SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS, OF COURSE THE MARKETS WILL LOOK BETTER

I was amused to see that the stock markets rallied* when six of the world's central banks, including the Bank of South Britain England, got together and eased the cost of dollar loans between banks by 0.5%, and put in place temporary bilateral liquidity swap arrangements (whatever they are), between central banks.


It seems to me, with precious little in the way of economic know how, that this is just banks lending more non-existent money to other banks and that this  will achieve nothing much except staving off an inevitable financial collapse.


While I was reflecting that I wished I'd paid a bit more attention to the boring economics lectures at college, it occurred to me that this is December, and therefore "bonus time" for the banks.


It probably looks better when they are awarding themselves vast and totally unearned sums of money, if the world financial system doesn't look like it is about to disappear round the U-bend for ever.


So when they tell you, as they undoubtedly will, that they did it for the greater good, it will be, to an extent, true. 


They did it for their greater good.


*FTSE up 198 pts closing at 5335

THERE IS NO PLAN B...

....But...


like the Royal Wedding, the Japanese Tsunami and the fact that Mrs McGinty's cat got stuck up a tree, the Eurozone crisis has proved too much for the faltering British economy and something has to be done.

So it's been confirmed that Mr Osborne (left) will announce that the rail fares increase that put a huge strain on the finances of the commuting public (mainly in the South East of England) will not be as great as had been previously announced, at a cost of some £130 million to you and me. And for the rest of us, talks are under way to try to delay, cancel or at least reduce the 3p extra on a litre of petrol. A much more expensive ploy and by no means signed, sealed and delivered yet.


And now we hear that the Westminster government is going to underwrite loans to businesses that the banks feel would be too risky to make. 


How good of the banksters to be prudent about that. They are doubtless worried that if they had to be bailed out again, the bonuses really would be under threat. But why should they take the risk when George will do all the hard work for them, leaving them to sit back and count their money? Well, that's what you get for funding the Tory party, I guess. 


It was recently announced, too, that the Westminster government intends to lend money to first time buyers in order that they should get their feet on to the all important "an Englishman's home is his castle" property ladder.


That sounds decidedly to me like the Westminster mob underwriting sub-prime mortgages. People who can't afford a deposit for the admittedly VASTLY overpriced British home, will be able to borrow the extra, underwritten by you and me. 


Now, call me spoil sport, but didn't we recently prove that there was a flaw in this "owner occupier status for all" ointment? Particularly at a time when "ordinary" people, no, "families" "up and down the country" are losing their jobs, unable to get new ones and therefore unable to pay their mortgages, is this not just a little on the silly side?

Added to this, despite the plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face evidence to show that it was a hare-brained idea in the first place, the English part of the UK government is now going to sell off its council housing, leaving social housing even more stretched. (Although the dangerously stupid sounding English housing minister,  Gregg Schapps (right), insists that they will build a new house for every one sold off [just how, we're not sure].) 


Fortunately the Scottish government has stopped all sales of council houses and is building up the stock once more.


It seems to me that the Westminster executive is doing all the things that it  (with hindsight) criticised Labour for doing; things that contributed massively to the financial breakdown in the first place. 


And still no claw back of the bankers' bonuses.

RARE SIGHTING OF A VERTEBRATE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT

I’m mystified.

Mr Osborne has put a small increase on the bankers’ tax, the bankers have feigned displeasure and we have been told it is a victory for the taxpayer.

Well from where I’m standing I’m not seeing a victory. I don’t see all the tax payers who are about to be made redundant celebrating this victory. Nor am I seeing all the people who have to work part time getting out the bunting.

George said in his speech: “The anger at the terrible mistakes of the banking industry and the failure of those who regulated it will long remain, and rightly so.

“But let us as a country confront this hard truth - anger and retribution will not bring one percentage point of growth or create one job.

“The anger will remain and we must never make the same mistakes again, but Britain must move from retribution to recovery.”

In short, yes, OK, they were wrong, and yes, they wrecked the country’s economy and your lives, but it’s time to forgive and forget and let them get back to trousering vast amounts of dosh, while you sit at home in the cold.

George, listen up mate. Along with an incompetent Labour government and financial control authorities, and an opposition that was reluctant to criticise the banker’s ridiculous remuneration or the country’s personal debt that was getting totally out of hand, these people, these bankers, are to blame for the horrific mess we are in.

And yet, and yet.... Some of these fools are walking away with bonuses well over a million pounds... while we get the sack or have to go part time. The government has felt it necessary to cut the military, reduce their perks; cut welfare payments even for sick people so disabled they cannot leave the house without help, telling them we are all in this together. Everyone must make their contribution.

It seems to me that we have started to treat these people like we treat royalty. Although there is no visible difference between us and them, they are different. We’re not quite bowing and curtsying, but, just as it is inconceivable that Princess Mrs Parker Bowles should take the bus to do her shopping in Morrisons, it is inconceivable that these people should suffer or be made to pay for their mistakes, because they are bankers.

They threaten to leave the country, go to Bombay, Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, and we shiver at the prospect, and beg them to stay. This may have more to do with the fact that these self same bankers provide more than half the money that runs the Conservative Party than that the country would go to the dogs without them.

God knows we went to the dogs WITH them.

Then we have someone with just a little bit of guts.

Liberal Democrat Finance spokesman in the Lords, Matthew Oakenshott, spoke out against the deal accusing Osborne’s team of “arrogance and incompetence”. Of course he was sacked by Nick the Tory for his troubles. Danny Alexander who also seems to have become more Tory than the Tories, condemned him and said that this does not reflect the Liberal Democrats’ view.

I rather suspect, Danny, that it does.

Perhaps the most worrying thing for the coalition is that Matt Oakenshott is a close friend of Vince Cable, and is seen by many as his spokesman.... Ew er... What's next?

Pics: (1) Jedward? Nope, but close. It’s our own Dgeorge, whose careers seem to me to be following the same trajectory as the cheeky twins. (2) A set of lazy scroungers who probably refused to take a pay cut or work part time or indeed for nothing for a month. (3) That’s what happens to little boys who tell lies. My granny told me that, but until now I doubted her. Sorry Gran. (4) As they always trot out us owning 80% of RB SCOTLAND or 40% of Halifax SCOTLAND, I thought it might be appropriate to remind people that we own 100% of NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND-based Northern Rock. (5) Despite reports to the contrary Liberals are not extinct. This one has been found languishing on the red benches. Not only is he Liberal but he appears to be a vertebrate.

SO MANY PROMISES: SO MUCH JOY AND SO MUCH MISERY AT THE SAME TIME

Bankers will be pleased to know that all the criticism of Labour for going easy on bankers and promises to be tough on bonuses, was just a load of hot air from the master of hot air, Spinning Dave.

He admits that the public is rightly (have you noticed how often politicians seem to use that word) angry about the size of bonuses, (and on that he is rightly right, especially when it’s our tax money they are paying out to people, to all intents civil servants, who caused the mess we are in with their greed and plain downright inability to do the job). But he said that he will not court short term popularity by trying to “hammer” the financial sector.

Message to Cameron.

So what is this about hammering them Dave? We didn’t want you to do that. Although your party is well known for hammering. Ask your friend; the one you were happy to quote to Angus Robertson when you called him “frit” the other day. She was a mad “hammer horror”. She hammered the life out of so many industries and so many people.

But you’re right not to emulate her Dave, because the misery she caused with “Thatcher’s silver hammer coming down upon their heads”. So no one was actually asking you to hammer them. However gratifying it might have been to watch these subsidy junkies get paid something like what they realistically earn, none of us wants Edinburgh to be battered into provincial township.

But come on Dave. How the hell do you think us “ordinary” plebeians feel when our wages are being cut and bankers are awarding themselves 50% salary increases to guard against possible reductions in bonuses and then sneaking in congratulatory bonuses amounting to £7 billion for a job well done?

A JOB WELL DONE ????????

There was a guy the other day complaining to a parliamentary committee that it was time all this backbiting stopped. The same day some other guy was awarded a £2 million bonus, along with a golden parachute of a further £2 million. And something like 80% of it is OUR MONEY

And at the same time you (well, not you personally, but “one”) can watch people in supermarkets, the “hard working Scottish family” (although of course you’d call them British) stocking up with own brand, and economy own brand groceries, stuff that has little nutritional value and tastes like dirty sawdust: shampoo at 15p which leaves you scratching within minutes of its application; beans that are all watery sauce and few beans; orange squash whose nearest connection to oranges would be that the aisle that it is on is only 2 away from the fruit and vegetable section; bread that is stale before you get it home...

What a life for some. What a bloody way to run a country. You should be ashamed of yourself, you spiv. We sure as hell are ashamed of you.

POOR BANKERS

The Committee of European Banking Supervisors’ recommendations for new rules to contain the worst excesses of the people who nearly brought our country and many others to the brink of ruin, and whose debts we will be paying for a generation or more, contain the following points:

• Curbs to apply in all parts of company inside and outside EU
• Non-performance related golden parachutes banned
• Up-front bonuses subject to claw back
• Big bonuses not to be awarded purely in up-front cash
• Should be an appropriate rate between base pay and bonuses
• 40%-60% of variable remuneration to be deferred for 3-5 years
• Governments must be repaid before bonuses paid
• Contracts must be subject to regulations
• Information on remuneration to be made available to shareholders
• No multiple-year contracts.

This has apparently left the City in an uproar.

Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, and patronizing woman, has told us that companies might very well relocate elsewhere outside of the EU and that the UK will lose the millions that they pay in taxes every year, perhaps forgetting that we had to bail them out with billions, and there is no guarantee that it won’t happen again in fairly short order.

I can’t see anything unreasonable about the regulations. The bankers remind me of BBC executives and civil servants with their “We could get more elsewhere” attitude. Frankly I doubt very much that many of them want to live in Mumbai or Hong Kong, and if they do, in order to satisfy their extreme greed, then good riddance.

I’m sick of us ordinary people having to pander to other people’s greed in order to retain their incomparable services... the British Civil Service who seem to be incapable of getting anything right, the BBC, for which we have to pay if we want to watch any television at all, on pain of criminalization, and bankers, who light cigars with £100 notes.

So GO, I say, if you can't behave like human beings, but you don't go until you pay every halfpenny back and if that breaks you...so be it.

UNEMPLOYED WILL PAY FOR BANKERS' RECESSION

It appears that, in an effort to get Mr Coulson off the front pages of the newspapers, Mr Osborne has come up with a diversionary tactic. Hit the dole scroungers. No one ever objects, Rupert loves it, and he’s the boss. Can’t go wrong.

So George announced that there will be swinging cuts on benefits.

OK long story as short as I can make it (and I apologize; it is a long post). There are cheats. Yes, loads of them. But there are far more decent honest people on the dole than there are cheats. I promise you. It’s my job.

The truth of the matter is that most people do not actively choose to live on benefits. Despite what the Sun and the Mail tell you, they are rubbish. Even worse than the kind of wages so many people get by on.

No, most people would prefer to have a decent job and a disposable income. Those who are long term unemployed are so because they:

a) do not have the kind of skills, or intelligence, necessary for the kind of work that today’s employers are offering;

b) were put on the scrap heap in the last great clear out of jobs, taken off unemployment benefit and put on to invalidity benefit, in order to massage the figures, and forgotten about. As a result of which they are now elderly and utterly unemployable;

c) have criminal records which, for most employers, immediately disqualifies them for consideration;

d) have appalling employment records which mean that they discarded by employers;

e) have drink or drugs habits which will exclude them from any kind of work;

f) are recovered drug users or alcoholics;

g) are female, and pregnant or single and have children under 10;

h) are HIV positive and their treatments make them sick

or

i) they are over 45, and most employers are dubious about employing them

or (and these are things that should be actionable by government because they are the individuals fault, although that doesn’t increase their employability)

j) they have debts (that are held in abeyance while they are unemployed);

k) they are dealing drugs on the side and need the cover of unemployment;

The people who made this recession are sitting in the House of Lords or selling books, or raking in massive bonuses again like nothing happened. But savings have to be made and the idle poor are to be made examples of.

Maybe George would like some of them in the Treasury. Maybe he would like to explain to his colleagues why there is a paedophile and a rapist starting in their office on Monday, along with a guy who has a drink problem, and someone who is HIV positive and whose treatments make her vomit regularly.

If you are going to get the 5 million people that the government now estimates are idle (I seem to remember that the estimated it at 7 million when Labour was in power) back to work, iron lungs and all, there is a golden ingredient that is missing, and that is JOBS.

Unemployment is going up. Employers are paying off. The government is about to add to that. Vast numbers in the poorest parts of the UK (the BBC survey was all about England for some strange reason) are going to be paid off making the most depressed parts of the country more depressed.

I hope this is a ploy. It certainly was not planned and some members of the Liberal party are furious and predict resistance as they were not consulted. As for the public? Cutting benefits to the lazy is usually much welcomed, but there are a lot of hard working folk that the bankers’ recession has thrown onto the dole, while they take ever bigger bonuses like nothing has happened. I’m not sure that it will work so well this time.

Don’t take the prols for granted George. You’ve probably met very few of us, but we can be quite assertive when we are not tugging our forelocks.

A NEW BONUS PLAN FOR RBS: IT'S LIKE WINNING THE LOTTERY

Our bank, you know, the one we own, the Royal Bank of Scotland, has unveiled a new bonus plan for its management, and, would you believe it, their boss, Stephen Hester could pocket up to £4.8 million in shares.

The new scheme, although much less generous than the previous one, could still pay out up to 4 times a director’s pay in shares.... that’s shares that belong to you and me.

Hester’s salary is £1.2 million. Last year he forwent his bonus in the face of public outrage on bankers’ pay, bonuses, greed and incompetence.


It is Hester’s job to turn the bank round and take advantage of any upturn in the economy (ha, bloody ha) to make the bank profitable and to start paying back all the money that it borrowed. (Just a thought: It is strange how difficult it is to get a couple of thousand for a car loan from them, but when they need billions, it’s there! Tout de suite).

The bank’s remuneration committee, in deciding how much of a bonus to pay to a director will have to take into account how much risk was involved in the financial result.


The bank recorded a £3.6 billion loss for last year, mainly caused by vast amounts of bad debt reflecting the economic downturn in the country, and across the world, along with a history of incompetent lending and bad investments.

I think that we are going to have to make sure, like Mr Obama is trying to do, that our banks and other financial institutions are never allowed to get back into a situation where they are too big to fail. It is madness to allow them to take over more and more of their competitors in order that they make more and more money, and when they get found out, and the bottom falls out of what they are doing (as it has before and probably will again) they just cannot be allowed to fail.

As for the bonuses? I wouldn’t pay a halfpenny to management of banks which have had to be nationalised. As such these managers are civil servants. Who ever heard of civil servants getting bonuses of 4 times their salaries? And if they say that they will leave and go to Bombay, I say bye bye... Take something cool to wear and lots of deodorant, you’re gonna sweat a lot.... oh, and remember the snakes with the black heads are really really nasty....

Pictured: Stephen Hester and the Royal Bank . Source