I took this photo on Ely High Street earlier this week.
The former Capital and Counties Bank logo is still emblazoned on their one-time property, in the stonework. But now it is a charity shop.
Once we had banks on the High Street. There are almost nine left in Ely now. HSBC has just become a Greggs. Barclays became a Gail's last year.
And now, what if the charity shops go? That is the question in this morning's video.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
How thre mighty are fallen. But when did that branch close? Many decades ago I expect. Capital and Counties Bank merged with Lloyds in 1918, and was itself the product of a merger of two predecessor banks in 1877. C&C was a clearing bank (one of several dozen) and had over 500 branches. The famous black horse was not even Lloyds’ own sign, taken from a merger with Barnetts, Hoare & Co in 1884. Lots of relatively small regional banks were swallowed up to make the Big Four clearing banks, but the regional branch network served a purpose in the days of cheques, before widespread use of telephones and the internet and debit and credit cards.
It would be nice to think we can return to the rose-tinted days of the 1950s with a dark suited local bank manager requiring everyone to be prudent but I fear that is never coming back. Just as the local bobby on the beat is becoming a camera on every corner with ANPR and facial recognition.
Hello Richard.
This is off topic.
I saw a headline that a scientist, in Brazil I think, has developed nitrogen fixing bacteria. The cost to farmers would be US$2 compared to US$50 of fertiliser, to give the same amount of nitrogen.
My thoughts are that this is good for farming and the world.
However, I also wondered how economics would view this. If this was implemented across farming globally, would this actually be counted as a fall in world gdp? Or would it just be another price within the economies as a whole, and how it affects gdp would be rolled into a host of other things, like productivity or the inevitable corporate profiteering?
Regards.
I think this is a very good question.
I think the story was probably about Brazilian work on biological nitrogen fixation. My searches suggest that the technology is already extensively used there and that bacterial inoculation reduces the need for nitrogen fertiliser.
Your GDP question is interesting. Suppose a farmer who previously spent $50 on manufactured fertiliser can now achieve the same crop yield by spending $2 on bacteria. All else being equal, that reduces GDP.
But has society become $48 worse off? Obviously not. The farmer is producing the same amount of food while buying fewer inputs. They are more productive, not less.
The benefit could exceed the financial savings. Manufacturing nitrogen fertiliser uses substantial amounts of energy and creates greenhouse gas emissions, while biological nitrogen fixation can substantially reduce those environmental costs. I gather Brazilian research has suggested significant financial and carbon savings from doing this.
The farmer might use the $48 saved for something else, in which case GDP could reappear elsewhere. Lower costs might also reduce food prices, increase farm profits or stimulate additional production. So the final GDP effect would depend upon what happened throughout the economy.
But your example illustrates one of GDP’s fundamental weaknesses. GDP measures the value of marketed economic activity. It does not measure whether we have become better at meeting human needs. If we can produce exactly the same amount of food with dramatically less fertiliser, less energy, less pollution and lower costs, that is an economic improvement even if measured GDP falls. An economics obsessed with maximising GDP can therefore sometimes mistake using fewer resources more intelligently for economic failure.
That is one reason why I think we desperately need better measures of economic success.
I enjoyed looking at this. Thank you.
We have NO banks left in S Bristol. Lloyds (who perversely have no deposit agreement with the post office) and Nat West leave this autumn. Nothing south of the river.
Forget nostalgia, substantial numbers of poorer, older, or less able people are left stranded by the failure of finance, private or public, to consider their basic human needs (including protection from the 40% of UK crime that is financial faud). I meet them regularly. The constant refrain of “get the app” is like offering a wheelchair user a choice of a ladder or a staircase to access the toilet.
Government has a duty of care to its vulnerable citizens. They are failing in that duty.
Agreed