As a headline, it ranks up there with "Dog bites man".

Its what dogs do. Its what rats do.

Andy Hornby, the chief of HBOS, having run a business model which brought HBOS to its knees is jumping ship and looking for a soft landing at Lloyds TSB.

He claims that the Bank of Scotland subsidiary of Lloyds TSB will be "a real monster power house in Scotland".

We don't need a "real monster power house", thank you very much.

What we do need in Scotland is a bank that is focused on its Scottish business. That provides a service for its customers be they individuals, small businesses or larger companies.

Neither The Bank of Scotland nor The Royal Bank of Scotland have been providing adequate customer service for the past ten years. The business model has been to ignore their customer base in Scotland and follow a path to riches by aggresive expansion in overseas markets.

The Bank of Scotland was given a Royal Charter in 1695 to provide banking services in Scotland. Since banking must be a devolved matter, the Scottish Executive should yank the charter of The Bank of Scotland and advertise for a suitable service provider. With no operating charter, no doubt the physical assets, the bank buildings will be available at a knock down price.

Establish one decent bank in Scotland and the others would be forced to match the service on offer.

We may as well sort out some of the other banking problems while we are at it.

In this day and age, each bank issuing its own notes is quaint but unproductive.

In case you haven't noticed, when you use a Bank of Scotland ATM you get cash in all Bank of Scotland notes. Ditto for The Royal Bank of Scotland etc.

Daft

We will switch to the Euro and get a stable currency which is used by a major part of our customer base, is better protection against counterfeighting and will be acceptable to all banks in Scotland.

Banks will also stop charging their business customers for counting the cash that is being deposited.

A bank charter in Scotland is a literal license to print money. Counting customers money is part and parcel of the Charter. No added fees.

A smaller, focused Bank of Scotland won't need to be taken over by Lloyds TSB or anyone else. The takeover rules won't have to be bent and public money won't be necessary to prop up a failed institution as happened with Northern Rock.

Sounds good to me.

Now if I can persuade the US Congress to drop the $700 billion bail-out package, I'll have it made. Since I get an American pension, I pay US taxes. The bail-out package is going to hurt in the pocketbook.

The common joe, the man in the street is being asked to bail-out the high flyer who didn't think the small print included him.

Warning! The value of assets can decrease as well as increase. Just as you will take any increase as your rightful due, any decrease in value falls to you and you alone

I don't see any reason to bail-out the punters who took a risk lured by the prospect of large profits and now find themselves faced with large losses instead.

The world is not going to come to an end if folks with too much money to begin with suffer a temporary loss. It will teach them some humility.

All of this talk about a recession is brilliant PR to soften up the Congress who are about to head off for the November election cycle.

Its about the numbers folks. A bail-out package will have a negative impact on more voters since it will take away money they can ill afford. The number who will benefit is miniscule by comparison.

Gonna no dae that!