The cheque circulaire isn’t offered since 2010, that’s explained at the bottom of the current fees.

Circular cheques are still being used. I just received one. The articles you link say that the circular cheques will remain when the postal orders are eliminated.

Your links were quite helpful. This looks like the most relevant bit for answering my question (from this article):

(en translation)

…According to the office of the Minister of Public Action and Modernization, Vanessa Matz was able, via the circular cheque, to guarantee a concrete and free cash alternative for the most vulnerable. In particular, this measure concerns those who do not have access to banking services or who are isolated. Neither circular cheques nor prepaid cards will be billed to beneficiaries, says the firm on Tuesday.

(fr original)

…Selon le cabinet de la ministre l’Action et de la Modernisation publiques, Vanessa Matz a pu, via le chèque circulaire, garantir une alternative cash concrète et gratuite pour les plus vulnérables. Cette mesure concerne en particulier ceux qui n’ont pas accès aux services bancaires ou qui sont isolés. Ni les chèques circulaires ni les cartes prépayées ne seront facturés aux bénéficiaires, précise le cabinet mardi.

That seems to explain what I was misunderstanding. I thought if the fee for cheque cashing is going away, perhaps so are the cheques. That would be very disturbing but that’s not the case. Apparently the 4€ fee is going away.🎉 I believe that fee was always illegal. Glad something was done about it.

Remaining question: how does a postal order differ from a circular cheque? What do we lose when postal orders go away? AFAICT, they function the same. This article seems to say circular cheques require movement – going to a bank or post office to cash it, which is a problem for some handicaps. But I don’t get why that would not be the case with a postal order as well. How does a postal order get converted to cash? Is it perhaps about showing ID? Is it a case where a family member could cash a postal order for their grandparent, but not a cheque?

I am using Ungoogled Chromium older than 120, so apparently that’s the issue. Does that also explain the problem of feddit.uk comments not being seen?

for example

still dead for me. Perhaps they are quietly blocking Tor.

Yeah, that’s true. The open data law does not overturn or tamper with copyright. So the material itself still has the same copyright protections. But it’s the /catalog/ of books and media that I am referring to.

I’m asking if they are bound by the open data law, which is effectively a question of whether the data is held by a public or private entity.

It depends on the level of competency of the executives. If the approach done with low frequency, feedback to upper management could trigger someone to calculate whether lost sales is worth it. If it is done on a large scale, then less competency is required for upper management to do the calculation. So the frequency of abandoned carts to have effect depends on the competency of management.

it prevents the business from functioning correctly and I think in that hypothetical scenario, you’re definitely hurting cashiers.

It’s not a boycott. You can abandon a basket in one Spar shop to send a msg then still buy the stuff at another one.

But let’s suppose it’s not just a signal but actually a boycott. To harm the cashiers the boycott would have to be on such a large scale that it causes at least one Spar shop to shut down. Do you really believe that would happen? It’s beyond unrealistic. Only 60% of the population even cares about cash. Many fewer even shop at Spar to begin with. It would be unlikely if even just 1% were to boycott on this issue. Then you have to figure that the 40% of the population who is okay with forced banking and cashless society would counter the boycott by patronising Spar when they otherwise wouldn’t. On top of that, this is not a hill Spar would die on no matter how incompetent they are. They would give in to the boycott far before closing shop.

In short, you have no chance of harming cashiers.

Giving the cashiers work to do does not “harm” them. If anything it improves their job security for them to have more work to do. They get paid the same whether it is putting back abandoned items or collecting money from shop supporters.

If the cost of unfruitful overhead labor coupled with lost sales does not change the behavior of the executives, fair enough, they are their own incompetent adversary in that case. We can setup conditions for them to make smart and favorable decisions but in the end it’s on them to make the smart decision.

It cannot be about addiction prevention especially when there is only one casino in a given area. The staff sees the faces of addicts on a regular basis, their behaviour, and emotions. This is better information than they could get from a transaction record.

Having to register is common across casinos I think.

It’s recent. In any case, I would like to find rare casinos that are free to enter anonymously.

Thanks for the feedback. So if the company is collecting pics on the parking, then the company is apparently complicit in bike racks getting stuffed.

They do have the rackless boxes where I am, but not everywhere. I’m not sure if the companies have a requirement to finance those and rent the space, but in any case they are not pulling their own weight in that respect when there is a shortage.

There is one shared bike operator where I am that has stations that the bikes are locked to. It’s a proprietary lock and they must install stalls for them. The bikes must be returned to a stall eventually, to end the billing. It’s an older system than the newer unlocked ones with tracking, but better because the company finances and manages the stalls. They take responsibility for the real estate they consume. It’s also better because your realtime whereabouts is not tracked and you don’t need an app… you just tap an NFC card on the stall.

Thanks. I wonder how long that statement has been made. In the past I was never confident in the wording from the national bank as far as expiry of banknotes. But the page you link seems solid enough. Saving an archived version here as an extra measure against any future shenanigans:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250521052910/https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/exchanging-old-banknotes

(and because bankofengland.co.uk is not an open access website)

ah, thanks!

Thanks for the tip! But I’m a bit confused about what that place is. The pic on the landing page is certainly what I am after but I think that’s just a recipe site, not a shop. I see no address and openstreetmaps does not have a shop by that name in Amsterdam.

Glad to hear you can help drive that from the EU side. Until then, I will continue sending paper correspondence. It would help if more people would insist on paper correspondence to create a bit of motivation.

Do you think it’s politicians’ job to provide technology education?

Of course. Public education comes from the public sector. We should be electing politicians with administrations who are smarter than the general public. Any tech education that comes of Twitter abandonment is welcome.

But there is a need for politicians to reach their constituents, and if they can be effectively reached by an imperfect method,

Leaders should lead, not follow. Politicians can reach and be reached on a Mastodon server, where all their constituents have access.

Asking ~8 billion (or however many) people to make a personal change first is a non-starter. Demanding many orders of magnitude fewer people (politicians) make the first move to break the dystopian cycle is far more sensible.

then I can accept them using it while also promoting better methods.

Posting on Twitter is an assault on promoting better methods. Mirroring everything on Twitter facilitates the Tyranny of Convenience (great essay by Tim Wu) by making Twitter the superset. It’s important and socially responsible to withhold info from Twitter so that it cannot be the superset.

RMS gives good advice for orgs who think they need a Facebook presence:

https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

Politicians don’t need a Twitter presence, but to the extent that they are not convinced, the bare minimum action they can take is implement some of the advice on that RMS page.

Any random 3rd party joe shmoe can make a Twitter bot that mirrors a politician’s msgs to Twitter. In fact, force Twitter to do the work simply by not feeding Twitter. Motivation for Twitter’s self-preservation would appropriately ensure gov resources are not spent on Twitter. Make Twitter be the host of dodgy mirror bots without engagement, where you need Mastodon to actually engage with a politician.

There are moral problems with crossposting to Twitter.

• Twitter is financed by advertising. I do not finance public services to then finance the advertising revenue of private corporations. Politician’s IT staff, time, and resources used to feed Twitter are not free. Public money is used for the tooling and the operations on that platform of inequality. So people who are excluded from Twitter are financing content fed to Twitter involuntarily via taxation. And those who are priviledged to be on the Twitter platform are hit with ads as a precondition to reaching content they already paid taxes for – due to an inappropriate intermingling of public and private sectors.

• Network effect: making Twitter a superset of content exacerbates the stranglehold Twitter has on the world. The private sector will do its thing, but the public sector has a duty to work in the public interest. A public office adding to Twitter’s network effect disservices the public interest.

• Twitter is a politically manipulated venue with a bias toward right-wing populism. People who vote for a green party or socialist party politician do not endorse feeding an extreme right-wing US agenda with worldwide consequences. They do not have an equal voice on that platform which is wired for right-wing propaganda.

Recall how Trump took power in 2016: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. FB and Twitter are pawned by right-wing extremists.

Shopping – Right to safe, high-quality products that can be repaired, replaced, or returned if needed.

It’s an illusion.

Right to repair started in the US and has been implemented in various states, but still does not exist in Europe. They have been discussing a r2r bill in Europe for over 10 years now. And if you read what they have so far, it’s weak. You can’t even get a repair manual unless you are a licensed professional.

Cannot repair my washing machine because the Dutch manufacturer will not tell me the secret unlock code.

I had a Belgian product die under warranty. No protection. Manufacturer ignored my request for warranty service. Belgian regulators ignored my complaint that the manufacturer ignored me.

Travelling – Compensation for delays or cancellations.

Flixbus was a no-show. Complained to the regulator. No response.

Strange loopholes in EU law too. If the bus route is under 250km, there are no protections for delays or cancellations. You can be stranded in Amsterdam because the bus to Brussels ditched you, and because that trip is under 250km there are no useful passenger rights.

Banking – Secure payments and fair contracts.

Secure payments yes, but FATCA guarantees all contracts are unfair, which discriminate against people on the basis of their national origin.

If you want to do a cash transaction above ~€1k or so, prepare for hostile treatment. A friend asked to withdraw €5k (IIRC) of her own money and the bank called the police, who then brought her in for questioning.

ATMs are really thinning out amid Bill Gates war on cash, which is really taking hold in Europe. Instead of making banking enticing, they are treating cash with hostility to force banking on people.

Surfing – Protection of personal data and safeguards against scams.

Most gov services block Tor. The data protection authorities take no action on most GDPR complaints. Public libraries refuse wifi access to people without mobile phones (the people who need it most).

I have a right to use twitter to the same extent as you have a right to use lemmy.

Not in the slightest. Twitter is like a private road controlled by a single gatekeeping corporation whose private property rights are the only rights to speak of – and it’s run by a right-wing populist who controls who can participate. Lemmy is like a network of public roads without centralized ownership, where the concept of rights is not even needed because there is no central corporate control.

The right to choose to use twitter is markedly different from making it a universal right to be able to access twitter.

Why are you talking about a universal right to access Twitter? AFAIK, no one here endorses that.

Either you lick Musk’s boots or you bounce. Those are your choices. Politicians who lick Musk’s boots and drive exclusion cannot effectively represent the people.

Public protest existed for centuries prior to Twitter

Those are different times. We are in Twitter times. Shouting on a street corner brings a smaller audience than posting on Twitter. Higher effort and less exposure; for not licking Musk’s boots. And because of network effect, non-Twitter methods have lost ground to an unequitable elitist platform that exludes people without mobile phone numbers as well as those wise enough not to share their number with Twitter, and those who object to feeding a right-wind ad surveillance platform. The open letter audience someone would have in a free world is dimished because the audience has their eyes glued to Twitter, who poached them by exploiting network effect.

deleted by creator

I tested by accessing ACLU’s timeline anonymously without an account. Is it different for different accounts?

(edit) just tested trying to access the acct of someone arbitrary… a broken login popup attempted to render. So I guess different accts are different.