1st April 2023
To the Directors, Barclays Bank PLC
As you will be aware, Border Crossings has been making use of Barclays’ banking services for 28 years now. During that time, we have been very impressed with the way you run your business. We have never had to charge you interest as you have always retained a healthy level of reserves and balance. Given the very challenging nature of the current environment for banking, the fact that a small organisation like yours has even survived, let alone thrived, is remarkable. We are truly impressed with the way in which you have weathered the last decade, when the government has been undermining your industry so catastrophically, with many banks having to close because of the funding cuts.
In spite of your having been such good bankers to us for 28 years, we have now decided, for a reason we will not explain to you, that we urgently require information about your board of directors, and the people who would be liable (albeit to a very limited degree) should you become insolvent. We are aware that the details of directors are available on your website and at Companies House with your accounts, because you are very careful about your annual filing duties, but we prefer that you tell us separately because that means more unnecessary work for you. We were surprised to discover that there are no details or accounts available via the Charity Commission: should you ever wish to know anything about us, that is another route that you could decide not to follow.
Because these details are so crucial to us, we have decided to write to you every few days about it. Knowing how crucial the provision of intercultural performance is to the smooth running of your bank, we have also decided to threaten a withdrawal of this service if you do not respond to each of these letters within 10 days of its date. We will not, however, actually post the letter on the day when we purport to write it, and we will use a very slow postal service. This should mean that the threat will already have expired by the time you get the letter, meaning that you will be very worried by it.
The letter will ask you to phone a particular number. After lengthy delays and requests for security information, you will then be privileged to speak to one of our staff. We will take care to ensure that this is never somebody you may have spoken to before, or anybody who has ever heard of Barclays. They will proceed to ask you the same questions that you have already been asked on numerous previous calls. In case you should start to become in any way carefree in relation to the need to do this every few days, we will also send you emails that remind you about the letters. Your Chief Executive is someone whom we hold personally responsible for not telling us things we already know, and as we are fortunate enough to possess his personal mobile number, we will also be texting him on a regular basis.
One of our key requirements is that you provide us with a list of the names of people with limited liability in the event that you become insolvent. This list needs to follow a particular format, which we will send to you after your fifth phone call. It will be sent by email. However, our email system is not simply to send an email with an attachment. We will send you an email which will direct you to a secure site that you have not previously used, on which you will need a username and password to access the real email with the attachment. Once you have managed to download this attachment, you need to use it as a template to write a letter on your own letterhead, which must then be signed by one of your board, and sent to your branch.
If the Chair of your board is feeling particularly helpful, he may choose to deliver this to the particular branch of Border Crossings that deals with Barclays. Unlike our Chair, who is a charitable trustee and so unpaid, your Chair may regard this as a good use of his time as he is well paid to undertake meaningless activities. At this point, we will once again send you a letter requiring you to phone us, at which point we will tell you that we have not received the letter. When you explain that it was personally delivered to the appropriate branch of Border Crossings by your Chair in exact accordance with our requirements, we have instructed our operative to sigh audibly and explain that s/he is unable to contact the branch to request the hand-delivered letter, that this process could have been done by email, and that an original signature is not in fact needed, even though we previously told you that it was. We will then send another email giving you a link to a site containing a further email to which you can reply attaching the letter that your Chair had previously delivered in person but which we claim not to have received because nobody who works at Border Crossings is capable of talking to anybody else who works here.
We hope you are following all of this information with care, because if you do not go through this incredibly important process we will have no choice but to withdraw the provision of intercultural theatre services from Barclays, and that would be crippling for you.
In the event that there are any challenges to you in fulfilling these urgent requirements, do not worry, as there are many ways to contact us. You can go into one of the few remaining branches of Border Crossings, where you will need to wait for an hour before having a conversation with somebody who tells you that they can’t do anything about it. You can sit on a telephone helpline for an hour before being put through to somebody who tells you that they can’t do anything about it. However, our preferred method of communicating with our bank is via the Border Crossings app. This is really intended for your Chief Executive’s personal theatre-going activity, but we are happy to extend the invitation to him to use it for Barclays as well. We particularly like this method of communication, as it does not involve our having to pay any staff at all, even the ones we exploit in Bangalore call centres, but is run by something called Artificial Intelligence. We are letting you into a secret here, because most people would never know that they aren’t accessing real theatre through this app. We are particularly proud of one phrase which it likes to use when our bankers seem upset about the way we treat them: “If I would have face the same issue, I would have felt the same way.” The grammatical inaccuracy is what gives this a real human touch, don’t you agree?
Anyway, we’ve kept you long enough from the important services we’re sure you’re providing to many other small theatre charities. If you could find a moment to send us vast amounts of personal information about your directors, we would be grateful. After all, it’s important to know exactly whom you are trusting with your money.
kind regards
Border Crossings
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