Since January 2015, there have been about 1,000 bank branch closures in the UK
The expected reaction to the NatWest's closure announcement can be found in this week's Denbighshire Free Press. Outrage. Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru's stated a petition to save the Rhuthun/Ruthin branch,
It's all a waste of effort. We should instead concentrate on trying to make our remaining two bank branches as resilient as possible—by closing our NatWest accounts and moving to one of the others.
Mind you, Barclay's doesn't open on a Wednesday, not any more.
How long will it be before we have no bank at all in Rhuthun? Will that point ever come? Probably. This week, the governor of the bank of England said that we would expect to lose 15 million middle class jobs—half the workforce—owing to decisions in future taken by machines (software) and that includes the financial sector more than any other. A case of the computer says "no" to bank branches.
The last 20 years has seen spectacular change. Early internet adopters were laughingly labelled as geeks. Who'd then've predicted online banking, online shopping, smartphones and such like. What will the next 20 bring? The nature of money's also changing. Anyone remember their pay-packet, with actual notes and coins? As we move towards more electronic means of payment, the physical money supply will diminish. All we will need is a string of numbers to get to our online bank account. We will no longer need to visit any bank to deposit anything. No longer will we see controversies such as tallow-enriched £5 notes. It's hasta la vista, baby, for the banks and for banking jobs—and that's the view of the governor of the bank of England, who expects middle class jobs to be "hollowed out". Not to mention the synths popularised by the recent Channel 4 programme Humans. We may bitch about it, we may grumble, we may shuffle our credit elsewhere... but we can't stop it.
The NatWest closure in June 2017 is the first manifestation in Rhuthun of this brave new world that we've chosen for ourselves. Better get used to it.
The expected reaction to the NatWest's closure announcement can be found in this week's Denbighshire Free Press. Outrage. Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru's stated a petition to save the Rhuthun/Ruthin branch,
Mind you, Barclay's doesn't open on a Wednesday, not any more.
How long will it be before we have no bank at all in Rhuthun? Will that point ever come? Probably. This week, the governor of the bank of England said that we would expect to lose 15 million middle class jobs—half the workforce—owing to decisions in future taken by machines (software) and that includes the financial sector more than any other. A case of the computer says "no" to bank branches.
The last 20 years has seen spectacular change. Early internet adopters were laughingly labelled as geeks. Who'd then've predicted online banking, online shopping, smartphones and such like. What will the next 20 bring? The nature of money's also changing. Anyone remember their pay-packet, with actual notes and coins? As we move towards more electronic means of payment, the physical money supply will diminish. All we will need is a string of numbers to get to our online bank account. We will no longer need to visit any bank to deposit anything. No longer will we see controversies such as tallow-enriched £5 notes. It's hasta la vista, baby, for the banks and for banking jobs—and that's the view of the governor of the bank of England, who expects middle class jobs to be "hollowed out". Not to mention the synths popularised by the recent Channel 4 programme Humans. We may bitch about it, we may grumble, we may shuffle our credit elsewhere... but we can't stop it.