Jayne Dowle: We give, they take – that's how the banks are cashing in on our money

Meanwhile, we taxpayers won't even get so much as a thank-you. If it hadn't been for us bailing out these stricken financial institutions at the height of the credit crunch, they might not even be here, never mind slapping each other on the back and heading for their yachts.

How many of their customers won't even be able to afford a day-trip to the seaside?

While we have bolstered up these private companies with our own money, they have repaid the favour by squeezing the consumer ever tighter. I know interest rates are still at an historic low, but you wouldn't think so if you looked at the average mortgage.

Whatever the headline Bank of England figure might say, the banks have not generally passed on the benefits of low interest rates to the mortgage-payer. And even if they have taken it upon themselves to offer good deals to persuade customers to bolster their mortgage books, they

have found plenty of ways to make swapping your mortgage to a cheaper rate as expensive as possible.

When our five-year cheap fix came to an end last year, we looked into swapping to take advantage of the best deals on the market. When we worked out how much we would have to pay in valuation

and "administration" fees, it simply wasn't worth the hassle and

expense. We would have ended up saving, over the next few years, only a few hundred pounds. So we stuck with our original provider. For our loyalty, we got a letter shortly afterwards to tell us that our reserve overdraft was being slashed by thousands of pounds.

Not that we had ever used it, but that wasn't the point. We mean nothing to that bank, unless our own cash is helping to pull it out of the mire.

It is the arrogance that really annoys me. When Northern Rock announced its return to profitability, the first thing it did was increase pay and bonuses for staff.

This is our money it is spending – don't forget that Northern Rock is nationalised – so surely the first thing it should do is repay its own debts and then pass on any profits to the customer? Perhaps by rewarding ordinary savers with more than a derisory rate of interest would be a start, or making more money available for mortgages so the housing market could benefit from a sustained recovery.

But no, this is the banks we are talking about, and it seems that they are above any normal law. If we're on about playing the game, this return to profitability is due in no small measure to cash-strapped borrowers battening down their own hatches and meeting their mortgage repayments, despite the toughest demands on household budgets. We give, they take.

I resigned myself to the fact that we personal customers are the little people a long time ago. I seriously considered stashing away the little I've got under the mattress, but no doubt the building society would have invented some kind of penalty for "early withdrawal". Like thousands of others, I put up and shut up.

We are just numbers to the financial institutions. So I cover my

mortgage, keep my nose clean, and pay my credit card off in full every month, just to annoy them. But it's the people who run businesses I

feel really sorry for.

I've lost count of the conversations I've had over the past year with entrepreneurs who can't get their new companies off the ground, or find expansion plans stymied because finance is not forthcoming.

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that if the private sector is to grow and flourish to provide jobs to meet the cuts in the public sector, this has got to change. How dare HSBC claim that demand for credit remains weak, because wary borrowers don't want to risk new commitments? I suggest that those in charge of business lending drop into any Chamber of Commerce meeting in Yorkshire, if they dare.

Several experts rather better-qualified than me to comment – like Chancellor George Osborne and Business Secretary Vince Cable – have urged the banks to consider their economic obligations to lend to credit-starved businesses. Cable warns that any economic recovery could be "stillborn" if the banks do not perform a serious volte-face in the next few months.

I can only hope that while the bankers are sunning themselves in the Med, those clever Government economists are putting in some hours with their calculators, working out a way to force the banks to repay what they owe to us all. If they don't, then we face attempting financial recovery with no money to finance it.

Even a little person like me can see the problem with that.