ECCOnoob

They fail you consistently at a rate of 3 a year.....hmmmm. Not a single person I know has tech with failure rates like that . I work in a business whose staff has dozens and dozens of mobile phones, the absolute vast majority of which have been working perfectly fine for several years now. Even my own personal mobile phones and laptops lasts perfectly well for years until I choose to upgrade it. You really must be the most unfortunate person on the planet, right? I'm smelling bull in your story.

Seriously? Your excuse making is getting ever more feeble. Your clumsiness or even destructive tendencies are clearly your own problem. I'm glad someone's got money to throw around if you're able to break and replace 3 devices a year. As for the "hassle" of making sure there is enough power, there is none. For the vast majority of normal people, charging a phone is second nature. It's something we all do every single day without thinking about it. My current phone has a estimated battery life from full to empty of around 24 hours. More realistically, with intermittent use, it lasts around 14 to 16 hours before i need to top up. More than enough to get me through the day On the very rare occasion, I might need longer battery life, I simply throw my cable into my bag and give it to top up when I'm sitting in the office or having a coffee or even sat on a train or bus. You really are looking for problems that aren't there.

Same if I lost my paper train ticket.

Except for the fact that I can book my train tickets from the comfort of my own sofa at 3:00 in the morning if I want to, have it sent straight to my phone and never have to go near a ticket office or collect my ticket beforehand. Again, overlooking the fact that you would need to be physically there to hand over a physical cheque to your workman, window cleaner, milkman or whatever the case may be. Whereas I could quickly get their bank details press a few buttons on my bank app and ping the money to them without having to see them in the flesh. Which makes it more convenient if I am working out of town or busy doing something else. Or you could do what I do in my car park and simply take a ticket on entry and pay contactless with your card at the exit barrier without even having to get out your seat. You could perhaps use an season ticket or book parking in advance, which means the car park will have your reg number and you don't need to do anything on enter or exit. I do frequently. Far more convenient and I don't have to stand behind some ditherer yacking away to Doris on the checkout whilst packing one item in their carrier every five minutes. Or, as someone else mentioned, you can use one of the many scan and pack options so you don't even need to do any loading or unloading during checkout process at all. As for the camera in my face, I don't find that any more intrusive than my own mirror. I know what I look like. Given that any business is going to protect its assets by having some form of observation, security or other theft monitoring, what exactly is the issue. Is it any worse than the checkout operator looking you up and down, taking a peak into and under your trolley. It certainly happens. In fact staff are trained to do just that - so what difference does it make? Sounds to me like you are declaring some of that 'paranoid' behaviour I mention Yes, that 'pointless' word processing and email. Let's go back to the days of my secretary sitting on my knee, taking shorthand and having to retype an entire page from scratch every time there was one typo or amendment. Yes, let's go back to dictating a memo, waiting for it to be typed by the pool, waiting for it to be dispatched by the courier, waiting for a response to be dictated and then typed and sent back. Those wonderful days of a 7-day turn around just to get a simple query yes or no..... You seem to be looking for problems and almost deliberately wanting to make your life more complicated. Yes, you are right. Sometimes some technology is more complicated but once something becomes so long established in society, becomes so absolutely routine and widely accepted principle... such as the topic under discussion of of electronic payments..... It is just ridiculous for people to be fighting it and almost revelling in their refusal to accept it. This is the black Knight from Monty Python syndrome. Like I said in my previous dramatic examples, you are not putting up challenges to the revolution of the motor car or washing machines or domestic electricity. So why would you be putting up such ridiculous objections to electronic payments when they've been an established part of society, in some form, for at least 40 plus years.

Yeah yeah. You keep banging that drum, while sat there on an internet forum by means of a computer or smartphone 🙄

It's not 'tech addiction'. It's called progress, innovation and advancement. Something during your life you will have reaped the benefit from. Unless you're going to tell me you are still scrubbing clothes in the river once a week, foraging your food and getting around on horse and carts - don't give me such crap. We are not talking about addiction or the virtues of human attachment or obsessive behaviours which can happen no matter what gets invented. We are talking about basic changes in society which have been around for several decades now. Things constantly progress and there are no prizes for being a backwards thinking moron who deliberately refuses to keep up with changes. Electric replaced the candles and gaslamps. The horses were replaced by the combustion engine and now electric traction. The word processor replaced the days of the typewriter and ledger scribes. The telephone replaced telegrams. Computers and the internet have replaced the filing cabinets. Email has replaced millions of letters every day. Banking has moved on from passbooks and cheques to plastic cards to now contactless and digital transactions. Even back in the 1940s and 50s the vast majority of transactions were cashless. The only difference is they were done by paper trail cheque or bank draft or orders or credit agreement. Do you want to go back to those days of getting your wage in a little brown envelope, having to queue to put it in the bank, having to go around all the vendors to pay your bills or sit there at home writing dozens and dozens of cheques out each and every month..... Do you want to go back to those days of having to faff around each week making sure you got enough change for the bus driver or having to queue up at the train station to get your tickets from the ticket office carrying about bits of paper when it can be can all be done at the swipe of a phone or a plastic card.... I certainly don't Like I said, paranoid weirdos all thinking that this 'new fangled' technology is going to bring and end to the world. Hysterics have always been screaming the same thing since year dot.

You can if you want to live completely inconvenienced, backward and detached from the rest of the progressive world. Its nothing to be proud of.

Nonsense. If you actually bothered to properly understand the social credit system in China, you'd realise it is sod all comparison with electronic payments. Waaaa. Won't somebody think of the children!!! Well thankfully, the next generation are much more sophisticated. Children these days are understanding the basics of working an iPad while they are still toddlers. They are possessing mobile phones before they reach the age of 10 and by the time they hit mainstream schooling, there will be very familiar and daily using computerised equipment which is vital for their future development in the modern world and even more for any sort of working life. Most children who are capable of understanding the basics of money will be equally capable of understanding the basics of electronic payments In fact, many of them already have it. They don't need piggy banks and counting coins because they can get just as much satisfaction from watching their prepaid debit card balances grow or being presented with a nice little gift credit for their favourite online store or web app or gaming app. Some of us have moved on from the days of the tooth fairy and magic pixies leaving golden nuggets under their pillow. As for your wails about tipping, Please do drag yourself into the 20th century. The functions to enable electronic gratuities have been around for more than a decade. For at least 30 years before that people were able to write a tip in on the receipt when making credit card payments. Many places simply add it to a bill or give option for X percentage to be added on delivery charges or waiters or bartenders and even salons. Goodness sake, even the Sally Army collectors and street buskers carry card machines with them these days. You think what you like - but you deluded. The only people 'bothered' and 'taking a stand' are dinosaurs just like yourself. Tin foil hat brigade paranoid weirdos filled with distrust that the government is constantly watching them, monitoring or even giving a flying toss about that twice a week visit to Sainsbury's or that one gives 10% extra to the barber. Honestly, the ego. Get over yourself – your life really isn't that interesting for someone to be constantly watching you 24/7.

They will be whatever they were told to be as long as it was deemed to give them some advantage or Trump Corporation a bit of money. As for The Donald's great rousing speech. Big deal! Wowing the home crowd as per usual. Hardly a difficult sell to his deluded bible bashing tribe. They'd cheer anything. Must have been no NASCAR on the telly. Shame the majority of your lot are too thick to see all he's doing is hyping up and blatantly lying to get more money and donations to fund his ever growing list of legal actions. All this building a wall to stop the Mexicans..... They should build a bloody ring around the middle bit and let them at it. It could be Trumpopolis. Perfect! Utopia all envisioned and crafted just like The Donald wants it to be. Meanwhile, the rest of the country drags itself back to reality after the debacle before it.

Oh give it a rest with your fairy tales about the mythical sky being. It's totally relevant to this thread and complete bull crap justification to your opinion that somehow age of consent should be much older for homosexual relations than straight ones. You want to go preaching your homophobia and bible bashing claptrap go find a different thread. We are talking about the actions of Schofield with the allegations of underage relations being merely one part of the wrongdoings. It is wholly irrelevant whether the legal age of consent is 13, 18 or 25. The point that matters is whether or not it was breached.

Well thankfully our part of the world has become more enlightened now and we have moved on from a load of draconian views and outdated laws brought in buy a load of god botherers. Seeing as homosexuality was decriminalised in the 1960s. You are still not giving any reasoning is to why you still feel "it was a mistake" to lower age of consent for homosexual relations. Why are you saying it's perfectly fine for straights to lose it at 16 but homos have to wait another 5 years.

What are you trying to say? Its perfectly fine to bang 16-year-old girls but not 16-year-old boys. What is this magic difference that happens? That really isn't the issue. If they are minor in the law there are a minor. It makes no difference where the actual threshold is. Good grief in some parts of Japan AOC is as low as 13. The thing that matters is whether he did or didn't conduct sexual acts with the boy when they were under age. However, that is only one part of the story, as I have set out before. Even if it was entirely legal, there are other factors at play which contributed to his self made debacle.

Depends if he's legally allowed to talk about it. That's another unknown which still needs to come out in the investigations

Hmmm. Personally not convinced, but let's see what the outcome of the external investigation shows. All seems very odd. Young man who Schofield befriends gets work experience placement and then manages to bag himself a job on This Morning. Everyone seems to be singing his praises to the point where he then gets a promotion and joins Loose Women (which is still on air) suddenly he is then 'made redundant' with a financial package and that's nothing suspicious? Given his entire length of service seems to be barely a couple of years, most redundancy at that level will be worth sod all. Therefore seems even more unusual that is being specifically mentioned and reportable in the news.

From what I have read, there are allegations that the lad received some form of settlement payment and has left working for ITV.

Corrected your post to reflect reality rather than some Trumpesque woe is me statement.

I class Prime talent as a person who has been paid by television networks millions of pounds a year to front several of their prime programs and earn them millions of pounds of revenue. Yes, you are quite right, in theory anyone can sit on a sofa talking, but, as with all these things, only limited ones actually get enough profile and attraction to become household names. There are thousands of singers out there bit only certain ones are selling out arenas and going on world tours. There are thousands of actors out there but only certain ones are earning multi- millions for starring in blockbuster movies. Also, you might like to remember that prior to television, Schofield had years singing and dancing in west end musicals. So you haven't really picked the best example there to try and prove your point.

Are you for real? It is very much the business of the ITV executives. He was one of their prime talents and paid vast amounts of money by the network. In doing so, he would have been subject to their ethics and standards and regulations of which at worse he's breached with criminal behaviour or at best extremely poor conduct creating reputational damage. He has allegedly been covering up his brother's crimes - which I understand is something he even conceded in court. He has himself had an affair with a younger subordinate who he admits he first met when they were still a minor and seemingly started a relationship with the moment they they tripped over the age of consent. Therefore, raising lots of speculation and questions as to what exactly was going off in the interim. Regardless of whether there relations were legal or not, I highly suspect it will have breached the company policies of inter-employee relationships and furthermore the obvious concerns regarding executive talents having it away with junior staffers desperately looking for a telly career. Hardly looks great, does it. He continued to make a rod for his own back when he proceeded to lie to his own family, employers, talent agent and even his lawyers. Its caused severe reputational damage to one of the networks flagship programs and created a chaos for several other primetime shows he was due to front. Its lost millions of pounds of sponsorship and advertising to the network, the extent of which is still to be counted. This is just the beginning too. There's a whole injunction due to expire with even more revelation that might come out. In other words. It's very much their business and also totally obvious that every journalist is going to be wanting to report on it too. If this was any other celebrity on any other network, do not think Schofield and This Morning wouldn't be all over it like a rash. Doing the interviews, getting all the latest updates, picking out all the salacious gossip....

Not quite, users of such supermarket still have to log into their accounts and scan their way in. Theoretically lots of things could go wrong. But equally they was plenty of scope for things to go wrong the old fashioned method. The store would have to be staffed by more personnel each of them completely fallible. The store.opening hours would be much more restricted with its operations and procedures much more laborious and costly. Every time customers bought items someone would have to be manually checking the stock levels and daily auditing for reorder. There would be checkouts to be managed, change and floats to be counted and handled by each cashier, there are risks some customer items might be miss checked or wrongly input by the cashier, the day's cash taking has to be all manually counted and then locked away and then physically transported to a bank...... Of course, technology itself is not completely infallible but it is well proven by now that computers can repeat transactions, learn and calculate for quicker than any human. . That is why we use them so predominantly in everything. Example, for all the skill of a pilot, it is a computer that's keeping those A380s flying saving aeronautics, a human couldn't do the calculations fast enough to keep those satellites and spaceships up there. It's the silicon chip that's advanced our species to create these things.

Because human beings cost a lot of money. They have to be recruited and managed and trained and developed and disciplined time and time and over which requires even more human beings. A machine can be programmed once and it's intelligence copied over to any other machine at the press of a button. A human being takes time off for holidays or sickness . Machines don't. Human beings have working hour restrictions and rest periods, machines just keep on going. I get the points that Anna says about customer service and I agree that some things are better with the personal touch, but "good customer service" is a very broad definition and can be many things to many people. Some people would argue that the ability to browse something, get information on something, making enquiries and ordering something 24/7 is good customer service. Some people would argue that being able to make a banking transaction whenever they need to or get something delivered to their door within the hour or sometimes even minutes of ordering is part of good customer service - But of course only being made possible thanks to the machine. Whilst some long for the days of the old fashioned department stores and grocer shops with that personal service from the nice man behind the counter, others would argue that good customer service is the ability to go into a store 24 hours a day nipping in/out without having to queue or sit around waiting when they can just grab and go what they need and be out the door. Same with cafes or restaurants, yes on some occasions people do want the personal service. But let's be frank, fast, almost self serve food has been around a long time. When time is precious the ability to place orders on a kiosk or app, then have it handed to you within minutes of walking through the door has got to be seen as an advantage for some. I cant imagining some of the youngers today having to face going into a snack bar sitting around waiting for the waitress to take their order, wait for it to be made and then sit around the again waiting to pay the bill. There has to be a balance and some level of facing the inevitable that the world is constantly changing. The machines aren't going away. Ultimately, it is us consumers who embrace this revolution and gave these companies the dominance they have. Going back only 40 years, we had those traditional style businesses dominating our High streets and towns until those new fangled quick service, American style restaurants and boom.... We leapt at the chance and never looked back. Exactly the same sort of change happened when the outer town supermarkets took over the high street grocers. Then it was the huge mega malls of the 80s and 90s. Now it's internet shopping started to dominate and nibble at the heels of department stores, banks and travel industry with I suspect vast majority of people barely stepping in your travel agent from one year to next. Tell only way it will stop is the people to choose to stop using. But that dam is already burst.

Silly bugger.

I would wholly agree with everything you have said in bold. You are quite right. It does need drastic reorganisation. ....BUT, as do many others, here you've started to drift into the realms of fantasy, the trap of overprotecting our almighty health service with complete delusion that somehow all frontline staff are absolute angels who are perfect at their jobs and worth every penny plus much more. That is clearly not the case. I have a perfect right to be questioning the skills, necessity and competence of some of the staff because they are contributors to some of the failures of the organisation. Who else would it be? I would argue that some of those doctors and nurses are overpaid and certainly don't all work as hard as they should be. Some of them may be clinging on or even bound to outdated procedures and inefficient practices which fails to allow them to work smartly and cost effectively. I would argue that some of the services the NHS provides, it shouldn't be. Some of those services should be put back on people's own self responsibility with charges and penalties applied when people do stupid things, expecting the state to pick up the tab. There are lots of reforms that could be done and they should all be considered. But lets not pretend that every single member of staff on the front line is beyond criticism. There's incompetents and lazies, wasters and drifters and egos in every company. The NHS isn't immune from that. If it was, there wouldn't be £2.4 billion of negligence compensation payments last year nor would there be various NHS scandals occurring over history. Those sorts of things involved frontline staff... right? Those sorts of things could reasonably argued as those frontline staff failing to do their responsibilities or working hard enough... right? Oh. For the record, I never said the government is recruiting 10,000 doctors tomorrow. I was clearly using it as a hypothetical example that simply throwing in more staff isn't some magic wand solution that's going to make everything better. Its far more complex than that as I keep trying to explain. The questions need to be asked about what exactly is the shortages and where is the spread of those vast amounts of personnel we have working in the service now.

What? What the hell are you talking about 'don't live in the UK?' I very much live in the UK. In this very city. Perhaps if you spent a bit less time shouting and reading some of my posts properly you might actually get to know which poster you are responding to. You would also clearly see that I am not blanket 'blaming all staff'. I am challenging the system. I am suggesting it is hardly unreasonable to be asking questions about where the billions of pounds that get thrown into the NHS every year is being spent and why an organisation that has 1.5 million FTE staff levels and well over half of those being professionally qualified is seeming constantly screaming that they are suffering shortages and overworked. I don't work in oversimplification, sound bites and hysterical headlines. I like to know reasons and nuances and query why things are the way they are. I am open minded to alternative approaches and not so moronic to be writing off all mere suggestion of privatisation as some root cause of all evil. I'm realistic enough to understand taxpayer monies are a dwindling resource and no matter how many times people try and preach otherwise, there are far too many people failing to take responsibility, taking the health service for granted and not paying their way. In other words, I am not so dumb to simply declare everything wrong with the NHS is a Tory problem and it would all be rainbows and unicorns as soon as Labour got in.

Firstly, nobody screaming about a shortage of MP's so it's not even the same issue. Secondly, it is pretty well documented what all 650 MPs do given, by their very nature, they are continually subject to public scrutiny, every debate and committee and motion they put forward is recorded on public record and all their associations, interests and expenditure is all disclosible. Very much unlike the 71m plus NHS expenditure spaft away on staffing cost alone. Thirdly, the number of Tory MP's amounts to 0.02% of the NHS workforce so not even in the same galaxy. Now. Do you actually have any contribution to this debate or was it just another pathetic excuse for some tory bashing.

But questions have to be raised as to what is this shortage. Is it really a lack of skilled employees and training places OR are there other factors at play creating this apparent shortage. In reality, is it less about the numbers of personnel and far more about how they are being utilised, where they are being allocated, the sorts of duties they are doing, whether there is wastage or duplication of work or imbalance. As I have said earlier, the organisation has the equivalent of 1.5 million full time employees and out of that, 780,000 of them are categorised as professionally qualified posts. That's a hell of a lot of manpower so is it unreasonable to question what exactly they are all doing? I really don't think it is as simple as just screaming "recruit more" "train more" "pay more" Just like the thorny subject of NHS finances, there never ever seems to be enough. Year in, year out we always seem to have some 'service on the brink' and 'staff crisis' and 'pay strike' and 'departments overworked' Seems to have been that way since year dot. So what if they did recruit 10,000 brand new doctors tomorrow. How long will it be before they are screaming more and more all over again? Something is not adding up here.