Kill a banker?

There’s an insult cliché which begins: please rearrange these words into a well-known sentence. Well, with regard to bankers and Barclays’ Bob Diamond’s assertion that ‘the time for remorse is over’ (it’s not remorse, Bob, it’s anger, and no, it isn’t time), please arrange these items into a possible strategy for satisfaction: banker, lamppost, rope. Now Sir John Vickers – due to report on the findings of The Independent Commission on Banking (set up by George Osboy (sic) last June) in September of this year – has hinted at suggestions of major reform. Well, bugger me – it takes a year to come to that conclusion and it’s only going to be advisory? Why isn’t the government doing something now to defend us from these money-addicted risk takers, instead of instituting immediate major cuts to reduce the deficit? Isn’t one of the things they’re supposed to do is protect our society from threats to it?

Meanwhile, the cuts start to bite. My local library (in a building which has been used for such for over one hundred years) is now scheduled for closure in the scramble to save money. We’re allowing lobotomies to be performed on ourselves and our children, sacrificing the beauty and benefit of knowledge that comes from books – and free books at that – in an over-eager bid to help offset a problem caused by bastards swaggering around in the complacent belief they are ‘too big to fail’. Well, when the councils begin switching off every other streetlight to reduce spending, I’d like to propose a use for the redundant ones. First you find a banker …