Five Books for Kareem

Kareem Shaheen is a journalist with Abu Dhabi based newspaper The National. Try not to hold that against him, he's a decent fellow for all that.

Kareem's New Year's resolution is slightly unusual but highly laudable. He's setting out to read a book a week for the year. Yup. 52 of 'em. Rather wonderfully, he's also reviewing them on this blog linked right here.

I gave myself the unenviable task of listing the five books I would recommend to him above all else. It nearly killed me, but here they are: five books for Kareem. Feel free to add your five penny'orth.

A quick note for those of you reading this on FaceBook, which includes many of my literarily inclinated pals, please pop over to the blog if you would like to add your recommendations. Cheers!


The Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence Durrell
I think I can say this is my favourite book of all time, although it's really a four-in-one recommendation. Durrell's Alexandria Quartet is a winner on all fronts: set in '30s and '40s Alexandria it's lush, evocative and rich, its vivid characters occupy settings described with a sumptuary's eye, everything touched by notes of the mystical and imbued with a smoky sexuality. The Quartet is just that, a tetralogy - four books that describe the same sequence of events, forming an interlinear which sees its events unfold from four narrative perspectives: Justine, Mountolive, Balthazar and Clea. Structurally, imaginatively, intellectually and lyrically brilliant, it's a book I have re-read many times with joy at every encounter. If I had an ounce of Durrell's genius, I would be a giant. He was, incidentally, an alcoholic who liked to beat women, but I suppose you can't have everything...


Seven Pillars of Wisdom
TE Lawrence
Thomas Edward Chapman has been something of a hobby for me: I have every book written by him or about him during his lifetime, each one a first edition. I don't have the famous 'subsriber's edition', sadly, but then I'd be sitting on tens of thousands of pounds worth of book if I did. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt and his role in it makes for fascinating reading, let alone that it reveals old TE to be an author of considerable power and style. It's classical stuff written wonderfully and stands as truly a great work of literature - regardless of how you view it as history.

The Honourable Schoolboy
John Le Carré
John 'call me David Cornwell' Le Carré has to be one of my favourite contemporary reads. Often shrugged off by snotty, superior types as 'just spy stories', Le Carré's books are a good deal more literary than many suppose - he's a master stylist whose bleak landscapes are peppered with tragedy and human failure, increasingly so as he's grown older. The Honourable Schoolboy is set in Hong Kong during the fall of the British secret service following the uncovering of its head as a Soviet 'mole'. Using back-tracking techniques, basically going where the mole didn't want them to go when he was in place, Le Carré's famous Smiley and company start to buy their way back into viability by pulling off a major intelligence coup. It's unputdownable stuff at every level.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S Thompson
He hardly needs any introduction, but journalist Hunter Stockton Thompson invented 'gonzo', a school (if it can be elevated to that!) of journalism that celebrates the journalist as participant in the events being covered. And Hunter's idea of immersion is a Mach-speed plunge into the depths of drug-addled frenzy. Brilliantly played by Johnny Depp in the film of the same name, Thompson trod a constant tightrope of alcohol abusing, gun-toting, high speed drugged-up insanity in his quest to cover the Mint 400 desert race in Las Vegas. If Fear and Loathing doesn't make you laugh with manic glee and want to go out and commit a crime, you're not human.

The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
When he's not writing books, Umberto Eco is a professor of semiotics (at Bologna University, as you ask), the study of signs and symbols, and his books reflect his intellectual engagement with the ideas of the dawning of human comprehension that took place as Europe emeged from the dark ages. The Name of the Rose is set in a monastery in Italy, where an English monk and his Italian apprentice attempt to solve a series of murders. Set against a backdrop of Albigensian heresy and the Inquisition, their quest for truth takes place among the mysteries of the massive library-maze and the scriptorium that the Monastery is famed for - and where truth is by practice kept hidden. It's a brilliant whodunnit peppered with ideas and explorations of human thought and symbology. Oddly, I also liked the film but then I'm a sucker for Sean Connery...


So there they are. My five favourite books of all time. I know in my heart of hearts that I'm going to regret this, that the others jostling just under will make me regret this - let alone those that didn't come to mind this morning. I could so easily make it 50 or probably even more. But it's set in stone now...

What are your Five Books for Kareem?

Computer Says No

The sheer horror was slow to dawn on me. I was looking at a laptop with a blank screen that should have been displaying gentle shades of blue and playing warming, cute peepy sounds to let me know I'd made the right choice in Microsoft.

But instead of lovely Windows 7.0, I've got a fritzed machine, an error somewhere in chipset land made all the more difficult to diagnose because it failed inconsistently before eventually going down with the finality of a fat drunk losing his legs.

This is why the shower head got replaced, the toilet seat repaired and the picture hung. I hadn't actually realised how much of my time the wee sucker was actually eating. Depositing the little slab of now-useless black plastic at the service and support centre this morning left me walking away feeling distinctly naked, I can tell you.

Yet, despite my black thoughts in the car on the way over to the office, my day hasn't been a disastrous void spent looking at a notebookless desk. I'm accessing my email using our remote access client, doing stuff in Google Groups and pulling the documents I need from the server. I got Twitter up and running on the spare machine I'm using and all my RSS stuff is on Netvibes. The same crash a few short years ago would have been a true horrow - everything I had was held on my local hard disk. Now a great deal of the stuff I work on is out there in 'the cloud' - accessible to me wherever I am, whatever machine I'm using. Device independent, platform independent and client indepenent.

I do realise the fact that I even paused to think about this, let alone wrote a post about it, makes me a deeply sad individual. But then I am temporarily bereft of my beloved Lenovo T61 and grief makes one inclined to behave oddly.

GeekFest Beirut is a Go Go!

Image via Wikipedia

At the last GeekFest Dubai, we forgot to announce that we'd decided to expand the project and go ahead with GeekFest Beirut. The wonderful Alexandra Tohme agreed to UNorganise the event, little knowing what she'd let herself in for (Bwaa haa haa) and now it's all pretty much all sorted.

The first GeekFest Beirut will take place on Friday the 5th February 2010 and will be held at uber-funky Beiruti hangout, Art Lounge, which is close to the Forum de Beyrouth. A location map can be found here, while other details about Art Lounge can be found here (including sexy pics of its uber-funkiness).

Saadia and I are planning to be there and a number of other Dubai Geeky types have expressed an interesting in pitching up if possible. It's going to be an absolute blast, without a doubt.

You can follow @GeekFestBeirut on Twitter or you can schlep along to the obligatory FaceBook fan page if you like, where we've started to post some silly stuff and will surely post some more.

Alternatively, if you have questions or want to throw money at us, you can email Alexandra, Saadia or myself - we're all listed on the GeekFestBeirut Twitter page (because it's a graphic and the spambots can't see graphics!).

Just a reminder - GeekFest is a not for profit thingy, we don't do sponsorships or corporate stuff and we remain resolutely, as much as is practically possible, UNorganised!

Cheque this out...

Image via Wikipedia

The new chequebook requirement is not just on the part of HSBC, as my landlord’s man thought happily last night when I passed over my rent in cash to him. He was shocked to hear me tell him that every bank in the UAE is likely to start rejecting ‘old’ cheques and he had no idea at all how to tell the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ cheques. He is holding several ‘old’ cheques as PDCs preparatory to depositing them when the rents on other properties come due – I wonder how many other landlords are in a similar position.

In my humble opinion, this whole sorry episode is a case study in totally inadequate communications, a demonstration of breathtaking arrogance from banks and a clear sign that the UAE’s banks have a huge leap forward to make in customer service and communication. I might be overdoing it, but I doubt it: this is what I do for a living – communications. I might be useless at it, I might not. But I have never seen it so badly mismanaged in my life – and I have been working in the Middle East for over twenty years now.

All UAE banks have to upgrade their cheques to conform to new guidelines mandated by the UAE Central Bank and so there is a very real danger that the vast majority of cheques held by people out there are now duds. And that the majority of cheque books out there are useless.
The UAE is a society where a cheque was previously regarded as ‘as good as cash’ because of the Central Bank’s ‘two strikes and you’re out’ policy. In the UAE, if you bounce a cheque, the person you have issued the cheque to can call the police and file a case against you and if you bounce a cheque twice, the Central Bank can (and, I hear, will) withdraw your access to banking services.

This has been an amazing deterrent to any form of ‘bad cheque’ and, in fact, there are no cheque guarantee cards here. A cheque is a man’s word and bond and respected as such.

The new guidelines from the Central Bank have been triggered by the introduction of a new automated clearing system, ICCS. This demands banks take extra precautions before scanning cheques and sending them to the Central Bank for clearing, hence the mandated ‘more secure’ cheque books.

HSBC and other banks started to refuse cheques without the new features on the 1st January 2010. I have no record of HSBC contacting me to advise me of this – I did, incidentally, search through the 33 junk and phishing emails that purported to come from HSBC that I have received since November last year, but they are all fakes. HSBC has not responded to my post yesterday asserting that the bank had not effectively communicated the vitally important new changes to me.

There is some confusion regarding PDCs. According to Mashreq’s FAQ:
Retail and corporate customers may have already collected cheques which do not comply with cheque security features prior to this deadline. In view of this, collecting banks will accept such deposits and process them as usual in ICCS till 31/07/2010. Any PDCs dated beyond 31/07/2010 must be lodged with Banks before 31/12/2009 for collection on the due date.

But HSBC’s FAQ is a little more clear (my bold):
Post dated cheques without the security features, which have been collected by customers prior to 31 December 2009, can be accepted until 31 July 2010. After this date no cheque without the security feature will be accepted.

Post dated cheques and discounted cheques deposited in advance without the security feature and already held by banks for any date will not be affected by this rule; however HSBC will not accept any new cheques without the security features post 01 January 2010.

In other words, PDCs will only be honoured if the bank already held them prior to 31/12/2009 – think about it, a cheque dated now and lodged now is just a ‘new cheque without the security features’, no?

I haven’t seen any news stories or advertisements about this massive change to the banking system. If other banks have contacted their customers, well and good – but nobody I have spoken to has been aware of this whole issue at all. I should point out that some people commenting to the last post I put up on this issue do say they were made aware – although some said they received emails as late as 28/12/2009.

By the way – as far as I can see, the ICCS rollout from the Central Bank has been done with remarkable care and some two years of trials, dry runs and suchlike. I remain amazed that two years down the line, banks seem singularly unprepared to meet the challenges of the rollout.

There has been no concerted awareness campaign on the part of the banks to ensure that customers know about this issue. I can gather evidence of, at best, cursory and almost derisory attempts at communicating what’s going on (mounting a FAQ on your website is not communicating with your public). And that strikes me as verging on insane – let alone highly insecure – given that this move potentially invalidates every cheque in the UAE that does not conform to a new standard that most people are unaware of.

So what does this all mean? Try this lot:

• PDCs held by landlords in the UAE that have not yet been lodged or discounted with a bank are likely not to be honoured by banks. They are potentially worthless documents as of 1/1/2010.
  

• Anybody issuing a cheque using the old style cheque book is potentially defrauding the person they are presenting the cheque to. And anyone accepting such a cheque (do you know what the new ones look like? HmmMMM?) is likely to have it bounced by the bank.
  

• Any payments, for instance mortgage payments, car loans or PDCs issued by businesses against scheduled payments, may well (probably will) bounce.
  

• Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between the ‘new’ cheques and the ‘old’ cheques issued by every UAE bank is in danger of accepting a dud cheque.
  

• The criminally minded punter can now have a field day – imagine selling someone some ACs, a fridge or suchlike. By the time the cheque has gone ‘thud’, what are the chances you’ll be able to find yer man? Yeah, zero.
  

• Cheques in the UAE are no longer as good as cash. They’re as good as junk until someone gets their finger out and clearly communicates what the hell is going on here. And that means, collectively, the banks that have so far stayed resolutely silent need to start taking responsibility.
  

Incidentally, the cheque that HSBC bounced on my landlord (a cheque for tens of thousands of Dirhams returned without even making a call to me, of course) came back marked as 'Irregular Signature'.

Cheque Book Fraud

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I suppose I should be angry that HSBC failed to communicate the changes in cheque book requirements with me, but I’m not – merely resigned. I had to find out about it from someone on Twitter in the end.

I should equally, I’m sure, be angry that the bank dishonoured a post dated cheque I had previously given to my landlord, doing so, as usual, without attempting to contact and inform me. But I’m not. I’m just resigned to the lack of communication or basic care for the customer.

The UAE’s central bank has made changes to the way it handles cheques and has therefore made it a requirement that cheques should have an additional level of security, including a tamper-evident watermark. These have been added to new cheque books and banks are no longer accepting cheques made out using old style cheque books.

What amazes me is that a bank could actually contemplate making such a move without any attempt to communicate this effectively to its customers. I consider myself to be unusually contactable – I am quite an online person and you can get in touch with me by telephone, mobile, SMS, fax, email, Twitter or Facebook. You could even leave a comment on the blog. In fact, HSBC has frequently contacted me using SMS, typically to let me know about a discount I can avail at Joy Alukkas Jewellery when I use my HSBC card. Strange they didn’t think of using the same medium, or in fact any medium of communication, to let me know they were about to dishonour my cheque.

But I’m not angry about that. Just resigned.

They could even have bothered to write to me. To enclose a new cheque book, for instance, or at least a letter explaining what was happening and how it would affect me. They could have put a mandatory screen up on the Internet banking system that would have made me click on ‘NO I don’t want the new cheque book’ or ‘YES please send me a new cheque book now in plenty of time before the changes take place.’ That wouldn’t have cost them a penny but would have avoided my landlord getting a bounced cheque. They could even have sent an email using their woeful little Internet banking messaging system, but records show no such communication since November which is as far as records go back.

Given that I am a busy little bee with plenty more important things to do than muck about with this stuff, they could have used several routes to get through to me and let me know I had to act and that there would be consequences attendant on my inaction. They could have written to me, put a screen on Internet Banking AND sent me a letter, SMSed me and emailed me/messaged me via their Internet Banking service. All of them. Just to make sure I knew what was happening. They did none of them. Not one.

It’s not a time thing, either. HSBC has had plenty of time to inform customers of the changes and prepare them for the new system. The first phase of testing ICCS, which appears to have been a thoroughly well managed rollout by the Central Bank, took place in July 2006. HSBC has known for over two years that the new system was to be implemented and therefore has had two years to prepare its customers for the new security requirements. As the global local bank, it would have had experience from other markets of earlier implementations of Image based clearing, surely?

In fact, the whole thing has been a world class shambles, managed with the usual complete disregard for the customer and leveraging the communication skills of a deep frozen wombat.

But what makes me angry, because yes, I am angry, is that my landlord is a decent man but a very sick one and he didn’t need to have to deal with a bounced cheque. That cheque was written and issued in good faith, drawn on the bank account that I am paying the bank to manage on my behalf and returned without any reference whatsoever to the account holder. What’s more, the cheque was written on the cheque book issued to me for that very purpose by the bank – the very same bank that had previously taken to bouncing my cheques because it claimed my signature had changed (it hasn’t). The very same bank that I visited personally in August last year to sort out that whole sorry mess and who did not even think to let me know then and there that I would need a new cheque book. Although they must, at that time, have known that these changes were taking place as they'd been working on them for fully two years since full trials of the new system had taken place.

The bank has at no time communicated to me the requirement for a new cheque book or that it was going to start unilaterally dishonouring my issued cheques for reasons that were completely unknown to me.

Bankers.

Mum, there's crap in my food...

Image via Wikipedia

I avoid processed foods wherever possible and I’m a mildly obsessive packaging reader. I'm a bit of a foodie, have relatively good 'food knowledge' and am very aware of additives and ingredients used in food processing. I won’t buy foods that contain gunk like high fructose corn syrup, palm oil and modified starch and I’ll avoid dextrose, artificial sweeteners and the like. In fact, I'll buy raw ingredients wherever possible. And I have always had a mild aversion to American food products because of the increasing prevalence of GMOs and hormones in the US food supply.

So I was mildly surprised to find out a whole load of scary stuff about food that I didn't know.

For instance, I didn’t know that industrialised food production in the US has reached the level where there are now just thirteen abattoirs in the entire USA. Yes, thirteen. You can only begin to imagine the scale of them. Or that practices such as feeding cheap corn to cattle lie behind the massive growth in E. Coli infection (73,000 Americans get sick every year from E. Coli) throughout the American food chain – all the way down to greens such as spinach.

A good European boy, I’m strongly opposed to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in my food, but I didn’t know that over 80% of all soybean production in the USA is now derived from genetically modified seeds from Monsanto – one genetic modification being to make the seed resistant to a herbicide used on soybean plants that is sold by, wait for it, Monsanto.

And I didn’t know that 1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will suffer from early onset diabetes – attributed to the amazing prevalence of highly processed sugars in the national diet.

These facts come to you courtesy of Robert Kenner’s thought provoking documentary Food, Inc. I watched it on the flight back from the UK and I would recommend it as required viewing for anyone considering buying any American food product. The film is all the more scary for its reasonable and balanced tone and for the cheap shots it doesn’t take.

It’s possible that at least part of the film’s reasonable tone is down to the fact that you can be held liable in at least two US states (Texas and Colorado) for making false or disparaging remarks about food.

Food defamation. Seriously.

In fact, this very law is referred to in the film when one of its interviewees, food safety advocate Barbara Kowalyck, gets cautious about commenting – the Oprah beefburger lawsuit is trotted out to show how a single comment about beef on TV turned into a multi-million dollar suit. The Oprah suit is, however, just one of many that have been lodged by representatives of US agro-industry against food producers, campaigners and others in a concerted effort to ensure that people learn as little as possible about the way that food has been industrialised in America.

By the way, here are some common processed food additives that are made out of good old cheap American corn, over 60% of which is apparently grown from genetically modified seeds today:
Cellulose, Xylitol, Maltodextrin, Ethylene, Gluten, Fibersol-2, Citrus Cloud Emulsion, Inosital, Fructose, Calcium Stearate, Saccharin, Sucrose, Sorbital, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Di-glycerides, Semolina, Sorbic Acid, Alpha Tocopherol, Ethyl Lactate, Polydextrose, Xantham Gum, White Vinegar, Ethel Acetate, Fumaric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Baking Powder, Zein, Vanilla Extract, Margarine, and Starch.

Yum yum!

BTW, as we're talking about rubbish in your food, here's what they put in Pringles, here's what they put in Aquafina water and here's some stuff that'll put you off eating foods with palm oil in them.

Wonderful Life

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Flying into Lalaland, it’s always nice to have the last few minutes of the film you’re watching chopped off by the playing of the compulsory Dubai promotional video. The old promo, which used to show scenes of people enjoying themselves in Dubai’s iconic resorts to the soundtrack of some bird breathlessly delivering adjectives like ‘delicious, delightful, exciting’ in a series of sexlessly orgasmic gasps has now been replaced by the same sort of footage but played over a backdrop of 1980s band Black’s, ‘Wonderful Life’. The adjectives are now displayed as subtitles, which at least dispenses with any danger of DTCM being accused of attempted subtlety.

I have to confess to finding this film mildly irritating. It’s not the content or even the fact that you are quite literally strapped to a chair and forced to watch it that gets my goat. It’s that someone over at DTCM thinks it’s clever to play a promotion for Dubai to a planeload of people that are already committed, in a most fundamental way, to going there.

It never fails to have me thinking about the wasted opportunity to actually communicate with people that this slice of barminess represents – the chance, for instance, to tell them a little more about Dubai and what they could actually do in their time here, perhaps even to communicate something of the moral and social environment they’re about to enter. You could even inform people and help them get more out of their Dubai experience - for instance on how to get around, some of the major sights to be seen, what’s going on in the city right now. They could be produced as a series of short films featuring a presenter, perhaps even as a monthly magazine programme which would, incidentally, avoid the irritation experienced by frequent flyers who have to watch the same thing again and again and again. It could even be made – you might want to sit down for this bit – watchable.

But alas, no. Strapped into your chair, personal electronic devices switched off for final approach, you have no choice but to watch Tiger Woods (who is still, apparently, A Good Thing in Dubai) and friends loving the 'wonderful life’.

Oh, by the way, here is an extract from the lyrics of Black’s happy little ditty, a song of guilty loneliness. It is, perhaps, an appropriate soundtrack...

Here I go out to sea again
The sunshine fills my hair
And dreams hang in the air
Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes
You know it feels unfair
There's magic everywhere

Look at me standing
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine
No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
It's a wonderful wonderful life

The sun's in your eyes
The heat is in your hair
They seem to hate you because you're there
And I need a friend
Oh I need a friend to make me happy
Not stand here on my own

I need a friend
Oh I need a friend
To make me happy
Not so alone

Another BTW, BTW: the original video of Black's 1980s songette, shot in black and white, is here. I do find the first frame fascinating... And yes, thank you, it is good to be back.

Radar, radar everywhere

Image via Wikipedia

It's interesting to see the backlash against fixed radar on British roads. The most recent news, albeit broken in the fascist's friend, The Daily Mail, is that Wiltshire town Swindon has scrapped fixed radars. Getting flashed on a British road means a £50 fine (about Dhs300, which is a snip compared to the rather more lavish fines doled out in the Emirates, which start at double that and rise depending on how much faster you're travelling.

Swindon's town council reacted to the news last October that the lucrative fines revenue would go direct to central government in Whitehall by withdrawing the lot of them, thereby underpinning the popular view that fixed radars were more about revenue than road safety.

Since the move, Swindon's roads have actually become safer - quarterly statistics show no fatalities since the radars were removed (the quarter before, with radars, there was a single fatality). Over the same periods speeding fines went down from 2,227 to 1,033 - hardly a surprise - the 1,033 fines came from mobile camera deployments.

This news adds to the increasing chorus from those in the UK who believe that fixed cameras have no effect whatsoever on road safety - an argument that could well apply to the streets of Dubai, where higher fines and stricter enforcement have undoubtedly had an effect on road mortality rates. The question as to whether having the highest penetration of fixed traffic cameras in the world today is about revenue or safety is one that does tend to nag me.

The Mail also carries the story of an unknown radar bomber who has taken the motorist's ultimate revenge, which I quite enjoyed. It's here.

BlockBerries

Image via Wikipedia

So Etisalat and Du have put their heads together and decided to block the evil BlackBerries. From this day on, no longer will the UAE's population be able to access gambling, pornography,drugs and *gasp* Voice over IP sites.

It's interesting that the telcos rank VOIP alongside gambling and porn - an insight into telco morality, if you like. What are the worst things the UAE's telcos can think of - the most mind-corrupting, society-challenging, youth-destabilising things possible? And Skype is right up there with the worst things that the Lord of Mordor could possibly imagine.

You do have to wonder, don't you? The telcos, according to the report carried in The Paper That Tells It Like It Is, Gulf News, are acting unilaterally and not waiting for 'Nanny' regulator the TRA. Damn right they are - because while three of the four categories are culturally arguable, the fourth, VOIP, is a purely commercial decision that is contrary to the interests of the people that these telcos are supposed to be serving.

At least they're not forcing people to accept spyware...

Language

Image by jovike via Flickr

Language is a funny thing: when you're writing, sometimes you have to stop in mid-flow and cast about for the right tword, the mot juste. Sometimes your choice of word can be telling - and make the difference between how things appear. Sometimes a word can give away what you're really thinking and not what you'd like to project - what you'd like people to think you're thinking.

There are two words that are part of my everyday life that I believe are telling in this way. They're used by my bank, HSBC. No doubt selected thoughtlessly and dashed down in seconds as a tiny part of the greater job of building a sprawling empire of flawless customer service, they do rather give the game away.

When I use telephone banking, a service that I truly appreciate as it has meant I have had to make only infrequent visits to the branch and therefore have been largely able to avoid interacting with the drooling, slack-jawed incompetents that infest the place, I frequently make transfers between accounts. When this process is successful (which is quite frequently, as no member of the bank's staff has the chance to insert themselves between me and the computer), I get the message 'Your request has been processed.'

This is a screech to a stop moment for me every time. It's my money and you're providing a service to me in return for which I pay you. So it's not a request really, is it? It's an instruction. I am instructing you to do something, not begging a favour. I'm wearing the big boots, I'm the customer and it's a bloody instruction to you regarding the arrangement of my assets.

When I use an ATM to take money from my account (again a process that is frequently successful for precisely the same reason that telephone banking works - its totally automated and as long as you don't want to do anything in any way slightly unusual or intuitive, you're onto a winner) and the ATM confirms that I'm about to get my money, it tells me 'Your withdrawal has been accepted'.

Again, I apply the old locked brakes here. Accepted? Like an officious dame ticking a box to confirm that I don't have any threateningly anti-social tendencies and can, indeed, use the swimming pool, my bank is accepting my request to take some of money out of my account. And here was me thinking that my instruction was being processed.

I'm the punter, not a beggar in front of a mosque. Those two little weasel words are a constant reminder to me that HSBC's view of our relationship is somewhat different. To paraphrase the bank's intensely annoying UK advertising campaign:

Customer Beggar Beggar Customer