Post Office Banking
I had a distinct feeling of Deja Vu this morning on hearing of plans to set up a banking service to be run from Post Offices. It seems like such an obvious move and you would think it could and should have been done years ago. So why the feeling of Deja Vu? Because it was done before and if you wonder why it does not currently exist it is, of course, because ‘they’ sold it.
According to an excellent page about the Girobank at Wikipedia the Giro Bank was,”Established by the General Post Office, it was bought by Alliance & Leicester Group, which was subsequently acquired by the Spanish banking group Banco Santander.”
“The organisation chalked up notable firsts. It was the first bank designed with computerised operations in mind; the first bank in Europe to adopt OCR (optical character recognition) technology;[1] the first UK bank to offer free accounts to individuals; and the first bank in Europe to offer telephone banking, beating the much trumpeted First Direct service by several years. It is widely credited for shaking up the UK banking market, forcing competitors to innovate and respond to the needs of the mass market.”
A shame such a good business was sold off then. We had a widely available and successful bank operating at post offices around the country back in the 1960′s which was able to provide banking facilities for ordinary people in convenient locations and by post. If it had continued it might have benefitted the Post Office enough that we could have avoided the policy that caused several thousand post offices having to close. It would seem that it’s success was to prove it’s downfall and our elected scoundrels decided to sell it off in 1989.
We are well aware that we cannot trust any government with our assets. We saw the sell off of British Gas, British Airways, British Rail, Girobank and just about anything else that might have made a profit and benefited us all back in the 1980′s. We saw our unelected Prime Minister selling off our gold reserves some years ago and he certainly never asked me or any other voter if he should. Interestingly this bold move was at a point when the gold market was at something of a low and that same gold would be worth four times as much now and if we were consulted and considered selling it something we should do now it would be worth four times as much now. Apparently it would now be worth an extra 6 or 7 BILLION pounds. I remember the good old days when talking of Millions was pretty hard to grasp. Now we talk about a few billion here and a few billion there as though it is mere pocket money.
Our leader likes to suggest he is a man with his finger on the pulse in financial matters. Hmmm. I have seen some bad financial decisions in my time, and made quite a few myself, but that was a huge financial error that cost every man woman and child in the country £100 each.
Why is it that no government seems able to see that something that makes a profit would benefit the public for year after year, instead of one simple windfall benefit from selling off our assets. The other question is, of course, if they are our assets shouldn’t we be consulted about a possible sale of any of them?
One of the current targets for a potential sale is the Post Office and the reason given is that it is a loss making drain on resources. So why would anyone want to buy it? If some company would decide to buy the Post Office it would surely be done on the basis that they would be able to make a profit in the future.
Why is it that any government would consider themselves incapable of successfully running a business like the Post Office yet they maintain they are capable of running the country? Clearly the intention of selling the Post Office is proof enough that they are incapable of successfully running the coutry. This is not a party issue as the Tories are as eager to admit they are just as incapable of successfully running the Post Office and the country as Labour.
The other suggested sale has been the Dartford Crossing. How anyone could consider selling such a rip-off goldmine like the Dartford crossing is astonishing. It is money for nothing. It was always supposed to become a free crossing once the first tunnel was paid for from the cost of the tolls. It never did become free. They decided to open a second tunnel and delayed the free use because of the cost. Next they added a bridge which again delayed the free use and last year charges were increased. You only have to see the queues of traffic, caused by the toll booths, to see how much money is being made. Astonishing amounts of money being collected from motorists even though we were promised it would be free eventually and this ignores the cost to the country of the people wasting time in queues that are entirely caused by the toll booths.
Incidentally, there was a No10 online petition about the Dartford Crossing asking that the toll booths be removed to ease traffic congestion. The reply from the Prime Ministers office to that petition argued that it was necessary to have the toll booths to smooth traffic flow so there is no need for toll charges at all. Perhaps we can expect to see toll booths for pedestrians in Oxford Street at Xmas time to ease the flow of people during busy periods! It also contained lies about the number of lanes available to traffic, saying that there were fewer lanes available than elsewhere on the M25. (The crossing has 4 lanes heading North and Six lanes heading South) The M25 has mostly 3 lanes which is less than there are at the Dartford Crossing. Presumably they already had plans to sell off the crossing and a profitable company is likely to sell for more money. Incidentally, is it a mere coincidence that there was a 50% increase in the cost of using the tunnel/bridge a year or so ago? 50%? These people expect us to vote for them when they deceive and lie to us?
Anyway, I seem to have rather got off the point there. The idea of a post office based bank is a good one and is something to be applauded. Such a shame it has taken 13 years of government for them to decide to do this and the chances are that either a) Labour are not re-elected so it goes no further or, b) they are re-elected and then conveniently forget all about it.
There is also talk about encouraging children to save at the Post Office. More deja vu there. It used to be that children were encouraged to save and the post office savings account was the first place to start bing able to put a few pennies into a savings account. These days it seems that nobody wants small savers because there is not enough profit in them. Even the Governments own Premium Bonds require you to purchase a minimum of £100 worth.(It’s actually National Savings, did they sell that off too?)
So, yes. This is a very positive step in the right direction. We should all be encouraged to save for the future and if that means your child wants to deposit just £1.00 then they should be able and encouraged to do so. The Post Office would also, apparently, be able to offer 90% mortgages so you may in the future be, visiting your local Post Office and asking, “Can I have ten first class stamps and a £250,000 mortgage please.”
My worry is that if it takes place and proves to be successful greed will overcome commonsense and it will be sold off. Actually, it just occured to me that this will make the Post Office much easier to privatise with a successful banking operation. The cynic in me wonders if that was the sole purpose of this idea and any benefits to customers are mere coincidence. I wish I were able to have more confidence in the honesty of politicians but it is hard to have any when all they do is spin the truth, mislead the electorate and attempt to damage their opposite numbers. Let us hope that a Post Office Bank has a long and successful future that benefits the taxpayer forever.
