In olden days, communication from the bank was often along the lines of: “Dear sir, I’m more than distressed by the state of your current account. Could we please revert to the situation whereby you bank with us, rather than vice versa?”

Nothing so simple in the complex world of banking and fintech. Consider the following from Andrew Beatty, senior vice president of global banking at FIS: “Both parties must apply constructive criticism appropriately... the fintech should not blindly accept all requested changes from the incumbent bank which could quickly take both parties off course and threaten the traction needed to progress in the engagement.”

Or this from Stephan Fabel, product director at Canonical: “Only by reducing network latency can the next generation of customer-facing services be realised within bank branches.”

It’s all well beyond my financial capabilities and I’m sure even my long-suffering bank manager of yore, who was a dab hand at customer-facing services, would be scratching his head. As he would by this proclamation from Matt Hancock, who the last time I looked was health secretary, but parked his tank on Penny Mordaunt’s lawn in a foreign policy speech: “The future lies not in siloed services but in a full-spectrum, first-tier, day-one capability: special forces, cyber intelligence, working alongside the potential to project conventional hard power, combined with softer persuasive power, harnessed by a foreign policy steeped in diplomacy.” Nuclear-strength eyewash, I think you’ll agree, so Hancock, back to counting bedpans, please.

To happier matters and a new word, to me at least – skeevier, the comparative form of skeevy, meaning morally or physically repulsive, disgusting, sleazy. Damned good word. Feel free to use as you will.

•Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist