How Can A Bank Lose £4 billion?

For my sins my first career on leaving school was in banking. Having studied hard and gained all my banking qualifications after learning at the foot of my very old school manager Mr Wood I have to wonder how things have changed to the extent that a single bank lost £4 billion in just six months.I used to get upset if my till didn't balance by 5p so £4 billion! Not the US billion but the British billion that's £4,000,000,000 or £65.63 for every single person in the UK in six months. Old Mr Wood would be turning in his grave. Mind you, the writing was on the wall years ago. In 1988 as I got my first branch manager job and just before I left the bank they introduced two new products - endowment/pension mortgages and payment protection insurance. The sales people were so keen to sell these that alarm bells rang in my head and I felt that the endowment and pension forecasts seemed too good to be true and the payment insurance seemed extremely expensive with all the premiums added to the loan at the start and interest charged on them. I refused to sell any endowment or pension mortgages and sent customers to the local insurance brokers who could do the payment protection for a fraction of the cost. It didn't make me popular with the bank but at least I can somewhat smugly say today that I was right.



Got a call out of the blue yesterday from daughter Sarah to say that she is coming down from St Andrews tonight to stay with us for a few days. That's really great. We've been asking her to visit during her school holidays and we're really looking forward to seeing her.



The new pool table has arrived so the lads now have the choice of pool, darts TV or the gym during the lunch hour. The last pool table was great and has financed the new one. Here's Jason sinking the very first ball.



The quote of the week came from Charlie Brooker on "You Have Been Watching" last night. Commenting on Jeremy Clarkson's outrageous use of the c word against Gordon Brown, Charlie said it was a case of the **** calling the kettle a ****.



The show also had the wonderful Reginald D Hunter on the panel.Reginald has become something of a panel show regular this year and I've seen him on "You Have Been Watching", "Have I Got News For You" and "Eight Out Of Ten Cats". He has stolen the show on every one of them and I think he's going to be a big star. Here's a "taste"