Now, we know that banking hubs work. We know that banks can cooperate to create these hubs. We know that one person in a banking branch can help people over multiple banks with such things, because let’s be honest, the person who needs assistance from Barclays is very similar to the person who needs assistance from NatWest, and the systems from Barclays are very similar to the systems from NatWest, or Lloyds, or HSBC, or Santander, or whoever it might be.
But, we need to have that presence because banking cannot be remote from society and we can demand it. Why? Because all these banks operate under the terms of a license from the Bank of England. And the condition of that license should be that all the banks should cooperate to make sure that these banking hubs are available in every community of any size in this country.
It would transform the way that people can access bank accounts. It would make it possible for people who currently have difficulties with banking to go to talk to someone.
And there’s something else that could happen at the same time in this banking hub. It could also be the Post Office, because there are far too few of them in this country now. And people need access to Post Offices as well.
So put together the two, and have a banking and post office hub. And in every town, and even large village in this country, you would have a centre where people could go to get financial advice and undertake the transactions that they need to make their lives possible.
Labour could do that. It would cost them literally nothing.
There are, apparently, 44,500 or so cities, towns and villages in Britain. We’re therefore going to have to have 44,500 staffed (and that will require at least two staff per oulet, holidays, days off, extended hours and so on) offices. Which will cost nothing.
Rilly?
It’s costs Labour nothing to regulate for it …
Think there is however a case for much more rational use of public funded facilities and ‘concierge’ assistance models can be part of that, though much broader than banking , many Council and care services are just terrible and phone support is truly awful even compared to the banks.
Post office , job centre, out of hours schools , libraries etc etc. Constantly moaning about duplicative facilities being under funded ….
Please save us from all that capitalist market competition inefficiency … oh wait …
If it has no cost, why aren’t they doing it already?
Because these banking hubs have a cost, and generally require local authorities to throw some money towards them.
To be honest I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The Post Office is already a banking hub. For day to day banking needs for someone who is not online (depositing money (cash or cheques), withdrawing cash) you can do all that for all the major banks at a Post Office. For 99% of everything else it can be done online, and if we are worrying about the increasingly small % of society who is not online then thats a self solving solution – they are getting fewer and fewer every year. I doubt there’s anyone under the age of 70 who can’t do online stuff. Give it another 10 years and they’ll be vanishingly few. And most of those will be in nursing homes so wouldn’t be visiting banking hubs anyway.
Trust Spud to come up with a vastly expensive solution to a problem thats disappearing naturally.
Read the words:
Labour could do that. It would cost them literally nothing.
It will cost Labour literally nothing.
Shirley you didn’t think…
He means it will cost Labour nothing, which of course it won’t. It’ll cost the banks but who cares about them? The problem with socialists is that they soon run out of other peoples money.
Also, around me loads of convenience stores have a post office counter – the post office is already solving the problem.
What he means is that it would cost the government nothing, as they could force the banks to pay for it.
Fascinatingly on this type of topic, there is a book that came out where my relative who is a collaborator of Murphy’s is a contributor called ‘Act Now’
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Act-Now-Vision-Better-Contract/dp/1526180766
It’s basically a marginally less demented vision than Murphy’s of how the future might be ‘better organized’ – and he’s not involved in it so it has that going for it.
However, reading the first couple of chapters I am struck by the fact that as with so much of Murphy’s output the years 1964 to 1979 seem to have been bypassed completely. No understanding of why Thatcher was successful or what persuaded more to vote for her on 3 occasions by far than Starmer managed this time round. The prescription basically is – if we go back to 1978 or a version thereof, everything will be rectified.
The above suggestion is in the same vein. Before even considering the cost implications, I have been in HSBC branches recently (partly because I do feel if you don’t use them you lose them) and even the staff there are directing you to use the App and not talk to a person. And I was certainly among the younger end of the customers in my mid forties. As for the Post Office, perhaps he could tell his Royal Mail buddies something is severely fucked when the card you are writing in costs less than the stamp.
Man is at best wholly ignorant of anything of import or at worst a largely disingenuous polemicist. What I do find mildly entertaining is that he is considered utterly irrelevant now by Labour (if he wasn’t before!!) and with the SNP reduced to a rump he seems to be left with appealing to the 5 Hamas MPs, the 4 Greens who are also Einsatzgruppen memorabilia junkies or Plaid Cymru. A heart of stone indeed.
How far do you all drive, daily? Because we out here in the sticks in the US can get by without access to a branch in every podunk village just by driving 25 miles.
He talks like Brits aren’t capable of traveling further that 10 miles from home in their whole lives.
It will cost the Labour party less than nothing. They can legislate this; it will take an increase in the bureaucracy to track compliance.
Who will those bureaucrats vote for? Where will their political contributions go? If they go out to participate in politics, where will their time and energy go?
The Post Office already allows this. It’s not even a full time job for the existing staff there. Adding special bank clerks in a separate office so they can be idle most of the day, and occasionally deal with the clueless who don’t know they can go to the Post Office and need an “All Banks” branch to cash a cheque, seems like a waste.
Which is just like all his other commandments.
I think you’ve missed the “go to get financial advice” – that’s not just a counter service, that’s a whole load of specialist staff as well.
“ He talks like Brits aren’t capable of traveling further that 10 miles from home in their whole lives.”
Having moved from U.K. to North America one of the differences is travel distance, in a lot of the U.K. 10miles is a long way and can take time to cover and you’ll pass through a couple of other places.
Van_Patten
“No understanding of why Thatcher was successful or what persuaded more to vote for her on 3 occasions by far than Starmer managed this time round.”
It’s often overlooked that the party that has the record for most votes cast at a general election was none other than the Conservatives in 1992 – 14,094,116 – under John Major
Labour under Kinnock in 1992 got 11,557,062 votes – over 1.8m more than Starmer – and lost.
>BniC
July 9, 2024 at 4:41 pm
I don’t know, I can get from my sorta rural home, through town, and onto the freeway in 25 minutes – and pass a dozen bank branches on the way.
I don’t know how things are organized over there but I find it hard to believe you can’t find a bank within 20 minutes.
Also, I go to the bank, maybe 4 times a year – what are people doing (other than business cash deposits) that require more than a couple times a week?
I think he just lives in the 1980’s still.
Maybe he likes to go into the branch to withdraw cash rather than using the ATM because it makes him feel important?
Gasman said:
“I think you’ve missed the “go to get financial advice” – that’s not just a counter service, that’s a whole load of specialist staff as well.”
Which I suspect negates his opening remark that “we know that banking hubs work”. I shouldn’t think they’re giving out financial advice, in which case his contention that this is a tried and tested system isn’t true.
Matt: Perhaps he visits his bank regularly and is forever asking inane questions or suggesting all sorts of stupid ways in which they could ‘improve’ the service.
As for shutting branches, I happened to go into our local branch, on the day before it was due close, to pay in a cheque (rare and unexpected) because my banking app refused to take a photo of it for some reason.
It was rather busy, certainly more so than in my previous (rare) visits to the same branch. In retrospect it may have been busy as a futile demonstration of a continuing need.
The last bank in that town has now just closed it’s doors but there is supposedly a weekly multi-banking session at the local garden centre café.
There’s another aspect of this that isn’t widely known or appreciated.
Yes it’s true that the PO provides some useful banking services regardless of who your account is with.
But it’s also true that some banks have introduced maximum in-payment limits for Post Office counters, usually very low limits (like £2000 a year) which makes the facility useless for even the smallest business. It’s viable, basically, only for trivial personal sums.
This is partly the war on cash, of course, but partly also the banks protecting “their” turf.
“But it’s also true that some banks have introduced maximum in-payment limits for Post Office counters, usually very low limits (like £2000 a year) which makes the facility useless for even the smallest business. It’s viable, basically, only for trivial personal sums.”
Are you sure about that? Santander have a £2k limit for cash deposits per day at Post Offices (annual limit £10k), with no limit (as far as I know) for cheques.
https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/ways-to-bank/at-the-post-office#:~:text=Cash%20deposits&text=The%20maximum%20daily%20cash%20deposit,branch%20you%20plan%20on%20visiting.
I can’t think that they are that far apart from all the other main banks.
Edit: Barclays are even better: £10k in cash per deposit for Business accounts, no mention of an annual limit:
https://www.barclays.co.uk/ways-to-bank/post-office-banking/