'Old" or 'new" fashioned, people want a different approach to banking M&S's plans are altogether more nascent, but they deserve attention. I have to admit to a certain disappointment when the details surfaced. The retailer's strategy is clearly a defensive move to protect what it's got rather than an aggressive effort to break up the established banking club and take advantage of the trust deficit. But on reflection it's precisely that approach that might force the big players to up their game. M&S claims it has 800,000 customers who buy everything at the retailer, the loyal purple rinse brigade. That's where the company plans to win banking customers. A £20 monthly fee will set them back £240 a year but in return hand them vouchers worth £580. M&S's move to only launch paid-for accounts is key - it's a means of sorting the wheat from the chaff. As the banking unit's chief Colin Kersley said: "[With] free banking, how do you cope with people who aren't going to pay for anything and who don't shop at M&S? There is no such thing as free banking, someone has to pay. The business has been built on the back of our shopper. The retailer's plans might be fledgling and yet come to naught, but there's reason for optimism. Like Handelsbanken's approach, it's all about the customer. Sooner or later the big guns will see that's the only way forward. Jobs figures are not as good as they seem The British Chambers of Commerce believes yesterday's jobs numbers "provide hope for the economy." I fear someone's been on the optimism juice. As my colleague Louisa Peacock points out today, the jobs data is riven with contradictions. Of the 181,000 increase in the number of "employed" people, just half are actually working for companies. The balance are in taxpayer-backed training schemes, self-employment or unpaid jobs. Quite apart from whether the training schemes actually help get the unemployed into work, counting those in training as employed is plainly ridiculous. A further 11,000 of the now "employed" are "unpaid family workers." Full-time roles maybe, but essentially Smith Junior working in Smith Senior's fish'n'chip shop. It shouldn't be a job as the ONS understands it. Of the increase in "real jobs," it is concentrated on London and is likely to have been made up predominantly of hiring around the Olympics. It'll be a nice short-term boost, but come the autumn, those workers could quickly find themselves out in the cold again. Some commentators have questioned how the more positive jobs numbers tally with the fact that Britain remains mired in recession. The depressing answer is that the jobs numbers are clearly not as good at they seem. And a quick glance at the Monetary Policy Committee minutes - which show that policymakers considered cutting interest rates further to 0.25pc - show just how bad things are. They didn't act because they considered the cut wouldn't have much of an impact on consumer spending anyway. With the benefits of quantitative easing also far from obvious these days, one thing is becoming clear. The stimulus armoury is looking dangerously empty.