Online poker industry in trouble and strife

Playing poker or the market?

The US authorities have a thing about online gambling. They don't like it. So they've set about telling Americans that having a punt on a poker game is not only bad for the brain, it's ILLEGAL! Now they have unveiled an indictment against the owners of three of the world's biggest poker websites, throwing the young industry into turmoil.

This holier-than-thou attitude though only extends to gamblers identified as "online gamblers". It does not include those gambling down on Wall Street. In fact, they can do it with fake money. Online poker players have to use their own money or face up to debts incurred by their own actions. No bailout for these guys. No quantatative easing for poker games low on the chips.

How different it is for the Federal Reserve, which could be compared to a legalised casino. No restraints there. I'd like to see the American government get a grip. Legalise the online gambling. Tax it properly through corporate and personal taxation. Likewise, tell the banks that their gambling activities will be brought under proper scrutiny, fairly taxed and accounted for.

Two sets of gamblers, happy to gamble away their money. Just don't ask us to bail you out when the odds don't work in your favour.

Banks lose Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) judicial review

British banks, and that includes finance house, credit card issuers and other assorted moneylenders, have lost a judicial review that could have a major impact on whether more compensation has to be paid on mis-sold loan insurance. The whole practice of selling insurance like this has been a green-eyed monster as far as the banks are concerned. The day they decided to leave proper banking behind and become as spivs behind computers that was the day we were on a slippery slope.

Most of the PPI sold was never intended to be cashed in on. The wording was either so convoluted or devoid of meaning that they were virtually useless from the start. Many people were sold the product when they either did not need it, require it or want it. It was purely driven by commission greed. And for those that did require it, many found their straightened circumstances due to unemployment, illness or whatever, resulted in an inability to secure settlement to pay for their finance instalments. Those that have got into difficulty have had their loan accounts closed and sold at knock down prices to avaricious debt chasers, who care little for the niceties of contracts. And in many cases the banks cashed in on their own debt insurance! Goose and ganders don't apply here. It's just the bloody sauce of it all.

Thankfully, the judges saw through the flimsy arguments of the banks. Just like MPs saw through the erstwhile Northern Rock directors. One has to remember it was these banks that thought peddling a toxic mix of regurgitated sub-prime loans and Lehman Brothers "vehicles" was the panacea for the world. I don't think they are contrite yet. I think it is still business as usual. Or usual since proper banking ceased. Somebody is going to have to deal with them soon. I thought Vince Cable was that guy, but seems not. We'll have to wait and see.

HSBC shanghai'd in Bernie Madoff fraud

Madoff with their money!

Banking is a murky world. HSBC started off life in the city streets of both Hong Kong and Shanghai. It may be a case of "you can take the bank out of Shanghai but you can't take Shanghai out of the bank". I don't know about that. What I do know is that I read in the Daily Mail that HSBC is being sued for £5.7billion for its role in the massive fraud by Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff. HSBC is accused of creating and maintaining an international network of a dozen feeder funds based in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America that provided the money to help finance Madoff's 'Ponzi' sheme.

HSBC vigoruosly denies the accusations against it. However, what concerns me is that the vast bonuses paid out to bankers in London must have been as a result of creating feeder funds, if not these particular ones. The more that so-called investment banking is put under the microscope the more one finds a lot of things crawling about. Surely we need transparency? Or am I totally naive?

It is claimed that the bank was advised at least twice that there were irregularities. KPMG identified 25 'fraud and operational risks' in 2006 and 28 risks in 2008, according to copies of reports obtained by Bloomberg. HSBC says it 'did not know a fraud was being committed and lost $1bn of its own assets as a victim'. Well, someone isn't being straight.

The one good thing about the internet is that this sort of activity can be exposed for further scrutiny. Piercing scrutiny is the only thing that reveals the truth these days. HSBC is either a victim or it is something else. Either way, it has not been, in this case, very diligent and it begs the question whether those in charge are worth their vast largesse.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336360/HSBC-sued-5-7bn-failure-spot-Bernie-Madoff-fraud.html#ixzz1H3CxrBM2

Bob Diamond bags a diamond tipped bonus from Barclays.

The banking business is now a computerised casino for making money out of bytes. Touch the button and zeros become prime numbers with alacrity. Bob Diamond is the chief of Barclays Bank. He gets a salary of £250,000 for his day job. For his croupier activities he gets a whopping £6,500,000!

Now I'm firmly behind David Cameron's notion that the entrepreneurial community is going to get Britain out of the mire. But what did Bob Diamond do entrepreneurially last year to get his salary paid 26 times over in ONE YEAR?

Cherries picked out of Connaught's basket

Good news and maybe bad news on the jobs front with regard to the Connaught administration. Part of the business has been cherry picked by building firm Morgan Sindell. They have taken on the best contracts. Can't blame them for that. But those cherries deemed not fit for sale are in limbo. Around 1900 employees in the social housing maintenance business may be out of work. As for the sub-contractors, life is still lived on Rocky Road.

This may be a sign of things to come. Cutting public spending means cutting jobs. The Coalition is keen to see the private sector take up the new job creation. But many who work in the private sector are feeling demoralised and in fear of jobs. Companies are recruiting but not on the scale that is required. However, constant talk of cuts just makes us all draw in our horns like a snail in distress. When Margaret Thatcher was about to make cuts, the likes of Arthur Scargill made them sound like viscious knife attacks. Somehow Britain got out of the doldrums. But nobody really appreciated that it was mostly financed with easy money as opposed to hard worked for income.

New Labour pandered to the bankers who were devising schemes and plans to sell to customers eager to let their heads go to jelly. I was one who let my brain get temporarily fazed. Now we have as a nation collosal debt problems caused by computerised money being shown up to be worthless.

Robert Peston came on the BBC News last night to talk about it yet again. He mentioned Northern Rock and its woes. These he put down to loans going bad and inferred that some lending had been a might too risky. True enough. But he never mentioned that Northern Rock's cupboard was almost bare. When depositors queued up to take their money out they had no clue (most of them I would think) that the bank could never pay them all. Because their money was not in the bank. It had been used up and transmogrified into a notional set of numbers on a computer. No wonder the powers-that-be panicked. The cat was getting out of the bag and would be scratching around causing mayhem by morning.

The Coalition is right to try to stop the rot, but not by a one-sided approach. We need a proper debate on how the banking system finances business. Currently it is all based on debt with the debts paying interest. It is also a system where fees, commissions and bonuses are centre stage.

When a company goes bust the general economy can take that. But when whole industries are in turmoil it can't. I get a sense that Britain just doesn't have enough real money to go round so that everyone can survive. The cherry pickers may soon be scrapping around at the base of the tree that used to grow Britain's money supply.

Bob Diamond tipped for Barclay's top job!

So Bob Diamond (here on the left) gets to run the show at Barclays. He's been the chief bottlewasher at Barclays Capital which is an investment bank of sorts. No more merchant banks. If Marco Polo had come looking for a loan, he'd have all his sails done over in a Polo mint livery for starters. Barclays is not flavour of the month as far as the Coalition is concerned.

But HSBC is! The new Trade Minister is none other than the Rev.Stephen Green, Anglican priest (Non Stipendiary Minister, that is!) and CEO of all he surveys at the world's local bank. He will join Vince Cable as a government trade minister, presumably as a Non Stipendiary one. This means he will enter the Lords as a reverend lord sitting not that far from the right reverend prelates. It will be interesting to see who gets in first when it comes to the problems that Mammon is causing this government.

Mutt and Jeff and Gordon Brown

So Gordon Brown says he "misunderstood" what the good lady said. If that's the case, he's quick to fly off the handle over something he's not sure about. Bit like the cabinet ministers who had the rough edge of his tongue. Misunderstood, indeed!

He said this in an interview with Jeremy Paxman. Plus this - "Please believe me, I have never been soft on bankers and I am not soft on bankers now and I have been very, very clear about what the banks have got to do in the future." So clear that the banks cannot muster any backbone for self-control. Sir Philip Hampton, the boss of RBS, is so weak that he has to cave in to his ultra-greedy employees (those who get the massive bonuses). "If we don't pay our top people (appropriately), they leave very quickly," he said. So these top people have no loyalty to the bank, no loyalty to the customers and no loyalty to the country (who bailed the buggers out). All they have is a craven desire to get filthy rich by making "profits" out of illusionary money. Most of it doesn't exist. It's all in some follow-my-leader account-hopping merry-go-round. They can make nothing into something. Must make an alchemist sick!

Gordon Brown hasn't done what he should do. Instead of bawling out Mrs. Duffy, why doesn't he get those bank chiefs in and tell them that it's straight jackets not flash jackets from now on. No funny money stuff. No hedging, no betting, no ducking, no diving, no derivatives, additives, sedatives, or laxatives. Just plain honest banking.

Any chance these modern day moneychangers might be able to clean up their financial temples?

Toxic bankers need rounding up

The General Election in Britain is literally under a cloud. The volcanic ash cloud is vying for top billing on the news channels with the leaders' debates. However, such a natural disaster as a volcano popping off dangerous substances should not stop us knowing what our political parties are going to do about the financial crisis that will engulf us far more seriously than this Icelandic cloud.

Today we hear that Goldman Sachs are dishing out bonuses to people who have made a fast buck out of thin air. Over the weekend we are told that the SEC in the USA is getting tough and have charged the bank and one of its bosses with fraud for selling customers sub-prime mortgages as the American housing market collapsed. A senior vice president in the investment bank's London office, Fabrice Tourre, was named in court papers as the "architect of the scheme". More like a simply conman it seems to me, but I musn't get prejudicial, must I?

I remember seeing a British TV reporter interviewing an African-American mother of two or three children as she sat on the delapidated porch of her erstwhile house as she decried the fact that she had got in over her head with a sub-prime mortgage. She was in debt bigtime as she spoke. But when she took out the loan she was on welfare. Any loan arranger could have seen straight away she was not in any way suitable for the mortgage market. Cut to the loan arranger. He was now out of work bemoaning the fact that he had let himself put greed before conscience. Both were a sorry pair indeed.

But they are just pawns in the game played out by the likes of the real paper shufflers in the banks. Goldman Sachs probably doesn't have a dime of its own. Most of what they have is very similar to this Icelandic ash cloud. In this sub-prime fiasco they took these ridiculous mortgages and repackaged them as highly desirable "investment vehicles". The South Sea Bubble brigade were their amateur predecessors by comparison. The SEC's director of enforcement Robert Khuzami has said, 'The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple.' Precisely!

As Goldman Sachs continues to run its casino, the bonuses keep coming. Fabrice Tourre is the executive charged with fraud. The bank bosses let him go on working in London despite a lawsuit against him by the US regulators. Have these people got any integity?

What we need to know during this election is what is going to happen to these casino banks? They have no money other than what's shown in their computers. It's legalised gambling commonly passed of as hedge fund administration, leveraging and other such Humpty Dumpty phraseology. It's financial Chinese whispers played to the game of musical chairs.

The truth of the matter is that these banks are so big that no auditor on earth can give us a truthful picture of what is happening. But it is not the political parties who will hold power after the election, it is the bankers. How many more people are shuffling money around that has no origin in reality? Are the sub-prime loans still doing the rounds? There's much talk from politicians but no real answers.

Let's get the transparency that we are seeking in politics rushing through the banking system. Otherwise there will be more like Tourre drifting in on the financial ash cloud.

Banks, bonuses and botch-ups

When the Queen asked "Didn't anyone see it coming?" she may not have been looking directly at the prime minister at the time. Maybe she should have prodded him with a stick or got a corgi or two to nip him. Only now is it possible for Gordon Brown to admit that he was duped by the banks.

Brown says now, "In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation'. All the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much'. And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that. So you don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us'. You've got to talk about the whole public interest." Well, Well. You don't say!!!

It's taken him all this time to recognise that the banks don't just take people's money in and invest it by lending it to others. No, that's far too tame. Far better to have "vehicles" and mix dodgy loans up with the good and flog them off to others who know less about it. Banks are now operating in some kind of Las Vegas style. How many times have we seen that the directors of these banks hadn't a clue what was going on. Northern Rock was a prime example, or would sub-prime be a better expression.

What I find reprehensible is that the leading politicians find it so difficult to trust the public. They feel it better to prevaricate or lie. It is so sad to think that only 4% of the electorate thinks they are trustworthy. To what depths have we sunk? I suppose we can be pleased Gordon Brown has at last begun to see reason. One wonders if he should have taken his moral compass to the repairers moons ago. But at least it's flickering in the right direction. Won't make me vote Labour though. Somehow it's ingrained in me that there's something strangely foreign about the Labour Party. Yes, we've got New Labour and its precious precociousness but I still remember Red Flags and raw socialism as if it were a communist-lite offering.

So we've got a ray of truthfulness creeping in. Great! But let's not forget that the electorate has to be truthful too. Can't have only one side being good, can we?

Barclay's Bob Diamond Bags Bonus from Croesus!

Bob Diamond sees no recession. Barclay's Bank sees no recession. Gordon Brown does vaguely and all the while the national deficit gets whoppingly bigger. Bob Diamond is the American in charge of running Barclay's Bank and he carries on as if the Yellow Brick Road was real. In fact, Barclay's is no longer a bank, it has become a finance product retail shop. So much so that those with decent deposits get to be phoned up by British call centre workers trying to flog the latest "financial product" and the less financially secure get to speak to an Indian call centre with the delightful tones of 1940's English with a hint those teach yourself English CD courses. "Hello, Mr.Jones, I notice you only have two pee in your account - why is this?" "Rupee?" "No, not rupee, TOOOO PEEEE!" and the satellite phone system goes into it's own orbit.

Bob won't being getting any phone calls from Bombay. No, he's got some other place for the £63 million bonus bag. And I hardly think it's in a Barclays deposit account. "Hello, Bob, this is Brenda from Billericay, how are you doing today. Great. I thought I'd give you a call to let you know about the latest financial product we have on offer. It's got great returns!" A fantasy of course.

I find it hard to fathom where Bob Diamond and Barclays found this £63 million going spare. They aren't lending much, they aren't giving out mortgages as they used to, business is grumbling, so where did Bob make it all? Has he been to the funny money casino? It seems that this new thing called "investment banking" is just some kind of fancy money laundering, all done in the cleanest possible way, no doubt. I don't get to hear that banks have cleaned up their act. They've just re-invented the vehicle they last used. After all, if an impecunious hobo can be sold a house with a loan that, when it defaults, is wrapped up with similar loans and passed off as today's best investment deal, what chance have any of us to get a sense of the real value of money?

Who is fooling who? It seems two and two don't necessarily make four in the modern banking world. Five is just as good a number, or six or seven. Gordon Brown's arithmetic is at sixes and sevens. How do we know such an affliction isn't elsewhere?

Highway Robbery in the Square Mile!!

Stephen Hester appears to be a victim in this banking bonanza of bonus baggers. He is powerless to suppress the rampant greed of bank workers who are basically gamblers. He says if he doesn't shell out billions to these legalised punters, then they will go elsewhere. Is this man in the real world or living in a parrellel universe? If it wasn't so desperately wrong I'd think he'd got himself a part in a Carry On film.

The British public were told that the banks could not be allowed to fold. So shedloads of cash were poured into the likes of RBS. Hester has the brass neck to preside over a whopping loss of £3.6bn and still whine on about these blackmailing bonus buggers. It is outrageous.

Is the British public going to stand for this highway robbery? Hester told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, "We've had a small experiment in this respect... some of our best-performing people have been leaving in their thousands. The people who left us last year, I believe, would have increased our profits by up to £1bn beyond the ones that we've got." Really?

Where have these guys gone? Which bank is utilising their skills? Some offshore operation? A Swiss bank? Thousands have left have they? 40,000, maybe? Or 3/4,000? It's all so vague. No concrete figures are ever given. Just the parrot call telling us that whopping bonuses are an absolute must in 21st century banking. And can we be sure that any of the money used in this casino is real in any sense? I get the sense it's just another version of the wonderful sub-prime money laundering excercise that got us into this mess in the first place.

A man in Scotland made 21% on his investments last year and emailed the BBC to suggest anyone could do it, simply because the markets had risen strongly. Simon Hester was pushed three times on this (not exactly firmly) and gave a limp-wristed response. The truth is nearer the fact that RBS is being held to ransom by those who have found a great way to exploit banks to fuel their insatiable greed.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

Better banking or what?

Most people want to live in a secure and settled country. Indecision and a financial threat to livelihoods is not welcomed. So it must be, in a democratic society, that those who control the purse strings don't get to toy with the people as if they are only there to slave away for the benefit of watching those purse strings tighten or slacken at whim.

Goldman Sachs have decided to limit bonuses of top executives to £1M this year. Very gracious of them. However, such magnanimity is dwarfed by the taxpayers' compulsory attendance at bailout time. It seems there is still no proper incentive by government to tackle this ongoing problem.

I would dread to think that we exist only to act as financial sponges for what would appear to be a support system for financial spongers. Can Goldman Sachs tell us exactly what good they currently are doing for society? I know that they are doing excellent work for themselves. But do they provide a worthwhile service to us all?

I don't think they do. How can it possibly be a good deal if banks can carry on as they please, only to grab us all by the nuts when they get it a bit wrong? We are the suckers, surely? It's rather like having a bad apple in the family, a type of Terry-Thomas character, who turns up on regular occasions with such lines as "I say, old boy, spot of bother on the finance front. Met this woman, you know. Terribly into...." and you feel obliged and the rest.

Well, I hope, come the general election (May 5th apparently) we voice our opinions by voting in strong representation that can confront all the "old boy" routines and put a stop to this Las Vegas culture in the banking industry.

Obama banks on better banking

European banking shares have dropped after President Obama announced far-reaching plans to curb the activities of the biggest banks in the US. Some of these activities are akin to a Las Vegas gambler. He's not proposing restrictions other than on those deemed risky. Bank chiefs have appeared goggle-eyed recently at the prospect of their casino days ending. They threaten all manner of stuff like "leaving the country".

Obama's plans could lead to a worldwide reigning in of these profligate merchants who use the citizen consumer as fodder for their fun. Proper banking is to be welcomed. No modern society can exist without banks and it would be stupid to suggest otherwise. However, what we have here is not an issue about banking as such, but about a certain industry's right to have it all their own way every day of the year.

If a bank goes pear-shaped, then the bosses expect to be bailed out. If they make huge profits then they whine if questions are asked. I'm all in favour of the labourer being worthy of his hire, but I draw a line in the sand when it comes to scam artists considering they are worthy also.

But the biggest question of all is who calls the shots in a democratic society. Is it the elected representatives or a selected cabal of bankers? It's getting very close to High Noon!

JP Morgan Chase - Thin Air Specialists

Wall Street bank JP Morgan Chase has reported profits of $3.3bn (£2bn) for the last three months of 2009. Considering they got a hand-out from the American taxpayer, this seems like they are living in a land where "bust" is not in their vocabulary for themselves but it is for the poor American entrepreneur.

Banks can make money out of thin air - literally. It's called fractional reserve banking, whereby some invester places $10,000 in at the front desk only for a whizzkid to lend it out on the basis of it being $100,000. It's not exactly banking. It's more like Monopoly meets cyberspace. Only those crunching the numbers (or the angel dust) at the money shops know what's going on. The American government thinks it is dealing with businessmen when it invites the four squaddies from the banks to testify. They are nothing of the sort. It's about time we reigned these characters in.

The real question for us all is who exactly is in charge. Is it those guys on Wall Street or is it the President of the United States and Congress? Because if it's "those guys" we've been trussed up like a chicken, allowing them to feed off our bones!

Bugger the bankers!

In a time of deep recession, brought about in part by the headlong scramble by some bankers to make money out of loans that were past their subprime value, it would be nice to think that a kind of patriotic move might not go amiss. The bonus greed currently sweeping the City of London is very unsavoury to say the least. Angela Knight, she of the British Bankers' Association, whines on amount bankers leaving the country if they don't get more money. Even Croesus would have thought better! Well, if they are so hellbent on going, let them go. As George V might have said on his deathbed if confronted by these blackmailing types "Bugger the bankers!". Quite so.

The Borrowers

As human beans, we are being slowly put into the bean counter to maximise our worth to a profligate government that sees borrowing as a means to an end. Paying back is someone else's business. Gordon Brown may as well be a tiny person living under my floor boards. He appears to have tiny minds living under loads of floor boards, all over the country, popping out to borrow stuff from us human beans.

We now live in a country where most of the top corporations are crazed in their devotion to "driving down costs" and "reducing prices". We have banks that are so big that they have the government to ranson. They have become like an emboldened Oliver Twist, completely assured that they will get some more. Mr. Bumble the Beadle has buzzed off! Angela Knight, ex-Tory minister and persuasive moral blackmailer of the British Banking Association - she continously stresses that if banks don't get what they want, they will buzz off to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands or somewhere - is unperturbed by criticism. And we have a workforce wondering if their jobs are safe.

So on the one hand we have a situation where the tax take is diminishing and on the other where the borrowing is being stratispherically increased. Is there an accountant out there who knows how to join the dots up?

Rabbi removed for daring to speak up!

A rabbi is a religious leader in the Jewish faith community. It was often a title given to Jesus by anxious followers seeking help and succour. "Rabbi, what is the meaning of this?" could well be the cry that went up.

The oldest synagogue in London, the Bevis Marks, has just removed its rabbi for daring to allow a march to start from outside the synagogue. The march was a demonstration against the role of banks in the financial crisis. Apparently it upset "important figures" with "links to the financial industry". Rabbi Nathan Asmoucha is considered a good rabbi with abilities to create a good community spirit. Just the sort we need.

Instead, several characters with a desire to keep the bonus binge going and a general cowboy character to banking and financial dealings alive, rounded on the rabbi and have now succeeded in having him removed. Just for daring to speak up about the financial crisis and let others march to have their say.

The scoundrels here are those who removed the rabbi. They have left a bewildred congregation, which is bad enough, but it also gives the impression that usury and money lending of a Dickensian type are prevalent.

These men have done a disservice to democracy and to the ministry of an apparently upstanding rabbi.

John Prescott and the Beanstalk!

Pantomime Land? Well John Prescott's well and truly strutting the stage with his one-man fantasy that Gordon Brown is a Giant! Prescott has said the prime minister is a "global giant" who can win the next election. He said "everybody" outside the UK believed Gordon Brown had "turned this global economy round" and dismissed his opposition rivals as "pygmies".

Everybody? That's including the camp known as "the jungle" outside Calais, I suppose. They know a "global giant" when they see one. It's all a load of twaddle. To think that this is the stuff of high level politics.

Come to think of it, if Brown has done so well in turning this global economy round, he did it without the help of tax evading bankers. The Panorama programme tonight shows just what a bind he really is in. Caught in the headlights of a runaway bank juggernaut with the headlights searing into his brain.

If he's such a giant, he must have done his stopping around with velvet slippers on his feet.

Mortgage fraud or bad banking?

The Chelsea Building Society is in the red. In fact it has lost £41m as a result of mortgage frauds involving some of its buy-to-let loans. Well, they say it is mortgage fraud. These frauds appear to have involved professionals colluding to inflate the value of buy-to-let properties. Now does that come as a surprise? Not to me it doesn't and it shouldn't to anyone else.

Ray Boulger seems to have hit on something. He is from mortgage brokers John Charcol and he says that the Chelsea had not in fact been a big player in buy-to-lending lending. "It wasn't particularly big in that market, the niche area it was most well known for was sub-prime lending." Sub-prime, did he say? So it wasn't mortgage fraud? It was reckless banking practice that may well be the culprit? Who knows. The truth is convenviently muddied when it comes to delving into the accounts of the money shops. The Chelsea saw a fair amount of their (ehem, savers) money get frozen solid in Iceland.

It is relatively easy to blame "third parties". Yes, some brokers and valuers may get involved in some fraudulent activity. But you don't need a sub-prime lending frenzy for that. It was always the case that property prices get overvalued when money is flowing fast. My father was decidedly unimpressed when a neighbour once boasted how much his house was worth. "His house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it!" he grunted, as if to suggest worth and buyer were not connected in his case.

When the financial chickens come home to roost they will find the bonus-bulging cockerels very distinterested. But dare to suggest that the cockerels have their combs out of place and you will be blamed with any old excuse.

Brussels sprouts up to threaten to close banks down!

So the British government isn't really in charge. I knew that and most voters knew it last month. The eurocrats are in charge. Gordon Brown is the pudding stirrer but it is these wonders from the Wallonian wilderness who get to choose the ingredients. Sometimes it's all nice stuff, very tasty and tempting but likely to lead to overbloating. Sometimes, it's just a stick with no carrots!

They've allowed us to rescue the banks. Well, a lifeline more. If it isn't sorted in five years the lifeline gets cut. Philip Lowe, director general of the Commission's competition department, said that his officials were now looking at the long-term viability of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group and their ability to be weaned off state aid within five years. If they are unable to survive on their own, they will be closed down, as with other industrial sectors such as shipbuilding. "We will do that with the banking sector. We would impose a winding down if the viability of the bank isn't assured," said Mr Lowe.

So there you have it. De facto and de *****! Perhaps if Mr.Lowe is so keen to wind them down if they don't perform, he could start with the bonuses, which are still being squeezed out of the coffers like a wet blanket in the hands of a blancheseuse.