Are banks responsible?

 If I am scammed, that is willingly move my money to another account when asked to why, should the bank(s) reimburse me if the issue was fraudulent?

If I buy something from a person selling stuff out of a suitcase and it turns out to be fake I have lost my money! There will be no recompense, not that I would expect it. So why should scams involving banks be treated differently?

I never cease to wonder

 Why would anyone, least of all the prime minister’s principal private secretary, apparently send an email to 100 people marked, “Official. Sensitive. No 10 ONLY”, inviting them to “socially distanced drinks!” to “make the most of the lovely weather” and not stop to ask: “Is it a bit dumb to put this in writing?” This, after all, was in May 2020 when it was barely legal to lower your bum on to an empty park bench. Fifty-five minutes after Oliver Dowden made a speech telling the public that they could only meet one person outside their household in a public space, the sausage rolls and wine glasses were being laid out at No 10. If I was Martin Reynolds, I wouldn’t expect to be recruited by MI6 any time soon. I don’t think we’ve found the new James Bond. He might as well have headed it: “Sssshhh. Top-secret naughtypoos”. It almost makes me suspect we might not be being led by the “brightest and the best” after all.

Living in Interesting Times

 "Nobody told me that it broke the rules", this is Mr Johnson's plantiff cry in many of today's newspapers in response to questions on the "event" that he attended. So our Prime Minister, who gave multiple press conferences telling us to keep to the "rules" is now telling us that he didn't know what they were.

We have Dominic Raab saying "People were working extremely long hours, so it doesn’t surprise me if people, as you see in other walks of life, had a glass of wine or beer at the end of a very long week," he explained. I do not recall seeing much evidence of this taking place in hospitals or care homes. rather we saw pictures of medical staff grapping some sleep whilst sat on the floor. Stories of staff volunteering to be "locked in" Care Homes so that they could continue serving residents without the risk of travelling to/from their homes and spreading the disease.

Sir Austen Chamberlain,father of Neville Chamberlain, addressing the annual meeting of Birmingham Unionist Association , spoke of the “grave injury” to collective security by Germany’s violation of the Treaty of Locarno. Sir Austen, who referred to himself as “a very old Parliamentarian,” said (in March 1936):—

“It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.”

“We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.”

I really despair of the quality of the leadership of this country. What is worse I am not convinced that it is much better on the other side of The House. We certainly are living in interesting times.