Our mutual friends
I WAS SAD to think, so I told my audience of building society chieftains, that this was the last time we should meet in the Backscratchers' Hall, or whichever City hall it was. For next year (I said) they should book a telephone box. Perhaps the box was out of order, for they have not called me back, but the societies look more and more like an endangered species. Nationwide, the biggest, has been plagued by a comic butler who wants it to turn itself into a company, and it survived last week's vote by a whisker. Brian Davis, who runs it, has tried as hard as anyone to show that a mutually owned society can be a good club to belong to. His members get premium rates on their money and cut rates on their mortgages. Others are less fortunate. At the Backscratchers' Mutual Life Assurance Society, his opposite number has been con- tent to coast along, well-paid for what he does and with no pesky shareholders who might ask awkward questions, or even fire him. If being mutual was all it took, so I tactlessly said in the Backscratchers' Hall, we should all be buying our fishcakes from the Co-op and not from Marks & Spencer.
Previous page
