Wankers.

£850Billion. That is what we have given to banks so far. So far. That we know about.

Banks are a mechanism that are supposed to facilitate the movement of money around the economy. They serve a purpose.

RBS became vulnerable after a decade of expansion plans, that confused their ambitions with their capabilities, based on exploitation of an artificially inflated credit market, high risk ventures, and outright gambling with their shareholders money. They were warned by people inside the bank, and the FSA were warned.

The failure of one of the biggest banks was so frightening, that the biggest aid package ever given, or imagined. More money than our entire annual public expenditure, for EVERYTHING=for defence, for health, education, pensions, transport, everything-was handed over, with few conditions. Hundreds of billions more than our ENTIRE annual national expenditure. Thats how much we have given to them so far. That we know about. Without condition.

THeir fuck up has contributed to a recession which has resulted massive unemployment, home reposessions, hundreds thousands of people coming into a situation where they are relying on public services to cushion them. People who had also been sucked into a credit boom, perpetuated by banks like RBS, a credit boom which gave them more to lose.

And we have given banks £850 billion pounds of taxpayers money. And now the public purse that has just lost this unimaginable sum of money, has to find a way to maintain public spending without it.

I dare you to ring your local authority and ask how much they have been asked to cut back this year. How much has been clawed out of education, or childrens services, of all the departments we rely on.

I used to work for the DWP, when I worked at Todmorden Jobcentre, we were not allowed to open without at least 11 members of staff. Now, they open routinely with 5-6. A service for the unemployed, will obviously contract economic boom. Now that boom has bust, the service will continue to contract, to pay for the bail out, to the people that caused this bust. THe first stop for people who have already been shafted by being made unemployed, in massive debt, facing losing their homes- is a service which is woefully ill prepared for them, and will face further cuts. Do we think benefit rates will increase proportionately with the increased cost of fuel, or food, that has resulted from this recession, while we claw back this £850billion?

Last week, I was left without the ability to pay for food, due to bank charges on an unauthorised overdraft of less than £1. When the Supreme Court ruled these charges lawful. Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester, warned there was no such thing as a free lunch. Well it appears that RBS appear to think that our entire economy is a free fucking lunch.

If a bank is a mechanism which facilitates the movement of money around the economy, the banks which dominate our high street, have discovered a way of rigging the mechanism, so that money flows one way. Into their coffers, protecting their bond/deposit base- from everyone, and everywhere. And we, the public, are paying for their fuck ups, from everywhere. We pay for it with our jobs, our homes, our pockets, our public services. While they pay bonuses of £1.5 billion pounds to themselves.

That doesn’t sound much like a free market economy to me. Especially given that the basic rule of free market economics is supply and demand, and if we had stuck to the free market economics they base their bonus argument on, they would have been allowed to fail. And the market would have decided how to deal with it.

In January the VAT cut, which was imposed as a way of making the public a bit more comfortable, in the face of this daylight robbery, comes to an end, because by now the economy was going to be bouncing back. THis recession is nowhere near over. In the next few years, we have to claw this back, and its coming from the services you need. And out of your pocket. The effects of this recession are only beginning to be felt. And the only people who this recession will be over for, are RBS, and the like.

And there is fuck all anyone can do about it. A vote for a party whose entire ideaology is underpinned by the belief in ‘free trade’, and opposition to the ‘nanny'(read welfare) state, who were brought up in the same social circles as banking chiefs, or a vote for the spineless morons who deregulated our credit markets to the point where this could happen?

So this is a rant. A futile, empty, pointless rant. Cos the sheer obscenity of it all is astounding.

WANKERS.