There's a special place in hell reserved for bankers..........

John Mortlock
1755 - 1816
"Master of the Town of Cambridge"
Draper, Banker, MP, Recorder and thirteen times Mayor.
"That which you call corruption, I call influence"

Seeing this article this morning has made me sick to my stomach. It also stinks to high heaven of the shit that the blue-collar/working class/small man has to swallow on a daily basis.

I don't know what I was ever thinking, could I have honestly ever fooled myself into believing that at some point, by some wild stretch of the imagination that banking institutions could possibly made to pay for their injustice? I must've been crazy.

To give the reader a bit more insight into what I'm ranting about, I'll expand a bit. Take for example, yours truly, happily minding his own business, and who just happened to make a purchase that runs him into an overdraft scenario. WHACK!! the bank imposes a £25 charge immediately as a monthly charge for running into an overdraft. This charge is the same regardless of the overdraft amount, be it £0.01 or £100. To take it one step further they then impose a £15 per day charge for every day that the overdraft amount is not repaid.

If you think that's where the story ends, here's where it really starts to get interesting. If the overdraft amount is repaid, the amount due is not deducted from the holder's account until the end of the month, the daily charges will stop accruing, but the amount due to the bank is not debited until the end of the month as stipulated in their fine print. Therefore, giving the account holder the impression that there are more funds available than the true figure, which, as I so rudely found out, could then be deducted and send the account holder into another overdraft scenario.

Those fucking bastards. Furthermore, those terms which are put forward by whichever poison institution the individual picks could well have been written in stone tablets as though handed down by God via the lord Jesus himself then spell-checked by the devil. i.e NON-NEGOTIABLE. By what stretch of the imagination could this ever be fair??

A little birdie once told me that the banks could care less about the middle class and smaller accounts. But, the Beeb article has said --

"Research by the OFT published last year found banks earned around a third of their retail revenues from unarranged overdraft charges that were "difficult to understand, not transparent, and not subject to effective consumer control".

If I ever get around to making heads or tails of this 2008 Lloyds report I can make a better analysis of that, there's also this research paper by the OFT that initial glances seem to suggest that (if indeed the interview strata is 'random') they are a considerable source of income for the banks. This research also supports my own experiences as a consumer, take for example 64% of interviewees have never switched their current account provider. NEVER. Your wife/gf wil drag you around for 8-hours to find that pair of minolos at at 5% off, but NEVER even think of switching from a provider only too willing to pull down your pants at the slightest chance.

I am thoroughly disgusted, and just to rub salt in the wound, I'm sure that those responsible in passing the judgement have probably never even seen their accounts dip below 7-figures far less being faced with unfair charges.

It looks like I'll just have to suck it up. The Mortlocks and Ruperts have won. There is no justice for the small fry. I've cancelled the overdraft facility that I never asked for in the first place. I'm looking for another account provider and I'm slowly coming to grips with the fact that I'll never be able to recoup the pound of flesh that was so maliciously carved from my back by Lloyds tsb.

"If the law supposes that… the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience."
- Mr. Bumble (Oliver Twist)