Rant in Progress - Enter at your own peril!

So, this happy, smily poster from the happy, smily marketing department at AIB Bank greets me every night when I get off the train, showing me lots of happy, smily business people who do their happy, smily banking with happy, smily AIB.

And when I get home and put on the telly, I can watch more happy, smily business people telling me about their companies, and how much happier, smilier and more successful they are because they bank with happy, smily AIB. All paid for by the aforementioned happy, smily marketing department.

And I'd just like to ask... WHY?

Marketing exists to promote brand awareness and increase market share. Well, in case you hadn't worked it out, I am perfectly well aware of your brand. I am aware of the nice chunk of online service charges I am about to start paying because I'm not lodging over E3,000 a month into each of my accounts - I trust the ivory back scratcher this pays for comes in handy. I am aware of the fact that our mortgage payments have effectively increased bu 2.5% over the last two years, as you have withheld every ECB interest cut to refill your "treat box" - sorry, coffers. I am particularly aware of the E4,600 bounty on my head - and the head of every other man, woman and child in this sorry excuse for an economy - placed there as a result of the decision not to shove your sorry asses onto the dole queue at the first available opportunity. Not to mention the E6,000 to cover your brethren idiots in Anglo Irish Bank - "the most interesting Irish bank?"; certainly I'll be paying your interest for the rest of my life - or the other E6,000 to cover sundry gobshites in the rest of the sector...

As for market share? I own your arse; I own your competitors' arses too; and I'm probably going to own them for decades to come. So why should I care exactly which way the market share is divvied up between a bunch of incompetent gobshites, unable to understand the basic principles of their business sector, employed at my expense and against my will?

And business service? When you've eliminated the concept of the business overdraft? When business customers are struggling with the cost of the term loans they now have to take out to cover their cashflow needs? When I've lost count of the number of building firms, sub-contractors and architects who have gone to the wall, with work on the books and more work still coming in, simply because they couldn't get banking facilities to keep them afloat while they wait for payment?

Marketing departments? In the words of Douglas Adams, "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

Normal service to resume later with picture of happy, smily child!

And congratulations to the person who was visitor no. 10,000 to this sorry excuse for a journal. Unfortunately, you came and went before I typed up my offer of fame and fortune - well, a special mention and a link in my about page, anyway!