Losing their marbles
MOST bankers (Ogden Nash said) dwell in marble halls/Which they do to encourage deposits and discourage withdralls. Barc- lays' ancestral halls in Lombard Street, a massive essay in Banker's Georgian, con- tain so much marble that they scarcely leave room for the bankers. Now the bankers are moving, appropriately enough, into the Mint, so that the halls can be pulled down and replaced by three towers, to a design which I cannot admire. Friends in the bank call it paulo-post- modernist, and more vividly say that it looks like a 1930s wireless set, only lop- sided. Its most striking feature, in the illustrations, is that it appears to be wrap- ped in a transparent plastic container, but this may only be true of the model. Now I am glad to say that the question may not arise. Barclays has discovered, as so many of us do, that the best laid plans of builders and architects cost a lot more than they say. Here the catch is an unforeseen VAT bill, big enough to make even Barclays sit up, I think that the bankers will switch off the wireless set, and instead rebuild within their walls. I hope that they can spare their spacious banking hall in golden travertine marble, with its inlaid brasses and pleasant fountain. After all, Barclays now has £87 billion of deposits, and it would be a mistake to discourage them.
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