UK Window Cleaners Protest At Banks Greed - Now Worldwide

A window cleaner works on the windows at The Bank of England in London.

Royal Bank of Scotland was yesterday the subject of an embarrassing revelation in an internal document which suggests that "influential" people are more likely to receive a mortgage from the bank than unimportant people. The gaff by RBS came in a circular to staff last month which said that loans in certain areas of London would have to be reduced because house prices had risen so high that further increases were unlikely. The Scottish bank said the guidelines could be overturned in "exceptional circumstances". These include if "the customer is influential in the community". This is the latest public relations scandal to hit banks recently, after guidance by Halifax to employees that it did not want to take on certain sections of the workforce including cabbies and window cleaners. The bank, now part of HBOS, apologised to customers.

UK Uncut protesters outside Barclays at Piccadilly Circus, London.

At midday in Islington, North London, 50 activists set up a laundry in an RBS branch in reaction to the Islington Council threats to cut services to the elderly, including a much-needed laundry service. The activist set up washing lines, clothes horses, buckets for handwashing, and a team of window cleaners on the outside. The protest was attended by over 15 pensioners and the local MP Jeremy Corbyn.

A year before his tragic death, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King gave a speech in which he spoke of the human tragedy of the Vietnam War and the deleterious effect it had on funding for the poverty programme at home. But he also spoke more philosophically, declaring: “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” His words are as relevant today as they were then.  Banks like RBS-Natwest represent the ‘thing oriented’ society – the promotion of profits regardless of the social costs. We have heard of the role of RBS-Natwest in the financial crisis that in turn precipitated the cuts.

UK Uncut and US sister group stage more protests at banks: UK Uncut, the anti-cuts campaign group, staged protests at more than 40 bank branches throughout Britain on a day when the group's American counterpart, US Uncut, staged at least 50 protests.

The fast growing British group, still under six months old, staged the Big Society Bail In protests to show the range of services it says have had to be cut in order to support the financial sector. Last week the group focused on Barclays, which admitted it paid just £113m tax in the UK in 2009 on reported profits of £11.6bn.

This week the protests were aimed at 84% state-owned RBS, which has revealed that more than 100 of their bankers were paid more than £1m last year, while total bonuses reached close to £1bn on the bailed-out bank's reported losses of £1.1bn for 2010. Other banks' branches, including NatWest and Lloyds, in which the Treasury holds 41% of shares, were also targeted.

In Islington, protesters turned up at a branch of RBS with buckets of soapy water, washing lines and clothes pegs in to highlight claimed council cuts to services for the elderly. Supporters included the Labour MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn and pensioners from the borough.

Emma, speaking for the demonstrators, said: "The banks caused the financial crisis yet it's ordinary people across the country having to pay for it, through cuts to vital public services. By propping up banks like RBS with billions of pounds of bailout money the government has forced cuts to services like laundry help for the elderly, which is why we're here today. "The cuts are a political choice, not a necessity."