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I have had the temerity to question Open Banking's statistics that claim that eleven million UK adults are (and the formulations differ, which is always suspicious) 'active users of Open Banking', 'benefitting from Open Banking', 'using and garnering the benefits of Open Banking'.

Now it turns out that 60% of UK adults have never heard of it. There are 50 million UK adults, meaning that 20 million UK adults have heard of it, which is does not mean that 11 millions are users and certainly not that 11 million are garnering its benefits.

How much double-counting is there in Open Banking's own figures?

SWIFT announced a service outage on 18th July, in Delphic terms. Were they connected, and, if so, which SWIFT service went down? It could not have been FIN or more systems would have failed (including the UK RTGS, which hasn't migrated to ISO20022 yet, has it?). It cannot for the same reason be InterAct across the board, and it cannot be T-Copy for ISO20022 XML because TARGET2 uses that and it did not go down. So what's left? Answers please, on an MT099, to....

Far too late for the FSB's opposition to be credible, as they have participated in untold FCA/Payment Systems Regulator processes promoting digital payments as well as the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum, all advancing the case for a cashless society. They never uttered so much as a whisper of dissent. In doing so they in effect co-opted their membership into a direction-of-travel they now take issue with - too late, no credibility, go home.

Now we know why Jeremy Hunt's pension reforms will compel 5% of discretionary funds to be invested in 'high-growth' (in English 'high-risk') companies. Having bent the law to allow Silicon Valley Bank UK to be purchased within the HSBC ringfence and thus offer protection to this sector, the UK authorities have belatedly realised that they have not cured the problem but postponed its denouement. Where the markets do not work to confirm a pre-baked intention, find some stuffee...in this case a pension saver who has not made a specific election of where their money should be placed.

It's the 2017 Payment Services Regulations, of course. Apologies for the typo.

His Lordship reminds me of a Paul Whitehouse character from The Fast Show, the one for whom everything is brilliant. When he goes on holiday it’s ‘Flooding – yeah! Forest fire – brilliant! Tornado – fantastic!’, regardless of any damage done or of contradictions.

‘Fintech – yeah! Open Banking – brilliant! Crypto – fantastic!’.

His Lordship having been a major cheerleader for this stuff, it sits ill that His Lordship should overlook its detriments and also complain about access to cash, the inevitable victim of the developments he has championed. That is contradictory. Whilst cash is in reality a facilitator of financial inclusion, His Lordship infers that only digital products serve that objective.

Anyway, it must be obvious – and particularly to one who walks the corridors of power - that the government has done a deal with the banks: the banks must make their IT systems ready for the digital age and, to meet the cost, they are allowed to slash their branch and ATM networks.

The Bill's outcome will be to crystallize the environment for the resulting take-over by digital. His Lordship has helped to lay the groundwork for this outcome by cheerleading for digital; now the rest of us will be compelled to bear the consequences. Yeah! Fantastic! Brilliant!

This is a disgrace and probably the end of the neo-bank sector in the UK. It is an affront to decent hardworking families. I wonder how the losses compare to the income tax and national insurance paid over by the workforce at an employer like the steelworks in Consett Count Durham for its entire existence - up in smoke!

We can add another 6 months to that timeline: the TARGET2 migration has been delayed again.

I had that too, at a meeting at an IBOS bank in about 2004, where we were discussing how to enhance IBOS' intraday reporting service, to which the answer was 'why would we invest in MT942 when XML is just around the corner?' Exact same words - and a very long corner.

Yes indeed, Ketharaman, I have invested in a stainless steel dustbin to sit in during the implementation period.