Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 July 12

= July 12 =

People's Bank in England?
In the early 1980s I had an account with a bank called the People's Bank. As I remember it was not set up on normal banking lines, which was its USP. It went bust in the mid 1980s. I'm trying to find something about this bank online. Can anyone help? It was a UK bank, and I had cheque and deposit books, it had branches throughout the UK. --TammyMoet (talk) 13:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't remember that at all. I know that Labour planned a People's bank based in post-offices. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't remember that either. Are you sure it was English?  I don't recall a bank going bust at that time either (at least not a public bank).    D b f i r s   15:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The only UK bank failure that I could find during the mid-80s was Johnson Matthey Bankers. Marco polo (talk) 17:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Could it have been BCCI Bank? Bankrupt in early 1990s. Could it possibly have marketed itself as "The People's Bank". I remember it having branches in inner-city London. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks all. I remember the livery - it was burgundy red with grey and beige. I could even take you to the building that housed its Wolverhampton branch! It may have been bought out by another bank rather than going bust, I suppose. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:25, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Only thing I can find is one reference in a Times article from 26 Feb 1993 (Issue 64578) which states: "Provident Financial, the personal loan and consumer finance group, reported a 30 per cent rise in pre-tax profiles to £44.5 million for the year to end December, and announced the disposal of Peoples Bank, its banking subsidiary, to SecureTrust. The sale for £4.8 million, equal to the bank's net asset value, marks the completion of Provident's plan to dispose of non-core activities." Nanonic (talk) 20:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Aha! Confirm owned by Provident, see this Hansard entry from 1981. Nanonic (talk) 20:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Glad to see that Hansard extract mentions a branch in Swindon. At a place where I worked in the 1980s, many customers would pay by cheque and one day someone wrote a cheque on the People's Bank.  I never saw another mention of that bank and because of the bank's address on the cheque I thought of it as the People's Bank of Swindon; I suspected perhaps it was like the local banks in America and had only the one office.  Now I know better (although still not clear whether it went bust or just closed).  Sussexonian (talk) 20:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems like it was definately bought by Secure Trust if these FT snippets are anything to go by. Nanonic (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Bloody well done Nanonic! Thank you so much - at least I'm not going completely gaga! --TammyMoet (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Far from gaga! Itsmejudith (talk) 22:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We already have enough Ladies Gaga (or gaga ladies) around here to last us till the 22nd century. I thank you two gaga-less ladies for your gaga-free contributions.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  23:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * *blushes* --TammyMoet (talk) 19:04, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * ditto. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:41, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Dog and colours
what colours the dogs can see?? Miss Bono  [zootalk] ☆ 15:18, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * From the article: "Like most mammals, dogs are dichromats and have color vision equivalent to red-green color blindness in humans (deuteranopia). Dogs are less sensitive to differences in grey shades than humans and also can detect brightness at about half the accuracy of humans." —  Richard  BB  15:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Dogs can see more than grey as is popularly believed, though. Yellows and blues seem to be the ones they see. Mingmingla (talk) 17:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)