Some years ago I paced the graveyard of the Canongate Church on the Royal Mile, talking on a poor line to a man from the bank.

I told him that, after receiving my latest bank statement, I wanted to stop paying into a savings account which was linked to the stock market. We are not talking eye-watering sums, but the sight of money disappearing and the prospect of more following made the Presbyterian in me quake. I'd been brought up to believe that gambling was a sin, and here were its wages. "Don't worry," the young man on the end of the phone reassured me, heroically managing not to add the word 'dear'. "Things can't get any worse. They'll level off soon." Even so, I closed my account. Two weeks later, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and what had previously felt like a bad dip was revealed as a mere dent in a pillow compared to the abyss towards which the world's financial world was now careering.

That was in 2008, and you'd like to think that for the ordinary saver things have got better. The near-revolution in banking that followed the crash was meant to bring in an era of transparency and responsible prosperity. David Cameron's announcement that if his party wins the general election he will initiate a discount sell-off of Lloyds' shares is framed as part of an ongoing clean-up of this once pernicious industry, a way of repaying the public for bailing out this bank, and all the others. No doubt a few will benefit from this piece of electioneering carrot-cake, should the Conservatives win, but for most of us it won't make any difference whatsoever. Instead, we will continue to shop around, memorising interest rates as if they were the multiplication tables, and knowing that in a year or two's time we'll have to go through the same process all over again. Finding a way of getting a decent return on savings is ridiculously time-consuming. If the hours we put into thinking about it were costed at the minimum wage, the pitiful interest we're given at the end of a year would not begin to recompense us for the effort.

Last week my husband went into the headquarters of his bank in Edinburgh. The ceiling was draped in netting to prevent plasterwork falling on customers, as it had been when he last visited a few months earlier. As a symbol of the financial world's humbling and disgrace - and its blindness to how it is perceived - it could not have been more appropriate. A once magnificent edifice is now disintegrating, and nobody seems concerned. Someone should point out that investors, borrowers and those who simply need a bank account do not want to be confronted by decay. The message it sends is worrying, suggesting as it does the fragility and poverty of a place which is supposedly safeguarding the nation's wealth and security. Were a property-owner to try to sell a home in such a state of disrepair, they'd be laughed off the premises.

Meanwhile, the first-ever five-year mortgage at 1.99% has been announced by HSBC. It's good news for house buyers, and more bad news for savers. Already deposit accounts and ISAs are offering a level of interest that mean the only benefit they provide is peace of mind, knowing the cash isn't stored in the toilet cistern or under the bath. Added to which, the best rates are usually with banks you've never heard of, and don't know if you can trust.

Of course it's possible to make money on your savings if you thrive on risk, or have sufficient funds not to fear a small or temporary loss. Treating money as if it were a racehorse seems to be the only way to make respectable return. One bank even offers customers a higher than average rate of interest if a sports figure - be it Lewis Hamilton or Rory McIroy - wins a major race or tournament that year. In this supposedly more ethical, less dodgy era of banking, how can tactics better suited to a bookies be considered acceptable?

It is galling for those of us too weak-kneed to gamble to know that banks are using our money to do with as they please, lending to others at rates far exceeding that which we receive. Ask for £15,000 and it'll cost a fortune. Deposit it, and the sum will grow so slowly even timelapse photography couldn't catch it.

Unless we are in hock to them, banks sulk. Measly ISA rates, woebegone bonds and pathetic savings accounts are their equivalent of the regifted bed-socks you receive at Christmas from a friend you have displeased. Seemingly alluring new investment ideas aimed at over-65s merely reinforce the truth: borrowers and spenders and those who like a flutter are the only people banks want to do business with.