The £10m Gesture

I have to admit, I've never met a banker socially, but I like to think that despite their current position as collective national pariahs and convenient scapegoat for neoliberal politics, bankers are human somewhere. I watched Stephen Hester at Royal Bank of Scotland reluctantly forego millions of pounds in bonuses with a degree of grim satisfaction but while seeing Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin stripped of his knighthood is mildly amusing, seeing him occupying press columns next to luminaries who have suffered a similar fate - Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceasescu are two prominent ones - is slightly disturbing. Odious they may be, and indirectly responsible for much misery, but bankers are not in the same category as those responsible for genocide.

So put yourself in a banker's shoes - do you take the bonus, or not? I serve the public and so in my current role, bonuses are not an option. If they were, I would snap them off at the wrist. But then, I don't receive a six-figure salary offered, so maybe I would feel differently if I did. I'm tempted to suggest that enough is now enough - the triumphalism surrounding the humbling of individual bankers sickens me as much as the bankers themselves, and I feel the time has come to stop focusing on individuals and start dismantling the culture that surrounds executive pay in this country.

Fortunately, there are still others out there who very much believe in sharing the wealth, and Australian transport tycoon Ken Grenda is clearly one of those.

Mr Grenda sold his bus company to rival outfit Ventura this week for an unspecified sum. Immediately following the sale, the company announced that its employees would each receive a share of the proceeds based on length of service. According to the Australian news outlet Herald Sun, the total sum of payouts is worth £10 million, with some individual payments worth over £100,000.

So here's an idea that would put the cat among the media pigeons - rather than shelling out £2m to Stephen Hester, who clearly won't be losing sleep over it - how about dispensing it instead to the low-paid employees at RBS, where it might actually go to use stimulating our economy?

Banks Like Us

In another strangely-twisted hour of creativity, Four Thousand Words has seen fit to butcher another world-class song for political imperative. Apologies in advance to any Bruce Springsteen fans.

Banks Like Us (to the tune of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born To Run')

In 2007 we hit a wall while chasing an American dream
We siphoned profit from the sub-prime market in a suicidal scheme
In just twelve months we'd loaned out more
Than the entire whole of the country's GDP
Millions or billions, it's all the same
When you're a poor man playing a rich man's game
And now everything's up for sale
Because banks like us, baby we were bound to fail.

Escalating property prices caused overconfidence
We channelled funds from East to West in a move that now looks dense
RBS, Lloyds TSB
We'll loan till we drop, our reserves could never run out
Wooooah, even Bradford and Bingley
And other stalwarts of UK plc
Well, now we know how it feels
When the homes are repossessed and the value just isn't real.

With the end of trust in the banking system
Borrowing is just too hard
Investment arms don't know what to do
And the fund managers are scarred
A run on the counters might be just too much
We've got no liquidity
We're dying in the shadow of Northern Rock
And we've crashed the economy

One, two, three...

We've billions in mortgage securities with a government guarantee
We've got three years to pay 'em back so you can raise my salary
Give me my bonus, whack up the charges
Show me who'll stop us, what are you going to do?
You can't let us fail, we're just too big
Too important to die so you'll just have to pay eight hundred billion pounds bail
So banks like us, baby can afford to fail
Because banks like us, we were always going to fail!