VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Rev Roy Jenkins, Baptist Minister in Cardiff  |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130427.html][img=images/2013/04/pic130427.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]The Co-op has decided it doesn't want [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/apr/24/coop-pulls-out-talks-buy-lloyds-bank-branches]more high street branches[/url] and so the TSB will be returning instead.

The Trustees Savings Bank was a bank with [url=http://www.solhaam.org/articles/tsb.html]substantial assets[/url]. These were mostly ploughed back into local communities, providing support for local businesses. It was famously the "Bank that likes to say yes". 

As no one officially owned those assets, the government decided they had to be sold. That way the money could be taken away from local businesses and given to large financial institutions who would be able to do something more useful with it, like trade in the derivatives that caused the worldwide financial meltdown.

Banks now prefer to say no, thus further limiting the growth of small businesses. Small businesses are like children. All they ever want to do is grow, create employment, create wealth, deliver goods and services that are in demand. If you give them what they want then they'll just waste it on creating prosperity. That's why the banks say no. It's a kindness really.

It's [i]exactly[/i] like the Invisible Magic Friend with the Ten Commandments. You know the ones:

1. I'm the only god. You can be sure of this because I'm telling you it.
2. Worship me alone.
3. Only use my name in worship.
4. Reserve every Sunday for worshipping me.

etc.

Without the Ten Commandments, we'd all go around murdering and thieving. Fortunately, even people who have never heard of the Ten Commandments recognise that going around murdering and thieving is a bad thing. This just goes to show how very wise it was of the Invisible Magic Friend to tell us not to go around murdering and thieving.

Of course, lists of rules, like the Ten Commandments, don't work. I don't even know why I bothered mentioning them. You can't change the behaviour of banks using the kind of rules that successfully restricted their behaviour between the 1930s and 1980s, and that were brought in after the banks caused the previous worldwide financial meltdown. What's needed is a complete change in human nature. What's needed is more Jesus.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018c01j]Listen/Read[/url]|CATEGORIES|84,14|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|CREATEDBY|admin|DATE|1367048911
