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Debate of the month - should we be bailing out the banks?

20 January 2009

While businesses are going bankrupt and people are being made redundant is it appropriate that the government is bailing out the banks?

We are witnessing an unprecedented bailout of the banks using taxpayers money. Is this right?

  • Small businesses are going under, yet they won't get any help. Is this fair?
  • Or is it essential to keep the banking system going?
  • What is your view on this? Tell us what you think.

Have your say, and debate the issue here on PCS comment, and a selection of the comments will be published in View, the monthly magazine for PCS members.

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  1. Banks

    26 February 2009

    We now have the completely unacceptable situation where the ex boss of RBOS is refusing to give up his £650,000 a year pension. This is obscene as we now have a situation where someone who had a hand in the economic shambles of last year can now walk away with this sort of payoff. It is also an insult to ordinary people who are now losing their jobs, their houses, and worse still possibly their dignity and their self respect.

    Lin Black
    Why Banks?

    24 February 2009

    Why do we have to keep the banking system going? What is there, intrinsically, about the banking system that makes it indispensible to society? While it is convenient to have the likes of telephone banking and internet banking, it isn't of itself, absolutley necessary. Before we had Saturday opening of banks, banks opened 5 days a week, from 9:30 to about 3:00. If you didn't get there then, tough. You had to have appointments to see the bank manager. Now I'm not saying that I want us to go back to that, but I am saying that the system still worked, albeit slower. And before the banks were set up, there were other ways and means of tranferring money. Again, it was slow relative to modern methods, but it worked. And when everyone hoarded their own money, it was even slower. But it worked. Banks are not indispensible.

    Dan Tanzey
    Banks

    24 February 2009

    So come on what else do we do let the banks crumble. The problems that would create would last for generations to come. We have to accept that it has happened and get on with it. As for paying them bonuses I dont agree with that not even for front of house staff. Any cash that can be saved should be put back to the goverment to end the situation asap.

    Robert Jack
    Bailing out the banks

    23 February 2009

    Alas we have no choice but to support the Goverment over this step, otherwise we would have far more problems if we let them fold. I like others think that any bonus should be given to frontline staff. As for having to pay a bonus to keep the top people generating income to pay back to the tax payers, this is wrong the so called top people caused the problem and should be held to account for what they have done.

    Robert Jack
    on reflection...

    18 February 2009

    ... I have decided that we should be bailing out the banks but with the same provisos that Barak Obama has put in place. As for their bonuses, I'm all for senior management not getting theirs, but as a member of frontline staff myself, I support the cashiers getting theirs... unfortunately, we don't live in a world where money for bonuses are put into decent pay to start with, thus eradicating the need for them in the first place, (my first choice) and I know how difficult it can be to face the public when your organisation is perceived to be messing up.

    Dee Luxford
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