Q. What’s the difference between keeping your money in a bank or in a tin under the bed?

A. You get better customer service from the tin under the bed.

Another Question: Who is to blame for the credit crunch? Would that be a) indolent politicians, b) irresponsible borrowers, or c) insatiable bankers?

The RBS Group last week announced it had lost £691m in the first six months of 2008. The rest of us count the cost of years of bank errors.

Whilst I would never claim to understand the popular mood at every turn, I’m pretty confident that a snapshot of opinion on the No 17 bus would have bankers up there with estate agents, politicians and, um, journalists, in the least esteemed profession stakes right now.

In fact there is not much that gets the people I meet more agitated than the antics of the banks that seem to regard the majority of their customers as either untrustworthy criminals or cash cows to be milked. The excellent advertising campaign by Nationwide, a building society, still, strikes a chord not just because Mark Benton, who plays the obese bank manager, is funny, but because the advert’s critique of banks largely rings true.

Just about everyone I know loathes their bank. Arbitrary charges, illogical arrangement fees, mind numbing call centres, patronising letters and a penchant for making life difficult at inconvenient times all add to the impression of being ripped off that.

One bank, for example, claims to take payments for its credit cards over the phone but will will only do so if the payment comes from one of its own accounts. Odd that, when shops accept any old debit card! And in an age where money market traders shift trillions of dollars round the globe faster than they can snort a line, the likes of you and I still have our dosh stuck in ‘clearing’ for a week. Need I go on?

So when the Credit Crunch came and record profits turned overnight to historic losses it was hardly surprising that the public had little sympathy for the beleaguered bankers. More alarming, they appeared to have little confidence either as the queues to withdraw savings from Northern Rock testified. That’s a real problem for a system where confidence is the scaffold that holds up the entire house of cards.

One year on from the Northern Rock panic it is easy to say with hindsight that governments should have acted to regulate the banks more effectively. Easy to say, but also true because hindsight was ignored. History shows that at the top of every economic boom the banks, to a greater or lesser extent, lose the plot. Greed gets the better of them.

Every time they say that things will be different next time and every time they are not.

The tragedy of all this is that we need a healthy banking sector in which ordinary people have confidence. That means the banks making healthy profits. But would it be too much to ask for the regulators to insist that the banks establish a fund from those massive profits so that the next time they lose the plot they can bale themselves out?

Banks certainly need saving – saving from themselves. And even though financial institutions have the power to destroy the credibility of any government, there should be no time like the present. This Government has nothing to lose. In fact only action on issues the really matter will give them the chance of salvaging credibility.

Announcing their record losses RBS boss, Fred Goodwin, said it had been “a chastening experience”. Let’s hope this time he means it.