Bankers’ betrayal

IN the City’s hour of need, taxpayers made huge sacrifices to fund bailouts running into tens of billions of pounds. Yet look how the banks repay us.

First they announce hundreds of branch closures. Now, as the Mail reveals today, up to 5,000 towns and villages – that’s one in ten in the UK – could lose their last free cash machines as the big high street lenders seek to swell their vast profits by cutting costs.

To the gilded denizens of the Square Mile, flashing plastic cards and smartphones in City wine bars and restaurants, banknotes may be on the way out.

But cash remains the lifeblood of countless communities, in which parents and pensioners now face travelling miles to get access to their own money. Inevitably, local businesses will be hit hard.

Meanwhile, almost three weeks have gone by since the Bank of England increased its base lending rate. But as the boss of Britain’s biggest building society points out, banks are still failing to pass on the benefits to savers.

Indeed, while they wasted no time in increasing charges to borrowers, they’ve so far improved returns on only one in seven savings accounts.

As bankers wash their hands of all social responsibility to the taxpayers who rescued them, don’t they often seem determined to give capitalism a bad name?

TODAY the Mail extends warmest congratulations to the Queen and Prince Philip on their 70th wedding anniversary. What a team! And what an example to the nation!