The bank that likes to say "F*** off!"

Picture the scene: it's a rainy Tuesday morning in the high street and you have a long list of things to do, the first of which involves a trip to the bank.

Fate, however, has other plans. The bank doors are firmly shut, the night safe sealed and the windows blanked out inside. Taped to the door is a single sheet of paper with a printed message: the bank will be closed for refurbishment for the next four weeks.

You are, it helpfully adds, welcome to visit any of the branches in the neighbouring towns, a mere 20 miles or so away. Judging by the expressions of the half-dozen or so customers reading the notice, this is a rather less than satisfactory arrangement.

A quick straw poll makes it clear that none of these customers - some of whom make weekly visits to the bank - has been notified by letter, text or telephone call that a month-long closure was imminent and neither was there any public indication in the branch itself.

Instead, the bank staff took advantage of the bank holiday weekend to 'fold their tents, like the Arabs, and quietly steal away', leaving  behind one functioning cash machine and a great deal of resentment.

A clue to the motive behind this moonlight flit may be found in the notice on the door, which recommends using the bank's online service instead. Though I doubt that they contrived the closure expressly to force their customers to adopt it, the way online banking has been pushed recently by cashiers and other staff suggests that the management saw this as a golden opportunity to increase the take-up rates.

This is, perhaps, the beginning of the end for those who cannot or will not embrace the new technology and commit their savings to the dubious security of cyberspace. Banks already offer favourable interest rates and extra benefits to online customers in a clear bid to hasten the day when they can dispense with an expensive and inconvenient real life presence on the high street for good.

The same phenomenon is creeping into other spheres; businesses and the public sector increasingly offer discounts for online bill payment or official registration - occasionally followed by notification that their database has been hacked and 'it is essential that you change all your passwords immediately' - in a bid to maximise their profits and efficiency by removing any semblance of human interaction with their 'valued' customers.

"We are" said the Tavern's resident Wise Woman recently, "being farmed - it's the only word for it."

Sadly, I have to agree.

@andromache - beware of Greeks

Following the news that Derek Simpson twittered his way through the BA negotiations on Saturday there's been much speculation about when and where not to twitter.

Opinion is divided about the stream-of-consciousness trend - it is all too easy to make oneself ridiculous. This quote from Dizzy Thinks admirably highlights the potential of the medium:
'Frankly, even a very shiny arse with neon lights on it saying "I'm a shiny arse" would find it hard to make more of an arse of itself on Twitter than Sally Bercow has in recent months.'

Remember Stuart MacLennan and his political career, or rather lack of it? And what about the jogger who ran into a tree while sharing with an agog audience the fact that he was running in a park? Both are strong arguments for a sort of Green Cross Code; Stop. Think. Tweet.

And for recognizing that there are times when twitter is simply not appropriate. Business meetings are, by and large, out, as are church services of any kind*, romantic dinners for two and anything involving alcohol, but my favourite to date is a sight I observed last week.

Troy has fallen to the Greek army. On stage before a rapt audience, Hecuba the queen laments the loss of her city, her husband and her sons and bewails the fate awaiting the Trojan women. And in the wings, waiting for her cue, stands her daughter-in-law Andromache, baby cradled in one arm, busily twittering on her Blackberry.


*Update: and royal ceremonies - Dizzy Thinks has just posted on a new Labour MP's reaction to the State Opening of Parliament.

Trapped in a lift...

There's a disaster movie scene which has stayed with me for over thirty years - a group of people trying to escape from a skyscraper unwisely get into a lift which, after a brief inexplicable halt, plummets all the way down the shaft to a messy conclusion.

It's a fair bet that a similar scenario was running through the minds of at least some of the 15 people trapped in the high-speed lift in Dubai's Burj Khalifa - that and wondering whether it would help if they all jumped into the air at the moment of impact. After all, when you've just got into a lift on the 124th floor, anything unexpected is probably going to make you a bit jittery.

And all the more so given the financial circumstances surrounding the edifice in question - the result of world-class hubris that had to be bailed out by the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. The consequent change of name - in honour of the UAE president - from Burj Dubai doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

This is, after all, the place where the lack of properly planned sewage facilities led to disgruntled truck drivers dumping effluent into the city's storm drains and where an army of low-paid construction workers provide an unstable and shifting polyglot workforce - not exactly optimal conditions for building the sort of precision machinery needed by a project on this scale.

In fact, it says a lot about how much we take technology for granted that people are prepared to get into a metal box and be whisked upwards at 40kph for the pleasure of looking at, well, a lot of desert. And, of course, a sort of real-life Sim City (most of which, according to the Times, is still under construction).

I'll give the last word to a delightfully terse comment from the Times article:

bob bob wrote:
True justice: Stupid people get trapped in faulty elevator in world's tallest mistake.

All Aboard the Amfibus

"It's a good idea, Q, but I can't see it replacing the Aston Martin."

With apologies to the folk of the fine city of Glasgow...

Oh the river Clyde, the wonderful Clyde,
You can hop on a bus to the opposite side,
And then when it breaks down you can drift on the tide,
And float out to sea through the mouth of the Clyde.

If your bus breaks down in Sauchiehall on the way to Blythswood Square
You can disembark and you can walk it all or you can take a taxi there,
If the engine fails at Kelvingrove or on Breadalbane Street
You’re still on dry land with the use of your feet.

But break down half-way over the wonderful Clyde
And there’s nothing to do but be swept by the tide,
Watching beer cans and turds bob along by your side
As you float out to sea down the turbulent Clyde.

The Rise of the Machines

Warfare 101: "Let's keep our guys safe, and kill the enemy."

At least that 's the definition inspiring Bob Quinn of robot manufacturer QinetiQ in his aim to delegate the whole messy business to a bunch of robots.

There's something distinctly unsettling about the idea of a battlefield where lethal robots eliminate each other in the name of human ideologies. It's the apotheosis of the arms race, the ultimate Deus ex Machina. We've already visited this territory through the visions of countless science fiction writers and filmmakers and it's a worrying place to be.

Despite the reassurances of Quinn and his colleagues that humans will retain ultimate control, the processing speed of machines could unleash a counterattack before the operating soldier fully registers the incoming fire. Wait for a human response and you've lost the advantage.

So robot warriors under human control only work against unaided humans; put them up against a similar force and the tiresomely slow human element will soon be removed. The search for advantage will transfer the decision-making to the robots themselves, and thus render it dependent on their programming; and we all know computers never fail, don't we?

Most unsettling of all, perhaps, is the Pentagon's new toy, the EATR. This driverless vehicle can refuel itself in from 'organic matter' scavenged from its surroundings. The interviewer on the Today programme had the same queasy thought as I did and asked the inventor, Dr Robert Finkelstein, whether it might feed on the bodies of fallen soldiers.

Dr Finkelstein reassuringly replied that it would consume "organic material but mostly vegetarian," but then went on to say, "The robot can only do what it's programmed to do, it has a menu."

I'm sure it has; I'm just worried about what - or who - might be on it.