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Some of your historical allusions go above my head somewhat PP, but I expect you are correct !
The difficulty with our Banks is that they have become an integral part of modern life. It would be very difficult to manage in today's modern world without them ( cue posts from other ABers who will testify that they have managed quite nicely, thank you, without a bank account since Noah was a lad ! )
I have been with the Co-op Bank since I first started work at aged 17 and I am 60 now. My Mum had been a Co-op member since just after WW2, so it seemed a natural progression for me, when I needed a bank account.
I haven't had much in the way of problems over the years and I like their ethical and cooperative structure. But even the Co-op is having problems now, trying to recover from a huge financial black hole left by their unwise merger with the Britannia Building Society.
The point that I am trying to make is that banks are not easy to avoid, so they count on that by trying to get away with mis-selling, which is fraud by any other name. We are trapped like moths in a flame.
Actually, come to think of it, there used to be a reasonably trustworthy bank in Britain, and it was called GiroBank, but Thatcher hived it off in the early 1980's and that was the end of that !