"We could insist that a tithe of bankers be sent every year to be publicly spanked with a traditional bristle birch in Hyde Park by a cohort of unemployed, low-waged and disabled people and indignant left-wing bloggers, and I'm sure we'd all feel a bit better about things.."

Why would we feel better Laurie? Wouldn't that be "inhuman brutalisation" or some such shite...what was the term you used? And wouldn't that just make the bankers violent when they grew up. It's bad enough that they rob us blind...imagine if they were violent too? They're fuckin loaded Laurie; they could hire an army of Chuck Norris clones to beat the shit out of us...don't be silly Laurie...sneering giggle...look to camera and smirk etc.

“No return to boom and bust” in that smug self righteous tone while sleepwalking the country into the biggest bust of all time was the defining momenet in Brown’s political career.

The self titled prudent chancellor, an incompetent fool with a legacy of rescission, PFI debt and a Labour party made unelectable, even when standing against a bunch Toryboy lightweights.

And all those people who try and shift the blame from the labour party are mad, bad or stupid. The labour party had from 1997 to do something about debt fuelled run away boom, but they preferred the easy path to re-election and short termism.

Quite a clever use of tithe though ... poetic licence.

"We could insist that a tithe of bankers be sent every year to be publicly spanked with a traditional bristle birch in Hyde Park..."

Hello, has she been reading Divine and andyg's little exchanges.

Simple answer is to cease their assets like countries do with rouge states and terrorists, and eject them from the country denying them citizenship. Simple and effective.

"...lobbying hard at Davos against the proposed EU financial transactions tax, which might actually oblige actual banks to take slightly fewer crazy risks with other people's money"

Rubbish. It's a tax, not a way to reduce risk. The tax will be the same whether the transaction is sensible or stupid. And banks that make lots of stupidly risky transactions would pay more tax, turning the state into a beneficiary of stupid risk-taking. The effective way to reduce risk is to increase capital reserves and to split investment banking from high street banking. But it would pain you to admit that, because Osborne's actually planning to do both. He's even going so far as to raise the reserves of UK banks higher than either the EU or Basel III will require.

"...designed to distract attention from the fact that not a bloody thing is being done to rein in the power of the financial sector to do precisely whatever the hell it likes and force the global poor to pick up the tab"

Don't you read the papers? They covered the changes to UK banking regulations quite extensively. Or maybe you just don't understand the subject. Your parents obviously wasted their money when paying for your private education. I went to a comprehensive and I can tell that the government is going to force UK banks to have higher reserves than banks in the US or elsewhere in the EU, and that means UK banks will be less free and that there will be less risk for the rest of us.

Cue everyone to call me a troll because I dared to comment how this journalist neither does her research nor understands her subject matter.

"Many liberal critics have grudgingly conceded that the removal of Fred Goodwin's knighthood and Stephen Hester's bonus are a step in the right direction."

I'd say that most critics have seen it as a pretty meaningless event. I think Penny needs to pretend others have been fooled in order to make herself out to be the truth teller.

"Quite a clever use of tithe though ... poetic licence."

"They could do. It means one tenth. Look it up."

OK...right after you quote me one example of 'tithe' ever referring to people. We have a term for ritual annihilation of human beings...decimation...or drumroll...'tenth'

If 'tithe' is imaginative licence implying we're all just inert 'livestock' then:

a)it'd refer to casual labourers, cleaners, agricultural workers and a whole host of others before we ever reached the gilded middle-classes, never mind the fuckin bankers

b)Mines a pint of useful-liberal-idiots or a bushel of public-school anarchists...with a twist of lime...or a hundredweight of sham-emotion

btw..."public-school anarchists", outside of 'If'-the single most overrated film of all time with about as much sociological relevance as the Shake-and-Vac adverts-and the feverish imaginations of liberal media commissioners, is used as an ironic oxymoron...cos once they finally fuck up, there's always mum and dad's or Camilla's spare room...never seems to be a case of shop doorways or jail, somehow.

you're all too 'laughably escapable' yourself...even

is spud actually george osborne? or does he just work for him?

"there are those at the top to whom the much vaunted "end of the something-for-nothing culture" seems by some margin not to apply"
Yes and the public would have a lot more confidence if the Jeffrey Archers and co were stripped of their knighthoods aswell. Never mind, tis life.
I see spotty muddled-mouth is still acting up!
Hello Mr D.

Mmm, well, what we're getting from the establishment is one attempt after another to take things off the boil.

Those on above average income will try to lose as little as possible in trying to placate opinion.
Put the other way round, those above average income will do everything to hold onto their privilege.
And everyone, and I do mean everyone, whether on benefit or lousy pay should fight. fight and fight again for their fair, ie equal share.
Cameron's numbers are interesting. He bangs on about 26,000. But that's the median income. 65-70 percent are below the mean, the common sense average, of about 35,000. That's the fair, average, equal income to fight for

andy

been meaning to ask you...do you keep a sort of scrapbook of my 'best bits'? What's your favourite?

I liked the bit when you said you had three kids ... but now its four. Congrads.

Here are two verses of a poem I wrote!

You can never get my good health
By stealing my money elf
I don't want your socialist disease
I want to protect my money please
Before you get my worms
For I have plenty of germs
Like blood in a healthy body flows
My germs are also in tows
If you try to take my money one or thrice
I'll give you such a fright
Viva Inequality
Viva it all through my life.

Keep your thieving hands to yourself Magpie View. Inequality is a force for good. Nothing will get done without it.

Here are two verses of a poem I wrote!

Who is fooled Goodwin’s knighthood

striped from him for all the good

of barefoot children limping home

with second rate genes, poor proteome

No public school no one percent

no Oxford leg up just discontent

If only we had a voice to tell

of our poor lives and the ground swell

of revolution and streets awash
with rioters with not the dosh

to help Ms Penny put words on a page

at substantially less than the London living wage.

Hey spiv mugshot, the full stop!
Mr D, that's it I'm blowing you out.
Spotty, sleeping bag and pot noodle? I'm way off the mark? ahhhhhhhhhh
Big P, yes indeed you are. What a loaf, thick cut at that.

I liked the bit when you said you had three kids ... but now its four.

Oh yeah?...show me that 'bit' Divine.

3 at home, 1 grown up and living in London...and as it happens, another one from when I was a kid who I've only seen once 28 years ago.

This article expresses the opinion of most people no matter what their politics. Gestures like this aren’t important to any but journalists who like the simplicity of the story it makes.

I really liked the use of the word tithe, it expressed an idea that could take a paragraph to explain in one word.

So, in summary. Nicely written expression of an argument against a straw man, that anyone was actualy fooled by Goodwin being striped of his 3 letters.

Sorry if this turns out to be a repeat, but the first try just disappeared:

So David Higgins is down to 613,000.
If we deprive him of another 575,000 (before tax) he'll be at about right.

Then it's just a question of whether he has the right background (lineage) and the right politics.

I like the McMac poem!

Penny is so right about the Queen. I've just had to cut out from Andrew Marr's sycophancy. She raised a day-off-from-school crowd of Union Jack wavers in Llandudno. This was remarkable for Marr. That the local AM is a Tory he wasn't aware of?

Marr's argument seems to be that she's been Queen thru all those diverse PMs, so she's....valuable.

Her likes and dislikes are presented as profound but seem to reflect simple aristo prejudices

The truth is that she walks a very thick glass floor indeed. She has never done a day's real work in her life. Nor has anyone in her lineage. Nor have any of her descendents any intention of doing any productive or useful work, ever.

Sadly, easy lies the head that shouldn't.

Get proper jobs, her and her Marr both.

When we tell that to Royals as a matter of course we may be getting somewhere.

My dad told the old Queen Mary to report to the Council Office at 7.30 on Monday morning, ready for work, when he caught her scouting out a London park, one weekend, just after WW2. The park was old estate land that had been taken into public ownership. The aristo ex-owners wanted it back, without of course paying their taxes. (They still do). Queen Mary (Teck) and her crummy women aristo skivvies were regarded as a well camouflaged recky unit. We got advanced warning that they were coming. The look on her face is a treat.

She didn't turn up for a job. Nor did any of her maids.

Surrounding Royals with how we feel about them instead of a bunch of kids thinking they're putting one over on the Welsh would begin to loosen those crowns from those heads

@ Mitch

There's not a single Tory mantra in what I wrote. I noted Labour's position is to borrow to stimulate the economy, compared to the government's position. I don't see how that's contentious or pro-Tory.

Don't be so devoted to the badly flawed journalism of Laurie Penny. Pointing out her mistakes doesn't make someone your enemy, any more than your desire for rapid de-risking makes you a Tory. Penny is opinionated well beyond the limits of her understanding, causing her to see the world in childishly black-and-white terms. "Don't be fooled" she writes. But she's the fool for not understanding what risk is, or how to reduce it. She is wrong to associate anger over the behaviour of bankers (no argument from me about that) with a lazy assumption that the Tories do not favour de-risking the banking system (wrong and totally unjustified).

Maybe the government should push harder, but their attitude to intervention is fairly consistent. Meanwhile, banks have been keen to get on with it - which looks exactly like increasing their margins. De-risking bank lending has a similar impact to government austerity. So you're entitled to your opinion when you say banks should de-risk sooner. But Laurie Penny would be first to scream with fury at the consequences for ordinary people.

Mr D, you kid only yourself. As for joining your pox together, don't bother. Go and see the specialist for your little man. I haven't seen you rage for over four posts now. How is bedsit land with the salt rising and cracking the brickwork? I hear that recently you've had quite a bit of mopping up to do, oh well. You never did tell me who fathered your kids, maybe next time. Oh and before I forget your secrets safe with me. I will not under any circumstances tell people that you and your imaginary friend spud are the same person, promise. Mr D, you've been trying to answer your own posts, I think it's time to get some help. Leave the girl alone, she does a good job, she reminds me of Annie Besant. I think that she should be in the next honours list don't you. Oh and you still have the loaf........toodle pip......wee willy winkie. xxx

Does spud have his own blog?

That's the first thing we need to do .. get rid of those crowns. Never mind the 'Honours' system. So what if the queen liz thinks you've done a great service to the nation and here's an ABC for you. So what? OBE .. so what. MBE .. so what .. Sir Googlemedick .. so what.

How many cleaners get honours? Not one cleaner has a knighthood. Why is that? Without the cleaners everything would collapse. The streets would be a mess, all the toilets would be blocked up with poo, the sewerage system wouldn't work. Service to the nation .. Rolf Harris comes over draws a few lines on a piece of paper sings some silly songs and before you know it he's the Great Sir Rolf Harris.

The priorities are all wrong. Service to the nation should mean usefulness. The Royal Family are a disservice to the nation because they encourage the notion that to be great you need to be a Lord or an OBE or a member of the Royal Family. And you can't be 'great' by having a 'lowly' job such as a cleaner. No wonder why there are divisions in society.