Our government which props up half our banks on our money and companies like G4S has now sold, on our behalf, 632 Lloyds Bank banks to the Co-Op bank for peanuts. Co-op apparently paying £350M up front and another £400M over the next 15 years in preference to another offer of £800M upfront and more over a shorter time period than the Co-Op offer. So, we prop up the bank and then we subsidise it's sale (and so lose more) to a Co-Operative organisation. I cannot work out whether this is communism or reverse communism or just plain insanity. Can someone explain it to me?

You have a weird sense of what communism is.

He has no sense of what communism is.

Have you though?

Yes.

I think its an ace deal to an ace company, in fact yesterday when I heard the news I applied to open an account with the Co-op (yes really), like all banks though they tend to hide the fact that you really don't have to pay for their current accounts which I was a bit disappointed with.

Anyway - I buy my gas and electric from the co-op now, and will be banking some of my income with them too, shortly.


I'm a right commie bas'tad me.

Same here, a couple of months ago I moved all my accounts away from the Halifax to the Co-op and Skipton Building Society.
Halifax closed down my 2 nearest branches, c0cked up a previous transfer to one of their pay accounts, massively raised the interest on my credit card, stopped my debit card while I was away on holiday despite having told them where I was going, and just generally been sh|t and unhelpful.
So I thought I'd let my socialist instincts take over for a change.

Oh, I love this one!

We had something similar happen some years ago. They then told us that we should have been telling them when we went to Furrin Land.

We said they'd never told us we had to tell them.

They said that they couldn't send out letter because those letter might have been intercepted.

You could not make it.

We are no longer with the Halifax. We moved to the Nationwide (a mutual) where our mortgage is.

Let me think now ... which banks would I trust?
Mutuals of course.

But, of course, in your book, Mutual = Communist.

Dally is right the sooner the government is voted out the better. Lets have an election soon and we can remove this hopeless Coalition and bring back in a Labour government.

I haven't, so can you please provide me with a brief explanation so that I do not make silly comments on the subject in future?

Thanks.

Probably be easier if you just didn't comment on anything.

I stand corrected *tips hat*

In the Which? survey of customer satisfaction, the Co-op's Smile online bank came second (89%) and the Co-op Bank came third (86%).
But we can't believe them, can we, they only had sample sizes of 570 and 604, so let's just go by what you say.
I mean, you were spot on with NHS satisfaction rates.


p.s. First place went to First Direct (93%), whilst Lloyds trailed way back with 58%.