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As someone who is always campaigning for financial and economic fairness and inclusion I wholeheartedly endorse Andrew Smith’s dismay at the number of ATM machines that charge, and that they disproportionately affect poorer areas and those less well served with other services.

Will he now perhaps campaign for the return and preservation of local sub-Post Offices whose network of for the most part free cheque cashing facilities has been decimated under the Labour government’s administration.

A good start might be to join the renewed calls for an competition investigation into Tesco takeover of T&S stores which has resulted in yet more counter closures. Maybe he could also explain what happened to the “Universal Bank”.

A poll published in Tuesday's Guardian apparently shows that most people feel that we have enough prison places and don't need to build more, and should find other ways of punishing people:

More prisons are not the answer to punishing criminals, says poll | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

A Guardian/ICM poll published today overturns the assumption that the public think tough prison sentences are the best way to tackle crime. It shows that a majority of voters think the government should scrap its prison building programme and find other ways to punish criminals.

Politicians in all parties routinely assume that voters think prison works. But 51% of those questioned want the government to find other ways to punish criminals and deter crime.

Of course many are in prison for offenses related to drugs consumption and the crimes many commit to satisfy addictions to substances that are artifically highly priced and because they are an illegal market. This illegal market itself creates more criminals and is the core of organized crime. Legalizing most of these substances would at a stroke enable us to empty the prisons of the hapless and hopeless addicts and enable them to voluntarily seek help knowing that they won't be treated as criminals for doing so, and if they didn't they could always manage their addictions more safely and affordably without resorting to crime to do so. And in the process, we'd free up prison space for real criminals.

The BBC reports that Westminster council are putting out a leaflet to warn foreign tourists about clip joints. Experience says they should probably start with naive young British boys. For it's twenty one years too late for me!

My first Christmas out of school was in London, three months into a job with a jobbers' firm on the Stock Exchange. I had one mate that I knew of from school in London, who was studying at the Royal College of Music or somewhere like that. The night I got my Christmas/annual bonus we decided to go to the West End. We were determined to go to the Soho highlight of the day, Raymond's Review Bar.

Well we got to the Review Bar and some bloke out the front dressed up in dicky bow and so on said "I wouldn't go in there chaps, it's gay night on Fridays, I'll show you a better place". Oh dear! We dutifully followed him. Duke Street I think it was, and a downstairs bar. Only a fiver to get in - what value! But then...

The only drink we could afford was the nastiest cheap German white wine on sale at £30 per bottle I think it was. Then these two "young ladies" came to our table. We didn't really know what they wanted, but let them sit down and be sociable. We went to share some wine with them...quick as a shot the boss comes over and says "Oh, no, sirs, the girls only drink Champagne". So we agreed - at £50 a bottle (this is 1985 remember).

Anyway - we didn't stay long. And the guy came over with a bill for us...for £200 - exactly my bonus (so much for million pound bonuses in the city!). I had to write four £50 cheques - three of them post-dated - so I could use my guarantee card. And that was my Christmas bonus. Of course, I would rather have been in Mr Raymond's gay night all along!