The steal

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alasdair Darling, is telling the British public what they can expect if Labour is returned to power in advance and the 'Times' has been informed that, "severe spending restraints are “non-negotiable” if he is to bring down the £178 billion budget deficit." That, of course, means, cuts in the NHS, cuts in education, cuts in all public services and who is reesponsible for the economic morass that 'Blighty' finds itself in? Did you say, "a bunch of greedy bankers"?

Still, they are suffering too, or that is what we might believe if we had stopped the clock back in February 2009 when the the 'Centre for Economics and Business' (CEBR) asserted that "even in 2012 bonuses will be only back to 48% of their 2007 peak levels", and what do we have less than a year on? Well, in today's 'Guardian' we can read that "The world's biggest investment banks are expected to pay out more than $65bn (£40bn) in salaries and bonuses in the next two weeks, reinforcing the view that it is business as usual on Wall Street and in the City barely a year since the taxpayer bailout of the banking system." That's right these "fuckers" stole from you, sabotaged your existences, robbed you blind, and now they are sharing out your money, while they send you off into the third world.

Moreover, this is happening despite Mr Darling's one-off 50% tax on bonuses of more than £25,000, and we are told that the biggest employers will pay the tax rather than cut the size of the bonus pools that have accrued throughout the year. Well, that shouldn't be a problem for them as they do, after all, have "silly" billions of pounds, which the British public sort of reluctantly gave to them. Money, which, of course, might just have prevented all of those "severe spending restraints" that Mr Darling and his cronies have lined up.