Peter Hill

WHEN I opened my first bank account many years ago it was a simple business. I walked into my village branch of the Yorkshire Penny Bank, an imposing stone building despite the “Penny”, filled out a form, shook hands with the manager and that was it. I paid in modest amounts from time to time and for many years took out less. Almost all transactions were cash.

The Yorkshire Penny no longer exists, absorbed into some “superbank”, and now that the internet is here life has got a lot more complicated. I pay for most over-the-counter things with a card and have a bewildering list of standing orders, direct debits and online accounts that deal with everything from council tax to TV.

I signed up to modern life without understanding that wicked people crouching over computers were trying to hack into my accounts, steal my details and steal my money. Only last week I discovered, after reading a newspaper warning, that more than £300 had been spent on one of my cards in California. The bank has refunded it in full.

It has also been revealed that 57 million customers of Uber minicabs and members of a posh London club have been caught out by cyber thieves, just the latest of countless electronic frauds.

My bank tells me never to buy anything online unless the website has a padlock symbol but criminals seem always to be a step or two ahead. I think it’s still, just, possible to go back to a cash-only life and that would be sensible. But it would be an awful faff. q I WASN’T there so I don’t know whether I would have joined the mass panic that overtook London’s Oxford Street – we’re all worried about terrorism – but it was an unedifying scene. After false reports of shots spread on social media thousands of shoppers ran like sheep, dropping parcels and trampling over others. Amazingly there were few serious injuries. Islamic State doesn’t have to do a thing because the public is causing mass disruption for it. Understandable but shameful. q NEW research suggests that helmets and high-visibility clothing make cyclists more vulnerable to accidents. Riders are emboldened to take more risks and drivers don’t give them a wide enough berth, it’s claimed. As a cyclist with decades of experience I believe this is very dangerous nonsense. You can’t be too visible on a bike.

I wear a fluorescent waistcoat and carry flashing lights front and rear day and night. I am amazed when I see people cycling in dark clothing and without lights even in the dark.

And why wouldn’t you wear a helmet? Anyone can hit a pothole and fall off. Don’t be tempted to drop sensible habits on the basis of one contentious bit of research. q THERE has been a “sharp decline” in standards at private faith schools, according the Ofsted. Forty-nine per cent of such schools they inspected failed to meet leadership and management norms or teaching fundamental British values. The report I read does not specify which faiths are the problem, and isn’t that a clue?

I suspect it almost entirely means those Islamic schools – hopefully not all – where British values are completely absent, an extreme version of the Koran is taught to the exclusion of almost every other subject, the children are indoctrinated to believe that girls are inferior and that their people are in a state of siege. There should be no place here for that brand of anti-education. q I WILL probably appal some readers by revealing that the best use I have found for my iPhone 6 is reading in bed. A book is heavy and you need two hands, one to hold it, the other to turn the pages. You also need a light, which annoys the other person who wants to sleep and causes rows.

I have a Kindle but that’s quite heavy, too. The phone is just right. I can hold it with either hand and flick the pages with a thumb with hardly any of me outside the bedclothes.

I have just read Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust (great story) on my phone. I have also imbibed the whole of War And Peace on it and many other classics. And it’s a brilliant way to read on buses, planes and trains. q WE LIVE in a transgender world. Apparently. But the Girl Guides’ new rule that boys who identify as female can shower with the rest is not on. Men and women are instinctively modest about their private parts and it would be appallingly embarrassing for the two sexes to be naked together even if the boys want to be girls.

Guides chiefs say it’s not appropriate to tell parents if their children are involved in transgender showering. Excuse me, but it’s entirely appropriate that they should have the chance to say yes or no. If that offends the shouty gender fanatics, tough. q AS A hater of political correctness I had to laugh at the Durham university rugby club’s idea of a miners’ strike themed party calling for “flat caps and filth”, now regrettably cancelled after howls of protest. We should never lose the ability, or the right, to make fun of even the most sensitive issues.

The hugely popular musical Billy Elliot parodies the miners’ strike without a chorus of po-faced objections. Come on, lighten up. q BLACK Friday passed me by without troubling my credit cards. As did Black Monday and so will Black Tomorrow. White Christmas is just around the corner. Enough!