We have booked to fly to New York on the 20th March from Newcastle via Heathrow for SES New York. The earliest that the strikes can start is next Thursday 18th and could go on for 2 weeks. There is a meeting tomorrow at 12pm at the Unite head office to decide on the strike dates.

Personally I think it is all totally ludicrous as the cabin crew will end up without a job at all if BA go bust due to the massive losses that it has month on month. At the moment it is not a viable business and the very last thing they need is to lose trust in the public. If they do strike and the flights to New York are cancelled I think next time we have to fly, BA will be our last choice of airline.

SideNote: Not sure how I managed to get 2 slots in the real time search with the same tweet?

Sunday 28th March 2010 at 1am

In the USA the clocks go forward on Sunday March 14th at 1am

So don’t forget to reset your clocks before you go to bed, and lets hope the kids don’t realise that they have lost an hour during the night.

Just for future reference for the UK the clocks always go forwards in Spring on the last Sunday in March, and go backwards on the last Sunday in October.
Spring forward, Fall (Autumn) back!

We ended up buying a couple of mugs, and a door stop that will solve a problem at work I hope. Thankfully the website that Exit Interiors advertise in the shop is great too. It’s always a letdown when you go to a website that belongs to a smart business and it doesn’t do it justice but Exit Interiors have a fully functional ecommerce system with all their products on. Being an “online shopaholic” I couldn’t resist buying more items … (purely for test purposes so that before I wrote about them I was sure that the website wasn’t a letdown). Let’s hope the delivery turns up intact and early next week.

Here are some of the cool things that they sell…

Offline it is slightly different and we are all meant to be careful with paperwork that could be used to steal our identity. Unfortunately I am a bit lazy and stupid and still put things in the bin that really should be shredded. I must try harder! One big bug bear though that I have is phone calls out of the blue from banks, insurance companies, credit card companies and the like.

Tonight was a perfect example .. the phone goes around 7pm. It’s for me.

“Hello” (in my most polite telephone voice)
“Hello, is that Mrs Naylor”
“Yep” (I don’t like speaking to cold callers in the evening btw)
“Hello, its Gary from HSBC, I was wondering if you have some time to spare?”
“Yep” (well I have now that you have broken me away from doing some homework with Miles)
“Firstly before I let you know why I am ringing would you be able to answer a couple of security questions for me?”
“Yep” (perhaps if you let me know why you are ringing first I can decide whether it’s worth it)
“Ok, I’ll tell you part of the information if you can finish it off … your birthday is on the 26th day of the month, can you tell me the month and the year you were born?”
“I would do if I knew who you were”
“I’m calling from HSBC”
“I don’t know that, that’s just what you are telling me … what’s the next security question?”
“I can’t tell you that until you answer the first security question”
“Can I ask then what you are ringing for then?”
“I can’t tell you until you have answered the security questions”
“I’m not giving my personal information over the phone to someone who I haven’t got a clue who they are… how do I know that you are from the HSBC?”
“I am from HSBC”
“Well it’s easy to say but you could be anyone. I have had a HSBC account for 20 years and have used my card a few times this week, and I don’t keep my birthday a secret .. so you could be anyone”
“I don’t quite understand your concerns, as I am from HSBC, we’ll have to send you the details in the post”
“You’ll have to do that then, I’ll await the post”

Now think about it… have you ever been called by a bank or credit card company who ask you for certain details, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, certain digits from your account number or pin to use as verification. I mean Mr HSBC you rang me, so you tell me the information you have on file and I’ll confirm it perhaps. It wouldn’t take any criminal organisation any time at all to set up a call centre with a non disclosed telephone number to systematically target people calling for different reasons on different occasions steadily collecting all of the details they need to steal your identity.

I think people are still too open these days to give out information without even thinking who they are giving it to… everyone needs to be a lot more careful. The guy I spoke to tonight from the HSBC, was probably sat in a big call centre in the HSBC head quarters thinking what a bitch I was. I can’t believe it’s still acceptable these days to ring out of the blue and expect to get full trust from the public and be able to get personal details over the phone, but I bet most people just give whatever information that they are asked for without even thinking about it. I’m probably just getting cynical in my old age as crikey I’ll be 35 on the 26th March … hmm that’s tricky to work out my date of birth now isn’t it!

Image from CC Chapman