Surprised the Co-op Bank is failing?

, but I shouldn't be. Some years ago I saw some official (properly painted and assembled) road signs in central Oxford that said 'Carridgeway repairs'. I still have the photo.

I was a very satisfied customer of Smile, the Co-op on-line bank for over 30 years. However, last week I switched to First Direct, partly because of the warning signs of the trouble the Co-op Group is in. Mainly though, I switched because I became totally disillusioned with the bank after the Rev. Paul Flowers fiasco. How could they expect to retain customer confidence when they picked a person like him to be Chairman of the bank?

The "corporate structure" of the Co-op movement is so incredibly complicated that it must be very hard to change anything. With all those differenct Co-ops having voting rights etc
I bet Frontera (NZ dairy co-op) and that massively successful Spanish co-op have a more sensible structure, surely?

It was a sort of 'Old Boys' network that has been poorly governened over latter years and it has got it's fingered burnt.

Even Labour's Lord Myner's quit because he said it was ungovernable in it's present state and there was no apparent will on the part of the board to make necessary changes.

I think it's a shame the Labour Party jumped ship, fair weather friends it would appear. Mind you, they haven't moved very far from where the branch fell have they.

You do "get it" don't you? (obviously Flickety does)

Jings

Oh bug--r.

I am sorry, hands up, committed the Cardinal sin, didn't read OP first.

Halo slipping obviously.

OK I'll confess - I don't get it...

What's wrong with it?

Ana ...a weekend is 2 days therefore a 3 day 'weekend' is 50% longer not a third longer.

Co-op should stick to food and leave the sums to those who can do sums

It's the maths. The weekend is 50% longer.

Oh yes!

I was looking for grammar or spelling mistakes...

I am mathematically thick!

Ana

Obviously me too.

Don't think the weekend IS any longer ... surely the weekend stays the same and it's the next working week which is 20% shorter?

My maths is so bad it would take me ages to work out or even notice that it was wrong as, it seems, did several others.

Only slightly related to the OP - a coop.store in a large village near here has been closed because mice were eating crisps from packets actually on the shelves - yuk!

Noticed that in the papers today a City Regulator has recommended that the Co-op needs to have more professionally experienced directors on its board.

The Co-op is still purist in its approach to board membership. Every single board member is elected, I am a Co-op member and dutifully vote when requested. It never occurred to me that the board did not also include any operating officers of the organisation like the Financial Director, Chief Executive etc. They only end up on the board if they stand for election (of course they could be barred, I do not know)n).

The Co-op Bank board did not have a single director with any experience or knowledge of banking

I smugly thought that the Co-op bank was a little oasis of decency in the filthy world of bankers. I changed my account last year only because I wanted a local branch, not because of the rumours of problems at the Co-op.
After reading about Paul Flowers I'm glad I left. It seems we can have our banks run by either crooks or fools.

The astounding thing is the government were pressuring the co-op bank to expand and take over a chunk of Lloyds...

But it was the process of checking during the negotiations, a process called 'due diligence', that revealed what a basket case the Co-op actually was.,

Its "corporate structure" if that's what you'd call it, can't have been a secret.
and it would not take a genius to look at it for, um, about 2 minutes, and think "how on earth is that structure going to work when it comes to running a bank?"

Who but Gransnetters could turn a post meant to be lighthearted into a boring critique of the Co-op Bank?

Who but 'Gransnetters' could turn supportive threads into sarcasm? Just sayin'

True.

We do need a "grumpy" emoti.