Banking charges.

The banks are today making their final appeal against the OFT(Office of Fair Trading) on bank charges, a multi billion pound annual scam. A cushy little earner that for wandering a penny into the red incurrs upto £39 in charges, which then leads to yet more charges and the hassle of resolving unpaid items. As well as lots of lovely interest for the banks.

Lets not forget that the banks will often refuse overdrafts to people who have a record of going overdrawn, or have a low income as they know they will clean up on charges. They will deny doing this but then banks have a long and dishonorable history of denying their bad practise.

Having worked for two groups of these corporate vultures, as well as fighting three years to get a mess resolved on an account that was not of my making; I know full well how amoral and plain fucking evil the banks can be.

Sure there is no such thing as free banking, but it must be remembered that when the money(or lack of) is sitting in your account the banks use that as an asset. The cost of sending out an automated overdrawn letter is minimal.

Sadly we are tied to banks, the banks know this. They run the automated DD systems and waste millions on glossy ads telling us how great they are.

Thankfully the banks have lost all the appeals so far, this from a sector that has shown its business model was outdated and indeed with having to go cap in hand to HM Govt was a model that did not work.

Yet even now after the bail outs:

• they still see cutting staff over here in the UK whilst keeping offshore call centres as a "cost effective" model.
• they still hang onto boards of failed directors who in almost any other job aside from that of MP would have been sacked.
• they are still not investing money in business.
• they have not faced up to their part in lending excessive money to householders based on a pipe dream of ever growing house prices. Money which even when the house has been taken back will never cover the amounts loaned.
• they have not accepted that over extending credit in a boom might cause problems.

Still it will be fun to watch the banks plead poverty in The Lords as they hope to pull strings - without being seen to do so - with directors of those self same banks who sit in that House.

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