Bankers get out of jail free

LIFE AND OTHER BITS:

OH to be a banker now that the recession’s here.

While millions face the horror of unemployment and even more of us wonder how we will make ends meet, especially when VAT goes up to 20 per cent in January, the bonus paid to bankers (feel free to insert your own name for them) is due to top £10 million this year.

I need not remind you that these are the guys who played real Monopoly with real money, lost it all and were only saved from unemployment by our money and us.

We gave them the millions they needed to stay in business in exchange for assurances that bonuses would be scrapped and that they would help those in need.

Can it be that the only people in need are the bankers?

Small businesses, which have traditionally leant on the banks for support in desperate times, now find that when they lean, the banks are looking the other way and in increasing numbers they are falling over.

Those banks that are lending money have increased their profit on the loans by 38 per cent, a crippling blow to the small and medium firms that keep 57 per cent of us in work.

And all this despite the fact that the Bank of England base rate has dropped from 3 per cent to 0.5 per cent.

For the banks this has become a licence to print money, a large slice of which bankers will be stuffing into their own pockets. These are our banks, it is our money; has no one out there got the guts or the gumption to stop it or have all those who could, got shares in these bandit banks? Makes you wonder.



THE uniquely mechanical tones of Stephen Hawking recently told us from the intellectual Mount Olympus where he lives was that we should be wary about contacting aliens because they might not be friendly.

Now he tells us that the human race will disappear altogether unless we pack up and move to other planets. Presumably, planets where he hopes or has calculated with his computer brain that the residents will be friendly and will not mind being invaded by earthlings in shell suits and trainers and with pint in one hand and giant burger in the other.

“If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy we should make sure we survive and continue,” says the science sage.

However, if we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, heaven (assuming turbo-charged Stephen believes in the concept) help the others.

All the signs are, however, that they are smarter than us, not least because they have not been daft enough to try to come here.


FINAL WORD: Apparently, councils are urging the Government to scrap the need for bicycles to have bells (and not to replace them with claxons for the hard of hearing). When was the last time you heard or saw a bicycle bell?