I have been signed up to the use of the same bank for some fifty-odd years of my commercial and private life, both in Great Britain and in South Africa. I was forced to leave for some ten-odd years because the companies for whom I worked in South Africa banked with a South African-based bank, and demanded that I do so, for ease of accounts etc. The fact that I swerved sideways back to Barclays upon my return to England says only that I knew the bank, felt comfortable with them, and also that I wished to continue an arrangement which began when I first had a bank account with Barclays, opened in a small former mining village in South-West Durham.
When political and banking pundits complain about the vast majority of the British people not switching bank accounts, they blame ‘apathy’, or ‘inertia’, or a combination of the two, which could be termed ‘I really canna’ be bothered’. We are all told, in glowing adverts, of the ease with which our standing orders, our mortgage payments, our insurance direct debits; can now all be transferred with just ‘one or two clicks of a mouse’, and all will be well. We just don’t believe this rubbish, and until we hear of large numbers of accounts moving almost seamlessly from one bank to another, we shall continue to disbelieve the rubbish. Possibly the simplest truth in this plethora of disinformation is that we just don’t really see the point; when the interest rate, at the bank which has its widest winning smile surgically installed on to every employee, is within 0.0005% of that doled out by the bank you are with at present.
There is, however, one bank to which I would never, ever, in a million years, think of even approaching. That bank is Lloyds. Have they stolen money? Have they behaved egregiously? Are they the equivalent of Robber Barons? As to all three queries, my answer must simply be ‘I do not know’. But one thing I do know; which is that I dislike, intensely, being advised, even on a subliminal basis, that my dislike of homosexual behaviour, as well as homosexual-friendly legislation, along with the very idea that homosexual behaviour, ideas and beliefs are not akin to perversion, is somehow beyond the pale within British Society. I disagree with the whole idea that once the act has been de-criminalised, everything else is okay. I disagree that a man can marry a man, despite that now being legal. An Act of Parliament does not make a perversion acceptable, to those such as I who believe in the sanctity of Marriage. Sex, and the very act of love, is there for a single purpose, which is to beget children; and marriage is simply for the protection of children who spring from that union. So why my dislike of Lloyds? Why do I bang on, despite many saying, ‘well, they have what they have demanded, which is legal acceptance; why go on, and on, about what is, after all, something which is both legal and accepted within modern Britain today? It is simply that I do not accept that my grandchildren grow up in a climate which accepts, without comment, a perverted sexual practice in their communities. Run the Lloyds Bank advert; which is a format of ‘freeze-frames’ of the ‘diversity’ of British life, and wait until the 18 second, and then 48 second mark, and then see if you agree that you ARE being told that some bloke asking some other bloke to ‘marry him’ is just part of the progress of this Country which has become so foreign to one who was born here?
Fire, Pillage & Plague 