StreetCowboy

Are you saying that as a customer, or as a retailer? I think, like credit cards, the deduction is authorised immediately, but the payment not so. SC

You always have to find a negative. We already have the opposite of what the OP suggested - high street stores with no customers. Dark stores where delivery riders pick up your stock and deliver to your home. A world where there is no more direct interaction, and poorly paid motorcyclists and anonymous big businesses help you avoid the real world. A dystopian fantasy in all but the convergence of reality... SC

So can I get it clear - the end of civilisation will make the cashless society irrelevant? Do you have any advice for the interim, before the end of civilisation?

Your own staff take the cash to the bank - that salary for that time goes to your staff. Payment by card or other non-cash means is rarely immediate, so that the working capital is with the intermediary, not the retailer. The cost of Working Capital may be irrelevant to you, but that is not the case for many retailers. The ability to more monitor and tax and police and control the way that money washes around the economy may be a big advantage. But I stand on the "or not" side of that argument. SC

Pubcycle 2023 will be Le Tour de Damansara X, if it goes ahead; it's not too late to sign up. Nor for Pubcycle 2022 on Sunday...

Other than those borne by the seller. I don't know if they pass those costs on to the customer through their prices or not. Cashless payment is a one-cent thief - like Grab, or Air BnB. While the claim is that the individual is empowered by selling directly to the customer, in fact, a big business is sucking money out of that transaction through its monopolistic position as intermediairy.

Or a list of those that he believes to be such, with no requirement of factual accuracy. Belief is more important than truth, in the post-truth world, and one cannot argue with someone until you know their beliefs, as we no longer share a common basis of facts.

One of the pubs has declined to support us, citing competition from World Cup promotions on their ‘free beer’ budget. That allows us to shorten the ride somewhat. But if you are joining, it’s even more important to bring lights, as we will have more drinking time in the end pub…

I heard that song recorded by Johnny Cash, and I cant imagine Kris Kristofferson singing it more touchingly.

I think of it as positivism rather than activism. I had an unfortunate bout of positivism a few weeks back, and it has been sweeping through my staff like an epidemic. My experience was little worse than I suffered after I got my first vaccination, and it made me wonder whether the cure is worse than the disease? But that is the whole point - what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. So better a vaccination that you know, than forego the added strength of the vaccination and suffer the unbridled rampage of unfettered disease, that might peter out like a half-discharged firework, or catastrophically different.

Back in the day, I had a black and white television, but I was told that was too divisive, so I called it monochrome. Only shades of grey. Anything for a pleasant valley Sunday. Now I'm a believer. Anyway, if you've seen one colour, you've seen them all. There were only two brief moments where I thought I was missing out. The first was the Sunday Mail advert - the first colour newspaper in Scotland. On a bright and crisp morning, the Sunday Mail paper boy rides through the town, spreading shades of grey. I imagine on a tricolour CRT it would seem brighter. And on the Robbie Coltrane show, when his character Mason Boyne is meticulously painting the geranium leaves orange, I am sure that would require less imagination in colour. But Casablanca was just fine, and The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine

Only shades of grey. Though I've never seen a coloured one, if I am allowed to say that,

Black and white, and conversation through clenched teeth. Life in Casablanca is a sentence, not an aspiration.

I would rather educate stupid people, instead of locking them up to learn from criminals. But so long as we need an underclass to support our own self-righteousness, needs must, when the devil drives.

That’s great that you can diagnose cause and effect so precisely in a casual acquaintance. Although your post is slightly ambiguous; did smoking dope turn him into a right nasty idiot, or was it the consistent claiming that it did no harm that made him nasty? Sometimes, the root cause is deeper than what the casual observer sees. I wonder why he smoked dope every day? But life is too short to ask questions, when we have opinions to maintain.

It’s lazy in the sense of refusing to face up to your prejudices. If I had to do it myself, I would try to avoid keeping people in prison.

No he’s not. He’s an individual; he’ll never be assimilated.

How early are you going to jump when the radar alarm beeps? Which way are you going to jump?

You’ve got one week to get to the event, or send your contribution. To be honest, it’s not about the bike ride, it’s about the kids

I guess you are assuming that the aliens would base their opinion on television drama, and not sport. The EPL would be more representative

The old yolks are the best.

The modern world is rubbish. I think Dr Who would’ve been better on the wireless.

What is the maximum width the courier allows? Sorry , I did not read your post carefully. If it is also too long, then unless the maximum width allowed is greater than the maximum length that they allow, then you may have to try a freight forwarder.

Back in the day, my mate came down from The Old Country, and we went to the into the big city. We went to The Brewery Tap, nearest pub to the Strangeways Brewery, replete with a “drink from 11 till 11” banner. ‘Sorry, we’re not open’ I pointed at the banner. She pointed at the fine print “Mon -Fri” So the only day you could drink all day, you couldn’t. We walked back into town and drank Tetleys.

Back in the day, some pubs allegedly opened at 0700. Not that I ever saw them at that time. I saw a fight in one of them, around 11 am. Myself and the other chap at the bar were doing our best to look elsewhere (not only in the sense of not looking at the shoving and pushing, but like we were elsewhere). The only time I thought about a pint at that time in the morning was coming off the overnight train from London, but I couldn’t see if the pub was open from the main road, and I couldn’t be bothered going to investigate. Last time I transited Hong Kong from the US I had to search for somewhere serving beer in the dawn hours of the morning. Years earlier, I’d taken my daughter to the dentists in HK, and agreed to meet my wife for dinner in a restaurant in Wanchai. We arrived early, so we stopped for a drink, and the only people there were still there, not there already. Anyway, as for why people are there before the pub opens… Back in the day, Diggers did not bother applying for a licence extension, so they would not open till 5 pm, so there would be a crowd waiting for them to open after the football. When TheBlether came to visit, after an afternoon in the town we stopped in a neighbourhood bar that did not open till 7, so we were sat drumming our fingers on the bar for 5 minutes. I doubt you wanted anything other than a holier-than-they condemnation of early morning drinkers, but I hope some people found the above either relevant, informative, interesting or nostalgic.