Darling to grill banks on lending

Why does it take 3 to 5 days for money to be credited to an account? The account is debited immediately but only arrives 3 ti 5 days later. In South Africa the transactions happen simultaneously! And London is supposed to be the financial centre of the world. The banks are theives.

Darling needs to give them more than a grilling. With interest rates as losw as 1%, it is amazing that they are sttil allowed to charge, in some cases 25%APR+. It is of equal note that the definition of "extortionate Credit Terms (Consumer Credit Act 1974) still defines it as 50.1%. I was also interested to received a notice from The Halifax Bank Creidit Card, that they were raising my Credit Card APR from 9.9% to 15.1% ...because of the current ecconomic climate. This should be read,"lets take advantage of those who are unable to pay of the card's debt in one go. As I suggested to them, if they were worried about my ability to pay, then surely it would be wiser to reduce my Credit Limit. The answer came back as: " No, we are increasing our APR to encourage our customer not to spend as much." Actually this should be read as: " Well, we know most of our customers can't pay their balances off in one go so lets jump on the band waggon. Doubtless other Credit Card Issuers

I had £165,000 in outstanding invoices and needed a £2000 overdraft to see me through till the end of month (12 days). Bank were only interested in invoice factoring which I didn`t want to get tied up in. The fees they want were stupid. Subsequently I have now decided to wrap it all up and start over working for a large corporation.

A new company taking over an existing function and conference business achieved huge growth in the first nine months. It secured advance bookings double the previous year and was targeted to increase yet again in the second year. Then came the recession plus a winter that caused chaos to the country, never the less the business continued to build. Surely three months of chaos could not damage it? Well actually it was the cash flow through that period that challenged it. Like all small businesses we believed the Government and went to the bank for help. It took two months and a period of jumping through inane hoops to eventually receive £2,500. Now I realise this is probably more than most received and as I said we had a healthy balance of bookings, but we now had to play catchup. Catch up is a difficult game as any golfer carding a double bogey on the first hole will tell you. Our double bogey was a government that talked and banks that said thank you MUGS one and all. Comments please.