Community

There seems to be a lack of understanding by both government and the banks regarding money. The money in a bank account is owned by the individual or business. In return for looking after this money, the banks get to enjoy the use of it and are able to lend it at substantial mark up over the rate of interest (if any) paid to the individual or company.

It is unreasonable for the bank to either make it difficult to withdraw your own money, or charge a fee for withdrawal.

However, both of these scenarios are now happening. By significantly reducing the number of branches and ATM's the banks are trying to force people to use debit cards which, of course, incur fees to the banks.

Given such poor interest rates, time to start stashing large amounts of cash under the bed, or somewhere similar. At least you then have unlimited access.

In the UK, we have had direct payment into your bank account of salary / wages for 50 years. We have had variable amount direct debits to pay regular payments for the same length of time. With a bank account and a debit card there is no need for a pre-payment card. In fact, pre-paid cards are almost unheard of. I have not written a cheque for more than ten years.

The Bank of England has published statistics to show that the amount of cash in circulation has increased year-on-year over the last ten years. Eight million people in the UK rely solely on cash, many in rural communities with poor broad band connectivity. We are a long way from being a cashless society.

Another alternative is sharing branches in a rural community. One shop with services from six or more banks, be there humans or video links, it does not matter. In addition, a free to use shared ATM. This reduces overheads to a manageable number.

Bob, given all of your blogs about these companies it is very obvious that you have a serious axe to grind against them - why I do not know, but it is getting quite boring. If you would like to check several other major companies you will find that they, too, have swapped company registration details. Both British Petroleum and British Airways did it for vanity - BP now has the company registion number 1000000 (the equivalent of buying a personal registration number for your car) and British Airways for the same reason - now company registration number of 1777777. I do not know the reasons behind their changes, but I'm not sure it is worthy of this amount of space

Nowhere do you or they mention why they need an additional £20 million, having already raised £85 million.

Bitcoin still has a long way to go to be acceptable to a wider audience. It remains the currency of choice for illegal trading - drugs, arms, hijacking, fraud, etc. Until this reputation dies out, the wider audience will avoid it like the plague.

The comparethemarket.com survey results assume that there are 50 million adults in the UK with a credit card. I do not believe that there are 50 million adults in the UK. Second, where and how were these 2,000 people surveyed? Stating facts from a very small survey is likely to be inaccurate, to put it mildly. I suggest that you read that remarkably old book by Daryl Huff - How to lie with statistics.

I think you may have missed the point. My son & I do not use any social media whatsoever. Neither of like the harvesting of data and neither of us are interested in following 'personalities'. Most of our friends in our respective age groups think exactly the same. We use e-mail, text and telephone and occasionally use Skype & LinkedIn, but do not use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Spotify. It could be related to our careers in IT, whereby we are fully aware of the consequences of using social media and are also fully aware of the alternatives.

My 25 year old son is well educated and has a good job. He stopped using social media seven years ago because of bullying. He tells me that e-mail, text and telephone enable him to keep in touch with all of his friends and most of them have he same view. I suspect that there are many like him.

In addition, most of my friends do not use social media for a different reason - age. I have never needed it. I have no interest in celebrity culture and grew up on mobile telephony (I got my first mobile telephone in 1987).

So your statement that most people now get social media is quite untrue amongst my and my sons friends.