As I type this, I am eating chilli coin carne for breakfast. Unusual but I am out of breakfast stuff. I went to the Co-op just after 6am. They were cash only and the cash machine was down. With only pence in my pocket, I came away empty handed.
What seemed at first to be a local problem, proves to be worldwide. Airlines are grounded. Supermarkets can’t take card payments, neither can many trains and buses. Banks are affected which why I have received a text from Lloyds saying they can’t process a change on a parish council account.
This story is breaking though the outage seems to have started last night. Reports are that it is down to CrowdStrike, security software that many companies and organisations use to protect Microsoft systems. The early view is that this is cockup, not a terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, it is my day off and I was going out for a pint later. If this is not fixed, I’ll have to wash up for a pint!
And for those saying cash is king, where do you get cash from? You can’t get any today.
Doctors in Ludlow
GPs in Ludlow and beyond are messaging that they have problems.
Station Drive: The major worldwide Microsoft/IT outage is affecting all our computer systems, this means that we have no access to electronic notes, ability to process bloods or to check results. If you have an appointment booked, we will try to contact you. Many appointments will need to be cancelled including all blood tests, smears etc. If your problem is urgent, please continue to contact us. Our telephone service is fine. As soon as this is resolved, we will let you know.
Portcullis: We are affected by a NATIONAL FAILURE in our computer systems and cannot access all our clinical records and therefore we have no ability to book appointments
- access records
- prescriptions
- see results or letters
We will provide a very limited service today until this national issue is resolved. If you have an appointment today and it is not urgent please cancel it and send as an online message using the link below: https://florey.accurx.com/p/M82043 and we will rebook you as soon as possible for a later date. If you need urgent advice, please contact us by telephone on 01584 872939. We will do the best we can to help but please bear with us as we will have a limited service until the computer system is fixed.
Anyone who says ‘cash is king’ will, no doubt, have a bit to hand 😉
Doesn’t this show once again that we are becoming too reliant on computer technology? You ask where do we get cash from? We used to have things called banks – High Streets used to be full of them – and you could get cash from them. We also used to have things called “chequebooks” with a “cheque guarantee card” – with them you could buy things without using cash or ATMs or computers.
Call me a Luddite if you like but I preferred the way we used to do things. Why can’t we be given a choice?