is then explained to me that the bank has a computerised software system that automatically sends out these messages, it’s just one of those unfortunate things …
So every time I then ask “Why cannot your computerised software system be re-programmed so that it doesn’t send out these texts to people to whom it doesn’t apply?!”
And every time in response I receive the same metaphorical ‘shrug of the shoulders’ and the explanation “I know it sounds illogical, but that how the computer system is set up and there’s nothing that can be done about it …”
As I mentioned earlier, you just couldn’t make it up …
