Closing the books

While out shopping this morning, I went to Riverside Clinic for some supplies, and had a brief chat about the trouble I've been experiencing over the past few days with one of the nurses who knows me well. Thankfully, I've been in somewhat better form today, and needed to be, as I had an appointment with a HSBC bank business adviser in town after lunch.

This was to sort out the problem caused by the bank's unilateral closure of Cardiff Crime Limited account before CBS could produce the 2018 Annual Financial Statement to submit to Companies' House. This is the final reckoning for the not-for-profit body set up to manage funds for the work of Cardiff Business Crime Reduction Partnership which ceased to function after the resignation of the Business Crime Manager it employed at the end of 2017. It will be a relief to me as the sole account signatory to obtain formal closure of this ill-fated undertaking. Everything is accounted for. No money is owed to anyone or owing to this account. It was set up as a not-for-profit undertaking, and has fulfilled its purpose, albeit causing a lot of grief, due to administrative errors on the part of the bank from the outset. Never again, I say to myself. Never again!

I finished the second Pablo Poveda novel 'El Aprendiz', which morphs from political thriller into an odd kind of sci-fi extrapolation of a world in which lies spun by the powers that be through virtual reality and fake news have entirely taken over and control society. The romantic intellectual hero of the first novel becomes the figurehead of a militant resistance movement at war against Big Brother state. He's not a particularly appealing character, and the characterisation of people portrayed isn't well developed. The story seems to be what matters. It's complex and full of surprises. I could see it being made into a TV movie series. The books have used a wide range of Spanish vocabulary which I have had to look up to get the full flavour of the narrative, but It's been pleasing to find how much I have been able to grasp the narrative thread, at my present intermediate language level.

Now I must hunt for the third part of the trilogy. First, a visit to Waterstone's, and if unsuccessful, I'll have to buy on-line. I'm reluctant to do this unless I have to. Bookshops are important cultural places, and like libraries, we're losing them at a lamentable rate.

Scan date

At nine this morning, a brisk 25 minute 2km walk to Llandaff's Rookwood hospital across the Fields and past the Cathedral to be given an ultrasound scan on my gall bladder. It was better than waiting for a rush hour bus and walking the last part, and I walked back as well. I arrived fifteen minutes early, waited another half an hour to be seen. The scan man had little to say, he just got on with the full scan survey of my thorax, instructing me when to move, and when to take deep breaths. That was all. The results will reach my GP surgery in about a week's time, he said, when I enquired.

It's the first time I've visited Rookwood since we were in Taormina at the end of 2012 and learned about Sir Edward Hill, industrialist of Rookwood House Llandaff, and his remarkable philanthropic daughter Fanny, who did so much for earthquake orphans, education of the poor, raising funds for an English church, and restoring the parental winter holiday home in an old convent to its original purpose by turning it over to be a home base for Franciscan Missionary sisters. 

Rookwood House has had several purposes since Fanny's parents died and it was sold, all to do with care for the disabled and sick. The distinctive late Victorian house has been extended and some ugly ancillary buildings inserted in the grounds. Although the main facade is recognisable, it's hard now to imagine how elegant it once looked, standing alone at the heart of a small arboretum of trees selected by the Hills. Many of those old trees still survive however, and are well looked after.

Later in the afternoon, a call from Ashley to say the banking Ombudsman's case adjudicator wanted to speak to me about the complaint we made about HSBC's incompetent handling of a necessary account review which has caused CBS many unnecessary problem. The bank admitted liability after we presented them with the evidence, but had not taken further action. Their letter to us came many months after our complaint to them was made. We warned that if we got no response we would take this step, and the Ombudsman's letter confirming they were investigating arrived the same week as the bank's letter. Why should we withdraw? Aware as we are of thousands of SME bank accounts being dealt with in a similar unsatsfactory way, we want to put on record the unseen impact the bank has when it doesn't maintain high professional standards of competence with all its clients.

I called the officer in question who listened with interest to my account of the catalogue of errors which created a situation yet to be resolved satisfactorily. He said it would give him perspective as we worked his way through the dossier of evidence we provided. Fortunately, it just involves an account which has been inactive for the past year anyway, but this still poses problems we could do without, for our public accountability. 

A wasted bank holiday

The street outside seemed Sunday quiet when I got up this morning and looked outside. Until I went out to get some bread and veg, I didn't realise that today's the Mayday bank holiday. Supermarkets and many other shops, restaurants and bars were closed. Even so, I walked around and found a few small independent shops and greengrocers open, and was able to  buy what I needed.

I couldn't take myself out anywhere during the day, as I had a long incoming call booked with the HSBC business account advisor whose job it is to re-check account holders' identity credentials, and their declarations of trading interest, to make sure that all account activities comply with legislation on money laundering, now imposed on commercial accounts. In order to arrange this Ashley has spent over an hour and a half on two separate occasions in a phone holding queue to understand what is now being asked of him and me, as CBS Limited account signatories and directors, also in my case as the signatory for the CCL account we set up for managing the Crime Manager's salary.

The call was expected at three o'clock, but didn't arrive. Ashley called to check if I'd dealt with it as expected, and was most annoyed to find that the arrangements he'd made hadn't worked, so he spent another half an hour in a telephone queue to the HSBC call centre, only to find there was no trace of the call booked in the register for the day, due to some unnoticed flaw in their diary system, or a mistake on the part of the advisor he'd spoken to. So, he's booked replacement call for 17th May. This has cost him two hours work time. HSBC has millions of UK business clients to whom the new legislation applies. 

It's costly and demanding for them, but in the end clients will be made to pay for this in bank charges. You can be sure of that. The slowness and inefficiency the procedure entails is to my mind symptomatic of an under estimation of the resources required for implementation. Since the great TSB internet banking fiasco of last week, researchers into the security and stability of networked computer banking systems in the U.K. have commented that banking infrastructure is a collection of old (some, very old in computing terms) networks which once served smaller banks and financial institutions which have long since merged with others. The customer web interfaces may look good, but they hide technical disasters waiting to happen. These are a major threat any time a migration of data to a new system is undertaken, as was the case with TSB. 

In the era when banking was labour intensive, it was also highly interpersonal at a local level, so bank clerks and managers knew customers and looked after them. The internet has revolutionised the entire way we do business and look after finances locally and globally. Nowadays the customer constantly has to prove who they are to an impersonal system, often time consuming. This is meant to be progress, but I can't help feeling we've lost the plot somewhere, discarded vital human values.

Anyway, as a result of just hanging around during UK business hours, just in case, I spent time both reading articles and writing all day, but as sunset approached, I went for a brisk speedy walk to the port and back. There were no big cruise ships in today, just the two vessels up for hire, waiting for work presumably. No reason to visit here on a bank holiday, naturally with all the shops and eateries closed down that usually benefit from cruise travellers spending sprees. Even the quays across in the port's industrial zone, occupied by bulk carriers, tankers and container ships lay quiet.