Would You Buy A Political Idea From This Man?
Gordon Brown is going to outline his ideas for better power sharing between London and Edinburgh. It’s all here on the BBC.
I doubt anybody will be listening!
I certainly won’t be, as he was one of the idiots, who saddled the UK with that useless bank, the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers, for which we are all still paying.
It would have been so much cheaper to liquidate it and then pay everyone who lost out in taxpayers money. But that would have meant Labour losing all votes in Scotland!
Should Oyster Become A Bank?
This suggestion was put forward by the Social Market Foundation in a report yesterday.
Oyster is a trusted brand and it handles billions of transactions in a year, so expansion into a contactless bank, would probably be something that could work.
I also get better information from my Oyster card than I get from my debit or credit card. I can see my last journeys at most ticket machines in London, but can I find out the last five transactions on my debit card at a cash machine? I don’t think so!
So perhaps the other side of this suggestion, is should bank cards be more like Oyster?
Barclays Loses Customer Data
Why is it the banks always seem to get things wrong? Or are they just accident prone?
This morning customer data from Barclays is reported to be on sale, here on the BBC.
I will not prejudge where the leak of information came from, but it will be interesting to see who did the dirty deed.
I suspect though we’ll see an increase in phishing scams tasrgeting Barclays customers.
Prospects For Scottish Banks
I have a trawl for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Goggle and two stories this morning make interesting reading.
Scotland Will Never Be Free as Long as It Has RBS is from Bloomberg and Analysis: Scottish banks plan quietly as independence debate gets louder is from the Chicago Tribune.
They should be read.
I don’t care which way Scotland votes, as it is their affair, but I won’t be following David Cameron’s advice to phone my Scottish friends and implore them to stay, Mainly because all of them seem to be in the Better Together camp.
One feeling I do have, is that the Scottish independence debate is the tail, that is wagging the donkey of the Royal Bank of Scotland. No bank is too big to fail, but because of the referendum in September, no English politician dare put the Royal Bank of Scotland and its employees out of its misery.
I can’t believe that if Barclays had got into the sort of trouble RBS did, then it wouldn’t have been liquidated.
RBS Mucks Up ISAs
My trawl for the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers, has found this story from the Herald. Here’s the first paragraph.
Some NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) customers have found themselves short-changed in their monthly interest payments in the latest blunder to hit the banks.
It looks like a computer error.
It’s funny, but it seems quite a few of the stories critical of RBS, seem to be in the Herald. Didn’t it uised to be the Glasgow Herald?
Should We Jump On The Peer-to-Peer Bandwagon?
I wouldn’t tell anybody one way or other, but I would advise them to research the reputable peer-to-peer lenders, if they need to borrow money or save for the future.
This article from Julian Knight was published yesterday in the Independent.In the opening paragraph he speculates that you might be able to fund peer-to-peer lending from an ISA.
As he says, it might only be kite flying, but if it is, it is a kite armed with some serious ordnance destined for the banks.
You may dismiss peer-to-peer lending as something for nerds, accountants or gamblers, but even if you do, read the article.
If you decide to act on it, make sure you think before you leap.
What Can The Banks Do For Us?
After writing the previous post about Mark Carney’s thoughts on the pound and Scottish independence, I got to thinking about the nature of different currencies and how I feel about them.
On my travels to Budapest, Stockholm, Palermo and Bilbao, I’ve used Hungarian forint, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian krone and Swiss francs in addition to euro and pounds. Train journeys across Europe could be a nightmare, as like the trip back from Stockholm, each country could be a different currency and you end up with enough change to tear holes in all your pockets, but impossible to understand.
The personal preference, that I like to use cash makes it worse in a non-euro and non-pound country, like Hungary, where I don’t have any natural feel for notes and coins.
I just think that the banks are making it easy for us to handle all these currencies, but some have made a start.
I have a credit card from Nationwide, that just converts the transaction into pounds on my statement and doesn’t charge me any commission, when I use it abroad.
As a customer I like that and I’ve heard one savings expert recommend this credit card for just this reason.
So shouldn’t all credit cards be like this?
But i used to be a world-class computer programmer. Probably to say I used to be is totally wrong, as my mind is still reasonably sharp and it certainly knows what computers can do.
So why when I use my credit card in say Ruritania and I pay for a delicious gluten-free meal with my credit card, does the terminal not show me the cost in both Ruritanian wotsits and English pounds? If I was say a Frenchman and my bank account was in euros, then I would want euros instead of pounds.
All it needs is a bit of clever software.
Come on you bankers!
The Bill For RBS Goes Up
On the first of January, I wrote this post, entitled Will We Ever Get Rid Of This Worthless Bank.
But now according to reports, like this one on the BBC, the bill is going to get bigger. The BBC article says that the bank needs another £3.1 billion for claims relating to the financial crisis. As there are sixty three million of us, that means, that even the granny in the council house and the baby just leaving the hospital will have to find another pound a week.
So next time, you look at your bank account or count the change in your pocket, think of the mess that the prudent Gordon Brown, dropped us in.
Now Lloyds Bank Has Card Problems
What is it with the UK banks computer systems, as Lloyds had problems last night, as is reported here.
Beware for a surge of spam targeting Lloyds customers.
It’s Not Their Money It’s Mine!
I haven’t used large amounts of cash for years, but I did a couple of times years ago, when I needed to buy a car, or in one case a truck privately.
However, I do think HSBC are being a bit heavy handed in this story from the BBC. Here’s the reaction of an HSBC customer, when he tried to withdraw £10,000.
Mr Cotton cannot understand HSBC’s attitude: “I’ve been banking in that bank for 28 years. They all know me in there. You shouldn’t have to explain to your bank why you want that money. It’s not theirs, it’s yours.”
Strangely, you’re probably better off using a peer-to-peer lender as an instant access account, as I do. If I needed £10,000 on say the 10th March, I could probably get it in returns from my Zopa account with little difficulty. But I’d have to plan what I was doing. On the other hand my credit raqting is good enough to borrow it from the sdame source, if I needed it urgently.
As peer-to-peer lenders get bigger, more common and flexible, we’ll see all sorts of innovative ways to manage our money.
Banks will probably die in their numbers, as they are incapable of innovation. I like the quote of Paul Volcker, who was once chairman of the Federal Reserve.
ATMs were banking’s only useful technological innovation in the last 30 years.
He is so right.
The Anonymous Widower 