Wu Wei

Just another load of reasons for hating Citibank

It's bad enough to lose your debit card and have to cancel it.

But Citibank then makes it impossible for you to log onto your bank account and see if anyone has stolen money from your account.  It also makes it impossible for you to pay any bills.  What's more they do not tell you this, merely putting up some error message which makes you believe that Citibank somehow has decided to prevent access to its website over Christmas for everybody.  Of course this is unlikely but by now I fail to be surprised by anything related to Citibank and bad service.

Not only is this bad enough news, but Citibank will not send you your card by airmail or courier, no matter how dire the emergency. They also will not help you get emergency cash, but think it is helpful to repeat ad infinitum that you should go to a Citibank branch in your country, even when they do not know where you are, and imagine that Citibank branches are scattered all over the world.

Of course with service like this, it is not surprising that there are few branches of Citibank in other countries. 

Recommendations for a better bank please, so I can implement a long standing New Year's Resolution?

 

 

 

Gatwick chaos

I can understand why flights can be delayed by snow, but why is there no heating at Gatwick? 

And why does the website not update properly so you can find out what's going on?  It seems to have lost all interest in providing live flight information.

Surely Gatwick should be prepared for flight disruptions by now.  I can't believe in an excuse along the lines of "wrong sort of snow on the internet" 

Bee complaining of kettling at the airport now.  With Gatwick staff going round with handwritten placards (?).

Thank God AirBaltic send text messages otherwise she wouldn't know anything.

British justice

Just as Assange's release was announced as breaking news on BBC World, someone decided to let off 5 mins of fireworks just below me by the river.

A good thought, of course it must have been coincidence, but well done that Lithuanian.

It's interesting that there is so much faith expressed in the British justice system, just at the time when students are busy complaining at the policing of their demonstrations.

It seems to me that the police have lost their institutional memory of how British demonstrations work, just as recent students have never done much demonstrating. 

On the first demo outside the Tory party HQ, they got a sudden shock and have overreacted since.  Kettling seems such an infringement of civil liberties when we have hardly got to the petrol bomb or even brick throwing stage.  Of course there was some violence, there always was, and the police should know who causes it and round them up out of the way.  Or are they scared to do that?

Instead they corral people for hours in the cold, without real reason, so that people become angry and want to get out.  Being kept against your will in a kettle is not much different from being arrested.

Stories of police photographing people as they were released show that the police are really over reacting.  And there are stories of ripping of their identification number so they can't be identified.

These stories come from what Bee saw herself so I am inclined to believe them.