Time to make your escape from hole in the wall gang

I would urge those customers that think they are affected to fight back. I have been a customer of RBS for almost 20 years and joined around the age of 12.

However, I will not be a customer for much longer and I am now making arrangements to transfer my accounts to rival financial institutions.

The banks are getting away with far too much now. Many charge a fee for running your current account.

It can be as high as £12 a month which amounts to £144 a year, and in hard financial times how many like myself who earn less than £20,000 a year can afford this? They do offer certain discounts as part of this such as breakdown cover, but often these types of things are not of any benefit to myself.

I also find more and more that I am being charged extra by shops just to use my debit or credit cards.

When I booked my holiday the travel agent wanted to charge me an extra £20 for the privilege of doing so. I refused to do so and paid by alternative means.

There is also the threat of cheques being withdrawn from use in a few years. I am being forced to pay more for my banking but getting less in return.

Perhaps the bank staff go home with large bonuses every year, but in the real world the rest of us do not and I would urge anyone with a bank account to shop around for alternative financial services. Perhaps if enough people close certain accounts it might force a rethink on this sort of policy.

Alastair Macintyre, Webster Place, Rosyth, Fife

Trams may halt before debt does

IT surely isn’t going to take the citizens of Edinburgh long to work out that repayment of the tram loan will take more than 50 years.

And this is excluding any interest on the money. So will the trams still be running in 50 years?

Mrs S F Wilson, Maxwell Street, Edinburgh

Students missed out on city vote

AS a member of the Executive of Edinburgh University Students’ Association, I write to express my dismay at the timing of the City Centre by-election.

The ward includes large student blocks for both Napier University and the University of Edinburgh as well as private student accommodation, most of which is now filled with holiday-makers for the festival.

Holding the election in August, at a time when most students are at home or moving between flats only serves to stifle their important voice as citizens of Edinburgh.

Students make up a significant percentage of the ward’s electorate, and my concerns have been vindicated by the election’s dismal turnout.

Stuart Tooley, External Convener, EUSA

Oil leak is not a significant one

Shell are getting a lot of political stick because they didn’t immediately alert the politicians, RSPB and anti-technology propagandists about the oil leak. Instead they closed it.

Perhaps some of the environmentalists and politicians complaining that Shell “concealed” the problem rather than shouting “Don’t panic, don’t panic” and giving them ammunition should consider their position.

How many of them have failed to conceal how insignificant it is?

Why has no measurable damage whatsoever been found?

Perhaps another comparison they should have made is with the fact that oil naturally seeps from oil fields into the world’s oceans – 500,000 tons of it every year according to the United States’ National Academy of Sciences which equates to at least 1,000 tons in the North Sea.

Puts man’s pollution record in perspective, doesn’t it?

But then perspective is precisely what the anti-technology “environmentalists”, and politicians don’t want.

Neil Craig, Woodlands Road, Glasgow