A depressing, instructive insight into who wins and who loses nowadays: the wrong people.
Twenty-odd years ago I spoke at the Institute of Directors to an audience largely composed of bankers. Mostly I gave examples of what a lousy job they were doing for customers and how dire their marketing was.
Naturally I couldn’t resist the joke – new then – about what “bankers” rhymes with. Nor did I fail to ask if any of them actually laughed all the way to the bank – and that got me a laugh.
I don’t suppose I could have predicted that neither the service nor the marketing have improved to this day. And I certainly couldn’t have predicted what great big fat laughs some of their top bozos – who might well be in jail if they were you or me* – have since enjoyed at our expense.
The programme on bankers and the LIBOR scandal was excellent. From it I learned that the only able person involved – Bob Diamond – although probably not entirely guiltless was punished for the incompetence of the regulators, politicians and usual suspects who run things so badly here.
People here had received warnings years before from the US regulators and chose to ignore it. The misgovernor of the Bank of England who was responsiblefor Diamond’s departure managed to escape being interviewed, though he clearly he turned a blind eye to what was happening and should be thrown out.
One of the most revealing moments came when Diamond was hauled up before some parliamentary committee for ritual crucifixion and fatuous point-scoring. Some smart-arse asked him if he knew the motto of the Quakers who founded Barclays Bank 260 years ago.
Of course he didn’t. So bloody what? How would that help you with the Libor rates?
There is a certain type of odious smoothie who rises to the top like scum in this country. One after another spoke about the whole disaster as though they were neither involved nor even there at the time. None got punished as I suspect you or I would be if we screwed up.
A man called Turner, who moves effortlessly from one overpaid pretend job to another, was infuriatingly smug. Those of us who have anything to do with financial services know that the Financial Services Authority over which he has presided has done nothing useful to prevent obvious abuse and everything to make it nigh on impossible to sell anything.
They have now changed its name in the absurd belief that this will change anything. Talk about rearranging the deck-chairs.
Then there was the beautifully dressed, amazingly distinguished and it turns out outstandingly incompetent ex-Chairman of Barclays Bank, Marcus Agius -straight from Central Casting for Dynasty. He laughed all the way from the bank.
The biggest slime-ball of all is the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland – still, incredibly, there – who spoke about the banking industry’s need to reform as if it were something he was not a part of; as if he had never presided throughout. I bet he’s still getting massive bonuses.
So there we go – back to worrying about next month’s money; and there they go, chauffeur-driven back to their multi-million pound, inflation-linked pensions and country houses.
These are the people running things in Britain – and running our lives into the .ground
Still, can’t complain; we don’t have Killer Putin or Mafioso Berlusconi running things. Just half the sixth form at Eton.
* Talking about the Mafia, readers often write saying things are even worse in the US. The second programme centred around a man called Corzine, a former Governor of New Jersey, home of The Sopranos. He certainly should be locked up.
You should be writing for a national newspaper Drayton. We all need some healthy independent thinking. I have almost stopped reading newspapers for anything but intelligent comment. And the more we know, the less intelligent that comment seems.