Just like the Miners in the 70s?

From a technology R&D perspective my impression was always that the city had a very, very short term view of things and the decline in UK science, R&D and manufacturing has not changed my perspective one bit.

Shouldn’t the bonuses by tied to paying back the taxpayer loans to the banks as quickly as possible and revitalising the wider economy through longer term investments and credit to commerce and industry?

Bonuses should also be fully taxed at UK standard rates.

If so I guess it will be yielding a huge premium for the public coffers.

If not it would explain the huge profits and bonus payouts.

Can I have a collateral free guarantee from the state for my business please?

Yeah – right.

Priceless !!!!!!!

And as Acorn says they have us by the short and curlies.

What confidence can you give us John, that things would be significantly different under the Tories? Who is smart enough to take on Sid the Shark and get a better deal for us all?

Where I differ from John Redwood is that I would sell off state shareholdings in banks as rapidly as possible – which is a matter (a) of making full disclosure about toxic assets and (b) being willing to sell to the highest bidder(s) regardless of the wishes of the current (failed) management.

Then there would only be category 3 financial institutions.

However, I agree 100% about what you say about monetary policy.

You are aware that “The Thick Of It” is fiction, right?

It’s politically-astute, clever parody fiction, but fiction nonetheless.

“Turning off in disgust” is an odd response to fiction. By that premise, I guess you’d never watch a murder mystery or a thriller, and horror movies must be terrifying for you!

HMRC was castigated last year for losing a £Billion, and also being incompetent and inefficient, but it paid out £27million to it’s workers in bonuses. Quite apart from the State should not pay any bonus because the pension and remuneration system takes account of that, why?

I can see opportunities for some new market products here. I see, for a starter, the possibility for a “BDS” (Bonus Default Swap). Should the barrow boy execs who run my outfit have to go to the government for cash, and I loose my bonus, some counter-party will pay me a large lump of what I was expecting.

The fact that the government owns a large lump of my outfit is your problem not mine. I still have a pile of toxics in the basement and they are coming your way. Slowly slowly catchy monkey style, unless you let me make, and retain, loads of profits to quietly shift the bloody stuff into the local landfill (or the BoE).

If you start getting shitty with me and my bonus, remember the government needs me to keep buying its IOUs at the DMO shop.
I have you by the short and curlies. We can go on a buying strike faster than a postal worker working a five hour day. (The other two and a half hours are his bonus pay; I don’t here you going on about that). All the time you are running a massive budget deficit, you can’t touch me. I will find a work around for any rules you can think up. I am much much cleverer than the government and much bigger.

So my friend, its like this, you need me more than I need you. Me and my mates down here on the trading floor are the guys with the degrees in higher maths. My bosses are the barrow boys of the sixties and seventies. They didn’t have a clue what we were doing and they understood it even less. They were happy when we were making piles of cash and so was the government. If you want me to do it again, and you will, it will be much harder next time. So you better keep me sweet.