Lament for Latin

          You can learn a lot on a train. While on an evening journey from Manchester to London last week, I read that the Finnish public broadcasting service has, after thirty years, decided to call a halt to its regular news round-up in Latin. It seems a pity, even though not many people speak the language (my own grasp of it is schoolboy rudimentary), because Latin is a conduit for our past and history has many lessons to teach us. Nevertheless public service broadcasting, for all its educational potential, is low down the list of governmental priorities, even in rich countries.

          The train was crowded with India cricket fans who had just watched their team beat the West Indies at Old Trafford. They were remarkably subdued, considering their ‘victory’ (how I dislike the vocabulary of war being employed in sporting commentary), which may be because they had taken for granted that they would win. If so, that might also account for the fact that there were no Windies supporters in the carriage. Why would they go out of their way to watch certain disappointment unfurl? But when a young black man, wearing sports-branded clothing, took the seat next to me, I assumed – among other things – that he had been at the match. In a polite and genial exchange, however, I learned that he had not: having just graduated from Manchester University, he was travelling home to South London and thence to celebrate with his mates. And no, they were not going to Glastonbury to see the Grime rapper, Stormzy, but to Amsterdam to take in the art ‘culture’. And no, he had not graduated in performance arts, but investment banking, a career in which he expected to prosper in the City of London – where else?

          I have been thinking about switching my current account from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (especially after China’s latest attempts to quash the remnants of HK’s democratic system) to an ‘ethical’ bank but am unsure whether ‘ethical banking’ is an oxymoron. There are not many banks that make the claim, anyway, and the pioneer in the field, the Cooperative Bank, lost its halo when it was bought by a hedge fund, the most rapacious beast in the menagerie of financial institutions. I would have raised this topic with my graduate neighbour, but he soon became involved in phone communications which absorbed his attention. Coincidentally, a few days later at a street-side community book exchange somewhere between the City and Canary Wharf, I unearthed a couple of volumes that may have been on his reading list: Equities, an Introduction to the Core Concepts and Futures and Options for Dummies. They are subjects I know very little about – as, it seems, did most of the people responsible for the financial crash of 1980: the books, though published in 2006, were in pristine condition – as if unread.

          Nevertheless, my research into the possibility of ethical banking continues. If I must have a current account, then let it be with an institution that shares its customers’ concerns and preoccupations with societal issues, such as recovery of the environment, the health and safety of populations, the eradication of poverty and the availability of education for all. If such institutions exist, they should be encouraged to wrest power and influence from the incumbents, whose established methods lend succour to the demagogues and plutocrats who threaten liberal democracy with their backward-facing policies and protectionist warmongering. In other words, let us learn from Rome, where democracy was replaced by tyranny because its citizens failed to take preventive action and opted, instead, for pane et circenses – bread and circuses. This much Latin is all we need to know.