Category Archives: hang the bankers.

The BBC seems outraged that Banks make profit. Today, it seems affronted that RBS has made a half-year profit of £1.1bn. We have Peston droning on each morning, and the BBC not being able to make it through a sentence on RBS without reminding us that the “tax-payer” owns 84% of this bank. The way I see it, the license-payer owns 100% of the BBC and it doesn’t provide us £1.1bn profit every six months. In fact it costs us £3.5bn each year to keep this anti-capitalist parasite afloat. Given the choice, I’d keep RBS and sell off the BBC.

The BBC are horrified that Barclays and HSBC have turned in some reasonably decent financials. Robert Peston has returned to haunt our screens again with his unique “insights” on the subject. It’s interesting to note that those Banks which refused State bail-outs are performing well, whereas those which took the Brown danegeld are forecast to announce even more losses. Maybe the lesson we could draw from all of this is that State intervention is counter productive in controlling banking and setting priorities? Then again, the State should have no role in bankrolling the BBC.

I note that one persistent BBC meme on this is that “Big Bonus culture” is an evil that must end. That’s why the comrades at Broadcasting House are enraged that those within Barclay’s that have helped bring in these results might get….gasp….big bonuses! Oh no. The horror, the horror. Why not just come out and just say that capitalism is wrong and that the State should determine what we are paid, for that is what lies at the bottom of all this jealousy.

The agenda is pretty clear.

Our caring sharing Chancellor Alistair Darling is calling in the Banks later today to find out why they are not lending to the degree he expects.

On Today, BBC favourite John McFall was brought in to reiterate the main talking points with Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association.

The interview was set up with the story of a small businessman who owns a successful coffee-shop and who seeks to take over another one and can’t get a loan from the local bank. The punchline was that there is a lot of “red-tape” involved in the small business loan area and banks are unfairly refusing to loan.

I thought Knight did rather well in explaining the position of ANY sensible lender. Naturally some sectors, such as Catering, are very vulnerable in a recession, and I would not blame any Bank which is cautious. Let us remember that this recession was brought about by reckless lending. Yet that is exactly what the Government via Darling and McFall are insisting the Banks continue with.

Madness.