Free!

Our love affair with things that seem to be free continues with the ATM network.

This network must cost a good deal of money, with the weekend DT suggesting for the UK something of the order of £1 billion a year, and is mostly free to use at the point of delivery.

So we raise a great commotion if anyone suggests that maybe ATMs ought to make a modest charge at the point of delivery, preferring instead to have banks recover their costs through swingeing fines should we ever overdraw by ever such a modest amount for ever such a modest period. Or should we infringe one of the many other rules in the small print which we are continually exhorted to read, 'in the sure and certain hope' that we never will.

A parallel being the arrangement whereby we do not pay for the services of the Google Corporation at the point of delivery, preferring instead their fairly discrete deluge of advertisements.

I suspect, without much evidence or investigation, that all this is a product of the highly competitive environment of the Anglophone world, with all its the races to the bottom. But would I find that things are just as bad elsewhere if I troubled to look?

Two other points occur to me as I type. First, when interest rates are high, banks can make a lot of money out of lending a suitable proportion of our current balances out on interest, reducing their need to impose swingeing fines. Second, Corbynistas would no doubt point to the fine dividends which at least used to be paid by banks to their shareholders.

PS: 'sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life' being a ringing phrase which I always notice towards the end of the order for the burial of the dead.