Neil McNicholas: Why do we still bank on a day off like today?

The original concept was that banks were closed for the day and therefore all other businesses closed as well because there would be nowhere for them to deposit their day’s takings.

I’m not entirely sure why banks felt they needed a day off, but once they come up with a reason then everyone else got a day off too – hence bank holidays became public holidays.

For banks to take a holiday, a prerequisite is that there has to be something from which they are taking a holiday and increasingly these days that is difficult to identify.

Many branches have closed and of those that remain automatic teller machines (which don’t need to take a holiday) have taken the place of real people to whom you used to be able to talk and from whom you could seek actual financial help and advice.

Indeed, banks seem to be operating increasingly on the principle of phasing out the inconvenience of having to actually deal with customers at all. The cosy image of your Mr Mainwaring-type local bank manager has long been a thing of the past, and even if there were still such a person you’ll probably have to take a 10-mile drive or bus trip to your nearest branch to see him (or her).

Much to the delight of banks I’m sure, increasing numbers of people are taking up the option and practice of online banking and so they don’t have to deal with those particular customers in person at all. I have to say that it’s a concept that so far escapes me.

To begin with, I refuse to accept the claim that there are no security risks – recent events in the news seem to suggest that no system is ever 100 per cent watertight and there are always hackers beavering away to prove the point. But if I do all my banking online, from where do I get real money? The day the bank allows me to photocopy my own bank notes is the day I’ll start banking online.

Sorry, where was I?Ah yes, bank holidays.

So the principle was that out of the kindness of their corporate hearts banks would take the occasional days off and so everyone else benefited by having a day’s holiday too. But that doesn’t happen any more.

Businesses and shops remain open just the same because they don’t want to lose out to their competitors who are staying open because they don’t want to lose out to their competitors and so on.

And you always know when a bank holiday is coming along because the television is wall-to-wall (no pun intended) furniture adverts. Why do they think people will want to refurnish their homes just because it’s a bank holiday? More puzzlingly still is the fact that people obviously do – hence the adverts.

The only places that seem to be closed on bank holidays are the post offices – and, of course, they are as bad as the banks these days when it comes to cutting back on providing the services that people need and in locations that are convenient to those who need them.

The logic seems to be that all the old people who need to collect their pension money will also have a bus pass that they can use to travel to wherever they can find a branch of the post office that hasn’t closed down. Good luck with that!

And of course if post offices are closed on a bank holiday so are the mail services so there’ll be no post delivered – but there again that won’t be immediately noticeable because these days there’s only one delivery a day anyway and it may not come until the afternoon. By the time you’ve waited that long, you’ll have forgotten whether there was supposed to be a delivery anyway.

Purely on the basis that the postmen aren’t working, the ubiquitous home-delivery services are usually off as well. I always find it a little ironic that they’ll work on Sundays, but not on bank holidays – but that’s a whole other article.

And so here we are, the famed “nation of shopkeepers” who daren’t close their shops for the day in case they lose business, but who should have shut up shop because the banks are closed though nobody knows why because they don’t ever really seem open in the first place in the sense of providing a service people expect of them as banks.

You’ll have heard the old conundrum that if a tree falls in the forest, but there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?On that same principle if the banks are on holiday but no one really notices…

Father Neil McNicholas is a parish priest in Yarm.