Go West?

What is it about Wests that just lets everybody down all the time? There is that awful film, Wild Wild West starring the naive and somewhat wasted talents of a young Will Smith, there is of course Fred and Rose West (the less said about those the better) and now there is NatWest, the bank the nation suddenly loves to hate.

That’s right; our money grabbing loving population was stunned to wake up to banks and ATMs across the country unable to dish out cash into their poor little hands. Like modern day Oliver Twists traversing an apocalyptic wasteland, our once proud homeland trudged through the streets, begging faceless bankers and holes in the walls for their weekly wages. (I must add at this point that this analogy only fits those who bank with NatWest, all of you other human beings banking elsewhere can either stop reading now, or continue reading in order to gain information of how ‘other people’ live their lives).

Although not the end of the world, this event is actually no laughing matter. The banking crisis (and it is a crisis) prevented people from collecting their earnings, managing their finances and submitting their savings. It is easy for those unaffected by the NatWest scandal not to give a hoot, I mean, although most have forgotten about it now, Iceland was once the enemy of the banking world (and not the supermarket) but it is important for us all to remember that our money is never actually safe.

We may not all spin the wheel, but we are now a society of risk takers. Banks are a gamble as much as roulette (well not AS much, but I’m sure you get my drift) and it pays to take note of where one’s money is placed. I’m sure NatWest will rectify this problem, but it does go to show that with all of our money floating around in cyberspace, it would sometimes be reassuring to be taken to some vault deep down under a Swiss mountain and showed all of our money sitting in heaps, glistening with wealth. Now this will obviously not happen (unless you are Harry Potter) so us citizens of the world must put our faith in the banks, whether we like it or not. Basically my point is this… Is it safe to think that our money is safe in a safe?