One the last occasion they actually informed me that a previous card I thought had expired had actually remained open due to another of these ‘security’ checks remaining pending. On that occasion apparently they could not contact me by phone or mail so I had now have to incur a €30 Stamp Duty charge in having the account closed. There was no mention when I contacted them by phone of actually verifying the ‘questionable’ transactions.

In addition to the obvious dangers of the method by which AIB conduct these ‘checks’ I would be very interested to find out exactly how a supposed suspicious or fraudulent transaction is flagged by their system. On the past two occasions when speaking to them over the phone, I have had to orally approve virtually identical transactions I have genuinely made online over different time periods, to me it seems unnecessary and stupid.

In one sense, I suppose it is good to know that AIB take this seriously (the checking at least, if not the methodology) but I was always of the opinion that the onus was on me, the customer, to regularly check the transactions on my account , and then to report any suspicions or concerns to them, not vice versa, particularly when the process just picks the same transaction type on each occasion and thus the cycle begins all over again.

I was thinking about Bord Snip last night and it struck me that any Minister who was actually on top of his/her brief should be able to pin point savings and reforms in the Departments under their control, cut PR and consultancy budgets in quangos under their control etc.

Id like to see Labour calling on individual Ministers to show true leadership and introduce cuts&reforms in their own depts. Most of the FF ministers have been in office for 10-12 years so they know their way around the place and where the budgets are soft. Along the lines of “what are you doing to reform the public sector”

I’d be interested in seeing the various ministers and politicians who divvied up decentralisation like spoils of war being made to apologise in public. Until then, I think that you’re going to do more harm than good in letting the pols have yet *another* go at that feeding-trough (and don’t believe that angles aren’t already being devised).

Btw, I thought that Labour were supposedly a socialist party, and pro-union. I see that I may have been mistaken.

This is so going to happen! Heh heh.

Yes, let’s do this, immediately. We’ve had so much success with political vision in the last…eh…decade, this is bound to work. Sure fire winner.