WITH the mammy of all parliaments in meltdown and Gordie Brown procrastinating over an election to clear out the fiddlers so they can spend more time with their tax advisers, we must not forget the others who have been playing fast and loose with our loose change.
The MPs’ expenses scandal took the spotlight off the bankers. Because they are under pressure to cut costs, they have used that as an excuse to stop doing even some of the things that cost nothing at all.
Thankfully, some people are still watching them and keeping tabs. One of the great successes in recent days was the campaign by Michael Drummond, a cool dude from Stornoway, to get the Royal Bank to let him write his cheques in Gaelic.
When they blocked him from making out his promise to pay his gas bill to Gas na h-Albainn, the Drumanach went doolally.
OK, he didn’t. Under that big black hat, Michael is actually a very polite fellow.
Hat's a boy
He actually went “Uil uil” which, for mild-mannered Michael, is tantamount to anyone else blowing a gasket and throwing a complete wobbly.
He told everyone and soon it was all over the media. But the shower of bankers at RBS would not budge. It was a security matter; it was too expensive; they didn’t have enough Gaelic-speaking staff. Blah, blah, blinking blah.
Then the big guns at Bòrd na Gàidhlig realised they should flex a bit of muscle.
Skye bruiser Art Cormack blasted the bank with a colourful letter to chief executive Stephen Hester on April 28. He didn’t mess about. If the bunch of bankers in Edinburgh did not get their act together, Art was going to withdraw his large fortune from the vaults of RBS and stick it somewhere else.
As if that wasn’t enough, after opening a vein and signing it in blood, probably, Art copied the missive to Sir Philip Hampton, the bank chairman.
We were learning that behind Art’s warm smile and affable charm lurks a fierce lionheart who would sgrob your eyes out if you looked at him the wrong way.
I get chilled when I realise just what a lucky escape I had a few years ago.
Art was on the bill at some hall in Glasgow and I was with a crowd from Uist when we decided to go along and see what the craic was. It is perfectly possible that we had called into the Park Bar on the way to the hall.
Funny how the memories of some evenings dim more than others.
We stumbled in and found seats and, before long, Art was up there, loudly exercising his lungs with a stirring belter about the sons of Glendale rising up to knock seven bells out of anyone who stood in their way.
It was very moving for everyone there, not least for the feckless gang who had arrived with the best part of a gallon of frothy ale inside each of them. It wasn’t long before each of us got to bursting point and had to waddle off to find the facilities, knocking over half a dozen tubular stacking chairs as we went. Although he had by then moved on to one of these fine ballads about when he was young, with each clatter Art would flash a look of violent disdain at us noisy bog trotters – all while keeping perfect pitch, of course. Someone realised very smartly that perhaps it would not be a good idea for us to wait until the end of the evening, so we dashed out into the Sauchiehall Street night before any Skyemen with evil intent tried to emulate these hardy heroes of Glendale.
Anyway, having fired off that letter to Hester and Hampton, there was much discussion about Gaelic cheques on blogs and websites. It was on one of these that Blackhat Drummond noticed that one writer in particular was very anxious to join the bunch of clots and ne’er-do-wells defending the dodgy bank we own a good chunk of in its ban on accepting cheques in the language of the Garden of Eden.
He couldn’t say how many Stornoway RBS staff would be able to read a cheque written in Gaelic, but he said: “All of them can read English; well, sort of, anyway.” Cheeky blaggard, I thought, even if it is doubtful about bank staff from the west side.
The forum contributor then wrote on April 30 that he admired the effort our Michael had put into learning a language which used to play a significant part in Scottish culture.
He added: “However, you could say the same for Latin, but having passed my Higher more years ago than I care to remember, I do not feel any sense of grievance that employees of my bank are unable to read written communications in that language.”
My bank? Who was this? What is the username? Hampton. Hold on. Is that not the surname of the chairman of RBS? Crikey.
Realistically, of course, we cannot be sure that it was the great Sir Philip Hampton who gave us the benefit of his views. It may be an imposter or a wind-up merchant. If so, he had us all going there.
In any case, within a fortnight, the bank did what it would not allow poor Michael to do in Gaelic. It withdrew.
So was the previously smooth processing of Gaelic cheques due to goodwill of staff or could there be any truth in suggestions that RBS was treating Gaelic unfairly?
Just before the announcement of the bank climbdown, a mysterious caller to a bank in Wales claimed that someone sent him a cheque written in Welsh and wondered what he should do. A staff member insisted the branch would happily credit it to his account. And, yes, he could write his own cheques in Welsh. And the bank? It was the Wrexham branch of RBS.
Am I sure of that? Absolutely. I was that mysterious caller.
