All I did was tell people to take a little time out of their busy lives to fill in a form and they may get some cash back from their bank if they were oversold PPI. That’s all I wrote here last week.
We did and we got a wee payout. Now everyone I know is at it. Suddenly, I am this great financial guru, handing out pearls of wisdom. Much of the country is banging in applications too. There has been a big spike in PPI applications in the last week and, while I cannot really claim the credit for much of it, I am delighted. I did my bit. And, if you haven’t put yours in, why not do it now? There’s only three weeks because you cannot do it after August 29.
Some banks are squealing about the time to process all these claims. To be expected but I would remind Barclays, whose finance director has been moaning that some claims are vexatious, you did much worse. So what if some members of the public are taking up your time to see if they have a claim or not? It was your bank, and others too, who tried to rip off customers by piling on the PPI charges without explaining them and even charging when customers didn’t need them.
It doesn’t take much time. Fill in a form if there is any possibility of a claim. You should be able to fill in the form on your bank’s website in less than 30 minutes. That’s only slightly longer than French flyboarder Franky Zapata took to cross the English Channel the other day. Whoosh. It took him 60 feet up in the air and then 22 miles in 22 minutes to alight safely beyond the white hills and on the green, green grass of Dover. He did speeds of up to 110mph but he had to slow down at one point for a passing helicopter to top up his fuel backpack. Cool.
His isn’t like these wobbly and dangerous battery-powered hoverboards that were all the rage a few Christmases ago and which were responsible for shattered smugness, sideboards and skulls. This one does not take AA or PP3 batteries. This was a jet-powered hoverboard better than those in James Bond. No special effects required. Whoosh. And, like all great inventions, it won’t be long until we all have one in the garage. When Mrs X tells me to go for a pint of milk I can pop out and then wonder where shall I go for the cow juice today? The bakery across the road? Or Tesco? Or Tesco in … Ullapool? Whoosh.
I want one. Imagine if you had one of these jet hoverboards and you overflew the ferry Loch Seaforth mid-Minch. How fed up would you be on the Caledonian MacBrayne tub to see someone rich and good-looking, like myself, rubbing it in by doing tight turns above the familiar Lion Rampant emblem on the ferry’s funnel? You can just imagine a passenger shouting up from the deck: “Hoi Maciver, have you got vertigo?” I would just shout back: “Nah. Another 10 miles and I’ll be at Achiltibuie post office for a quart of Mrs X’s semi skimmed.” Whoosh.
If we all got these hoverboards, it could sink CalMac. Loganair would just be for the super-rich. Mind you, isn’t it already?
Unlike the new dram being created in America. Because they don’t know how to spell properly over there, our cousins across the pond are calling it whiskey, not whisky, but by all accounts the dram that Endless West has created has a lot more in that it shouldn’t have. The California company says it makes synthetic food and drinks – including whiskey. It claims to make the whiskey in 24 hours – which is a bit different from the 12 years it takes to mature my own fave, Macallan Triple Cask.
Synthetic stuff is a substance made by chemical synthesis, especially to imitate a natural product. This dram sounds like a poor imitation. The reviews I have read suggest it tastes of apricot and not heather, smoke, peat and diesel – like most very fine Scotch Whiskies. I wonder if it makes you exclaim: “Oh, heorna mhor,” now coincidentally a battlecry of a recently-formed beat combo called Peat and Diesel – of which more soon.
So making great whisky takes a little time, but more than filling in a PPI form. Time management is not my forte either. Mrs X keeps telling me I spend too much time on this computer and I must go out for a walk with her. She is getting angry about it even though I told her I have to stay and write this column. She is taking it too far now. She has just told me she will slam my head into the keyboard the next time she catches me on it. So I told her that I’m the boss in this house. I’m the man. No one tells me what to jkhlk hGHr tKG^ %$:Ljk suir$.
