End of free banking? What is WRONG with these people?

So we’re now told, by the Sunday Express, no less, that the banks are planning to charge us all for taking our own money out of cashpoints. (Yes, I know, I just happened to pass it in the supermarket.) Apparently the FSA are about to rule on the legitimacy of the arbitrary charges hitherto levied by the banks. The banks presumably thought they’d get their threat in first, to warn the FSA against doing the right thing.

Where do these people think they get off, saying that if the courts rule one rip-off illegal then they’ll have to introduce another one to make up the shortfall? The answer can only be that they are living on a very distant planet indeed. Which of course they are; they keep telling us that if they are forced by taxes or regulation to live on the same planet as the rest of us they will take their ball and go off to Dubai or the Caymans or somewhere.

And don’t tell me they’ve got some absolute duty to keep their profits sky-high. I don’t believe bank profits are ever wholly legitimate. All the money they deal with is other people’s, and far too much of it is sticking to their fingers already. All through the crisis of the last two years they have behaved with the smug assurance of those who know they have the rest of us over a barrel.

It is a fundamental principle in a free market society that you only pay for what you freely choose. If someone is asked to pay for a good or a service they must have the option of refusing to do so and going without. And banking is not optional. It is certainly compulsory for every employed person. During an earlier acute phase of my bankophobia I wrote a formal memo to the payroll office at my place of work asking for my salary to be paid to me in cash in a brown envelope. This was purely in order to demonstrate that they would never allow this; I can’t say that I was ever really enthused by the idea of yomping round to electricity, water and phone companies with a fistful of tenners. Therefore government must ensure that there is at least one bank where they don’t charge you to get your hands on your own money. (It already owns a couple – where’s the problem? Or it could be based on a revitalised Post Office.)

Meanwhile, what are we going to do about a financial ruling caste who just don’t “get it”, and to an extent far beyond that of our much-reviled MPs? We seem to have exhausted all possibilities of moral suasion and all legal and regulatory avenues of restraint. It may be getting towards the time for direct action. Perhaps we should think of November 2009 as November 1788. Where I live in agricultural Lancashire there are plenty of old farm carts which would make excellent tumbrils, and I have always intended to learn to knit.