You can bank on people with an axe to grind having a pop at beleaguered RBS

Like other financial institutions, the Royal Bank of Scotland has made mistakes, has paid dearly for them, and continues to do so.

Victims of the bank’s past appear to have formed an orderly queue to make their claims for compensation and retribution from the Bank.

No sooner has RBS dealt with one complaint than another appears on the agenda. For the first time in some ten years RBS’S trading balance sheet shows a surplus. This good news is negated by the soothsayers who are quick to forecast that a repetition of this trading outcome is not to be expected in the current year.

As a private customer of RBS, with no interest in the bank other than a current account, a savings account and a modest ISA holding, I worry concerning the future of our only Scottish high street bank. The Royal Bank, often perceived as a huge predator in a large pond, is now merely a little fish striving in the ocean to withstand the attentions of clever sharks. After a decade of denunciation, it is time for the bank’s friends to stand up and defend the Royal’s aspiration to continue its long and distinguished service to Scottish individuals and the nation.

As we move forward into an increasingly unpredictable future it remains obvious that, without a reliable high street bank Scotland would be at a profound disadvantage.

Mistakes committed, reparations made, contrition acknowledged: time to moderate condemnation.

ARCHIE PACEY Barleyknowe Road, Gorebridge How cruel of The Scotsman to suggest that the Royal Bank of Scotland may be dissembling with regard to customer numbers. Of course, they weren’t. It all depends on how you define “customer”.

Perhaps an average of only 53 “customers” per week did visit the Melrose branch of RBS – according to the RBS definition of “customer”. The other potential 700 people per week who visited the bank were not “customers”, merely people the bank served, people normally called customers.

RBS have not been “grossly dishonest”, but I suggest they could have been unethical and misleading. RBS must be transparent and explain this apparent trickery, a probable scam to minimise opposition to their disgraceful closures.

DAVID MUIR Findhorn Place, Edinburgh Further to your article “RBS branch cull numbers are ‘grossly dishonest’ ” the same thing was happening at the Bank of Scotland. For the Bonar Bridge Branch, now closed, they said that only four customers per week were using the Bank. I suggested at the time that Lord Blackwell (Chairman) of the Lloyds Banking Group should improve his numeracy skills. MICHAEL BAIRD Dornoch Road

Bonar Bridge