EVEN the corny old jokes about bank managers no longer make any sense.

For years the men – and they were pretty much always men – who ran local branches where we all cashed our cheques were the butt of gags

People often talked about “keeping their bank manager happy”. This was somebody we knew and somebody who knew us – rather too well sometimes.

Think of Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army, bank manager by day and soldier by night. He knew just how much dirt was under the fingernails of the local greengrocer. The show set in wartime was first shown in the 1960s. Half a century later the concept of a bank manager familiar with your finances appears absurd. Logarithms rule.

Now Royal Bank of Scotland has announced another swathe of branch closures across the UK, 30 in total. Its NatWest wing is shutting even more, 128. Hundreds of branches will go. This is essentially a government-owned business scaling back local public services.

Its logic is well-rehearsed. More and more of us are banking online or by phone. Many of us never see cheques or go in to a branches. And, of course, RBS, as a public company, has to cut its losses eating in to the public purse.

But these cuts, on the back of the closure of the entire Airdrie Savings Banks and 40 branches of the Clydesdale early this year, further erode the trust financial institutions have in us and we in them.

This week The Herald has been highlighting the challenges and opportunities of an ageing population. Local bank workers, like local post office clerks, local churchmen or even local publicans, provide part of an invisible community safety net for very old, very young and otherwise vulnerable. Their loss, perhaps inevitable, is far from insignificant.

So how do we replace these vital community services? Post offices are taking up some of the slack. So are credit unions. But should government, local and Scottish, be looking at hubs offering everything from banks and libraries to shops and post offices? We think they should.