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Boris...

  • should completely lock us down immediately and fook up all our Christmas'

    Votes: 3 12.5%

  • let the bodies stack high

    Votes: 13 54.2%

  • lock us down from the 29th to fook up Treble's plans

    Votes: 8 33.3%
  • Total voters
    24
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brb said:
A little story about what happened at the Dartford Tolls and how people can be ripped off by the big companies in a cashless society.

They removed cash lanes, now you have to have an account to pay, and your registration is taken by ANPR. It records your every journey, despite not being a criminal.

Anyway, there is something in the small print of the accounts, that the media brought to light after fixed penalties were being issued as we came out of lockdown - people not knowing their accounts had been closed

If an account is not used for 12 months, it is closed, it cannot be reopened. They closed THOUSANDS of accounts over covid, all with money locked in them. You don't get the money back, because they claim they don't know who to pay.

So I phoned them, it appears I had £12 in there, and requested my money back, no great sum of money, but multiply that by thousands of time, and it's a hell of a lot of money. All just sitting there, because some people will never know. Each account has to have at least £10 in it to open.

This is what happens when they stop you paying in cash.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/01/10-000s-inactive-dart-charge-accounts-reclaim/
Click to expand...

I have a Dart account dating back to when my company did work for Network Rail in Kent

I received an E-Mail in November saying that the account would closed without a refund if it wasn't used within a couple of months so I rang up in my usual polite manner accusing them of theft because the government had virtually banned me from travelling without good reason

I received an apology, a years extention and a written guarantee that the money would be refunded in full if I closed the account before the new deadline
 
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duggie2000 said:
I have a Dart account dating back to when my company did work for Network Rail in Kent

I received an E-Mail in November saying that the account would closed without a refund if it wasn't used within a couple of months so I rang up in my usual polite manner accusing them of theft because the government had virtually banned me from travelling without good reason

I received an apology, a years extention and a written guarantee that the money would be refunded in full if I closed the account before the new deadline
Click to expand...

Yup, that was it, people said we were in lockdown, people had no reason to carry out their normal routines/journeys, complying with government covid guidelines during the 12 month period. It's an absolute scam.

I didn't receive any notification, the only way I found out about it was through the media. So I would have without reading the media, have fallen in the same trap has some other people, and have been issued with a fixed penalty charge.

It gets worse, because what I didn't add to my earlier story was if you have an old account, you pay at the old discounted rates, if you are forced to open a new account, which they have made the majority of people do, you pay at the new rates - so it's a sneaky way to increase revenue.
 
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I should have added, because there might be argument to say why don't you check your account. That's because you are encouraged to set your account to auto top-up. So once it drops to the £10 threshold, it auto tops up with say another £10 (min) or whatever your limit it set at. So for example my account had £12 in it, so it had no reason to be triggered for auto top-up or for me to be notified to check my account.
 
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brb said:
Yup, that was it, people said we were in lockdown, people had no reason to carry out their normal routines/journeys, complying with government covid guidelines during the 12 month period. It's an absolute scam.

I didn't receive any notification, the only way I found out about it was through the media. So I would have without reading the media, have fallen in the same trap has some other people, and have been issued with a fixed penalty charge.

It gets worse, because what I didn't add to my earlier story was if you have an old account, you pay at the old discounted rates, if you are forced to open a new account, which they have made the majority of people do, you pay at the new rates - so it's a sneaky way to increase revenue.
Click to expand...

What is even worse is that the toll charges were only meant to pay the cost of building the new bridge

The bridge increased traffic flow and someone high up on the food chain decided this was now a great source of income

Same as the road fund license which was only to pay for new roads but now funds the government (whichever party is in control) and virtually none of it is spent on roads and now Global Warming and emission controls have given them an increased income
 
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duggie2000 said:
What is even worse is that the toll charges were only meant to pay the cost of building the new bridge

The bridge increased traffic flow and someone high up on the food chain decided this was now a great source of income

Same as the road fund license which was only to pay for new roads but now funds the government (whichever party is in control) and virtually none of it is spent on roads and now Global Warming and emission controls have given them an increased income
Click to expand...

Yup the tolls were meant to have disappeared years ago, but some idiotic suggestion was it was a good way to reduce congestion, like they fooking kidding me right.

Although I will admit, many years ago, I actually came across some tight git, that had travelled clockwise round the 25 to avoid paying the toll, his employer was paying for the fuel! <laugh> first and only time I've ever heard of anyone doing that.
 
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Treble said:
I personally don't like the way it's going. Unless we get to some Star Trek utopia where currency is no longer a thing, I think the idea of trading/valuing stuff on numbers in the ether rather than something tangible in your hand as a bit of a dupe.

How far away is it from being something like crypto-currency then? Either under the control of governments or not?
Click to expand...


The only difference between national and crypto currencies is that Sterling is backed by the BoE, the dollar is backed by the Fed etc.

But if everyone with a bank account - which is everyone basically- wanted their money weighed out in cash, the banking system would collapse quickly.
 
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Saints for the Win said:
I don’t carry cash as a card does the job. Also saves having a pocket full of change that I will never use
Click to expand...


Then you will never know what a joy it is to back the first three winners at Cheltenham, in cash with a rails bookie, and not be able to fit your winnings in your wallet <ok>

You young’uns don’t know you’re born…
 
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aberdude said:
Nothing better than the interaction though some really good people struggling out there and a chat probably means more than the cash......but I get your point you can make a difference from a distance :emoticon-0127-lipss
Click to expand...

I assume he probably means things like QR codes mate. So they have a card with a barcode on it, that you can donate money to.
 
I don’t normally talk about my charitable work, but when I do I make sure I tell as many people as I can.
 
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Archers Road said:
The only difference between national and crypto currencies is that Sterling is backed by the BoE, the dollar is backed by the Fed etc.

But if everyone with a bank account - which is everyone basically- wanted their money weighed out in cash, the banking system would collapse quickly.
Click to expand...

If you swap out the term ‘currency’ for ‘technology’ with crypto you start to see where it’s value is at. Most (the serious non-meme ones) of the ‘currencies’ are not intending to replace cash or national currencies but to provide a technological blockchain for ‘events’ to take place, such as safer funds transactions - one of them is solely focussed on eradicating black market transactions for example. Others focus on contracts and various other confidential transactions.

The reason people think cryptocurrency is dead before it gets off the ground is because they think it’s trying to replace the USD or GBP. There’ll always be a requirement for local currency but the world is moving on from exchanges and silly charges for everything now.

As a side though, it’s unregulated and until it is regulated it’s still risk and gambling essentially. The reason the likes of Tesla invest in Bitcoin is because it’s no-lose (at least they thought that until they realised how Bitcoin was mined unethically and they shat themselves thinking the US Gov would pull their grants) because profit on Bitcoin would remain out of the clutches of the federal taxman as long as it remained in Bitcoin, and any losses were able to be written off against taxable revenue.

Or something like that.
 
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