Today, at last, a guest blogpost I wrote last year has appeared - on the website of that admirable campaign Move Your Money. They invited me to write it after I contacted them to ask them about this new, fluffy animal in our dilapidated highstreet zoo: TSB. Oooh, my mind's ear heard all sorts of sucking of teeth from the other end of the conversation. My gentle encouragement to be told what the problem was, went unheeded.
You tell us what you think, they said, and we'll put it up on the website and start the debate. The next day NatWest blocked all its customers' bank cards, and that kept MYM busy for a while.
But now the nettle is once again grasped. Lets say you want to bank in a way that doesn't make you sick because you're implicated either in featherbedding those [b]ankers, or in funding industries you're busy signing petitions against during the day.
If you want to bank in an ethical way that also involves a free current account with a debit card, then you're in a dilemma. There isn't a credit union in the area that will do that (savings accounts? Sure! be our guest. But free debit card? unheard of north of the river). What bank will do the job, now that the Co-op Bank has proven to be a piss-poor repository for sensible, caring money?
I put a bit of energy into researching TSB's promise: local banking - money exclusively to and from the local residents and businesses. The dream bank, no? I imagine my local traders' borrowing my money, and then, by golly, I go in and borrow some back.
Is there a problem? You tell me by clicking on this page .
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