If someone stole my Visa Electron...

[Hyperspeed]

The bank you describe sounds very much like the gaggle of screaming chimps that is The Cooperative Bank. They offered me a loan recently for £4,000 GBP and after 5yrs I would have paid £9,997 GBP. That's 21% APR and PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) included for my good custom.

The {bleep}s refused me a credit card or a larger overdraft citing a poor credit rating and then out of the blue they offer me 4k?

Hah.

I remember the Electron card all too well. It's a slur on the VISA logo if you ask me.

Regarding loans though, you are entitled by law to cancel within a fortnight of receiving the sum, 30 days for the payment protection policy. Don't be afraid to cancel and find a better APR % and try not to use a credit card over something like a Visa Delta Debit card.

Another bit of advice would be to cancel Direct Debits. They are basically leeches sucking away at your bank account and will continue to do so even when the host is exhausted. I remember trying to cancel one a while back and didn't notify both the bank AND the payee. They charged me £32 GBP for failing to comply with the DD rules. That was Abbey National, the barstards!

[Hyperspeed]

NatWest were exposed a few years back for telling their employees not to open Current Accounts for taxi drivers, hair dressers etc.

Some guys from NatWest were alledgedly involved in the Enron scandal too... tut tut!

There was a TV show on in the UK here also (Tonight with Trevor McDonald) about how there was a rebellion against extortionate late-payment fees. Apparently banks have to prove in the UK if their late payment penalty fine is proportionate to the administration costs involved in writing to you. When they charge upwards of £30 GBP ($60 USD?) then you can take them to the Small Claims Court (where the maximum legal costs you can be hit by are £75 GBP unlike the big courts).

It is vital though to keep an eye on your online banking as lately I have had coordination discrepancies between cheques cashing, Debit Cards being charged and them actually appearing on the ATM cashpoints. Sometimes their computers are slow and don't network properly and then you get charged when you go unwittingly overdrawn!

:-(

[Hyperspeed]

They're starting to crack down on them in the UK. The DTI does seem a little bit woos though when it comes to banking.

If you ask me the banks are very much intertwined with the establishment. Britain's largest bank is HSBC (formerly Midland Bank). HSBC is the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation and no doubt their roots lay in the opium smuggling trade with Britain in Hong Kong back some time in the 1800s.

Barclays Bank, another biggy in the UK was funding the Suez Canal and the Channel Tunnel.

When you think about it, these masters of mathematics are our real rulers. They can take money from us for cryptic and obscure reasons and we are both complacent and legally ignorant enough to shy away from challenging them.

The insurance industry is an even bigger con (gradually banks are introducing a lot of insurance into their products such as the notorious Payment Protection Insurance). The insurance industry is basically a giant protection racket that protects large businesses and government institutions and we end up paying. The World Trade Centre was paid for by Lloyds of London (something like £4 billion).

What I'd really like to know is who owns and runs the VISA, Mastercard and PayPal systems... they are an integral part of most of the world's transactions and, like the internet and the UN, could be controlled soleley by the United States.

On a side note, I wonder if the £600 million over-budget on the new London Wembley Stadium could be being syphoned off to pay for another phoney war...  not to mention the £7 billion over-budget on the 2012 Olympics...

Tut Tut Tut...