The problem with banks and business has been well covered. The Government wants banks to help businesses. So does the Opposition. The rest of us can't understand why the present and previous governments seem to have no control over them despite bailing them out with billions of pounds of our money. They can't even stop them paying millions of pounds of that money in bonuses to the people who wrecked the economy.

So, a personal story. A few years ago Your Life Your Style changed its bank to the Co-Operative Bank because, as a member of the Federation of Small Businesses, we get special rates from them. I imagined a long established bank like the Co-Op knew what it was doing. I wasn't alone, so did the government. Now we learned that they took on the Britannia Building Society without realising what a financial burden it was and they had a chairman who knew nothing about banking. I should have realised because of something that happened to me.

Like nearly all businesses, we have an overdraft. It comes in handy as we get further into the year and the money starts to dry up before the new wave of Christmas spending. When I say 'overdraft', I should make clear that its value amounts to less than two per cent of our turnover.

I needed a bit more than that to purchase stock in October for the Christmas rush so I phoned them up. (A further clue to their business prowess is that I couldn't do my business banking in Winchester despite them owning the Britannia at the top of the High Street.) I was refused even a temporary increase in my overdraft facility. Why? The answer was our level of debt. I was puzzled at first since we pay all our bills within 30 days. Then I realised. The bank counted as debt the money owed to my wife and myself that we put into the business in its early days. It didn't matter. The very nice guy on the end of the phone was following the rules.

So the Co-operative Bank refused to help a small business that had been a solid problem-free customer for three years. Now I know the Co-Op wasn't involved in the high risk investments of other banks that nearly bankrupted the country back in 2008, but it seems to me symptomatic of the current situation.

Having had their fingers burnt, banks are now being ultra cautious. They would rather put their money under the equivalent of a banking mattress than lend it to anything so uncertain as a business.

Years ago there was a TV series about a local bank manager. It seem an unlikely subject for a drama but it was enjoyable in a gentle cosy way. The plot of each episode revolved around the manager bringing two of his struggling customers together to make them both a success.

Any chance of a return to that kind of traditional high street banking where your manager knows your business and can make decisions based on knowledge rather than a computer programme? It's been generally agreed that retail banking should be separated from investment banking. I don't imagine that would do away with centralised decision making but it might encourage retail banks to start thinking about their customers' needs, rather than finding ways legal and illegal to make bigger bonuses.

I'm not getting too excited. The separation has been postponed until 2019, presumably because the government daren't upset the banks.