Today we read that Santander will gobble up 318 branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland making it the biggest high street bank in the UK.

Santander is a bank on steroids, expanding everywhere.

When the deal goes through it will have 1,643 branches compared with HSBC’s 1,369.

Most people knew very little about Santander until fairly recently when it kicked open the saloon door. It bought Abbey and absorbed it. It swallowed Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley

It got me thinking. What would be the public reaction if the biggest high street bank in the UK were, say, the Bank of China?

Yes, I know, there would be a million regulatory hoops to go through. But stranger things happen.

The Chinese have a sizeable stake in Barclays.

China is awash with money. It is hoovering up assets all over the world.

You thought Volvo was quintessentially Swedish. Wrong. Ford sold it to the Chinese Zhejiang Geely Holdings for £1.2 billion.

And, just a few months ago, the same Geely took a 51% stake in Manganese Bronze, the maker of the iconic London Black cabs.

The list lengthens daily.

Should we be worried?

I think so.

Edna Greenwood

I am saddened to hear of the death, at 64, of Edna Greenwood.

Edna was a trade unionist to her fingertips, active in the GMB in East Lancashire for as long as I can remember. Our paths crossed from time to time.

Helen Christie and Richard MacSween say she was politicised by the Silentnight strike in Barnoldswick in the 1980s which left such a bitter legacy.

It was a strike that divided the town, and families, for years afterwards.

Edna’s politics and her trade unionism were shaped by her own life experience.

She saw trade unions as the first – and possibly the only - line of defence for working people and their families.

I am sorry she is gone.