Tuesday 10 February 2009

Bankers come to Parliament

Big scrum of photographers (as I believe it is obligatory to describe them) outside Portcullis House this morning, awaiting the arrival of the banking bosses for their appearance before the Treasury Select Committee. It's days like these when I wish I was still a member; I came off the committee just as it started getting interesting. Anyway, off to a completely different meeting now...

13 comments:

Old Holborn said...

Is anyone setting up gallows?

Guthrum said...

I am watching this online, I thought the Star Chamber was abolished by Pym in 1641- looking forward to the PM and Chancellor appearing befor the Chamber and offering their apologies

Bristol Dave said...

What has it come to when a private business has to publicly apologise to Politicians?

Still no mention of Brown's useless financial regulatory framework and the dire mismanagement of interest rates for the last decade which allowed the bankers to do all this in the first place, I notice. They should have tried to slip that one in if they could.

Oh and please will somebody call the FSA to account on this one?! Please?? I thought supposed to be there for the consumers but in everything so far (overdraft charges, this current credit crunch) they seem to side with the banks.

Kerry said...

So you think everything should be so tightly controlled by central government that there is no possibility of people 'doing all this in the first place?'

The select committee has the FSA, the BoE, the Chancellor, the MPC, etc, before it regularly.

Dave H said...

OH Historically they would have used a table too -for the drawing and quartering.

To preserve her modesty Kerry would have been burnt, which I think most would agree is a pretty mixed courtesy. Perhaps having introduced a special exemption for women they were desperate to avoid appearing patronising.

(The capital punishment imagery is nothing personal, K.M.)

Kerry said...

No, I'd have been plunged into the Thames on a ducking stool, to see if I really am a witch.

Old Holborn said...

Is there doubt Kerry?

Dave H said...

The ducking stool was for nagging wives. They used to 'swim' witches. I would think in the Thames all three would be deadly.

Pause: should I have written burned rather than burnt? Is it like hung and hanged? Who cares?

LDN said...

'What has it come to when a private business has to publicly apologise to Politicians?'

When said private business comes cap in hand to the Government for public funds to bail out their failing enterprises

Kerry said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool

Dave H said...

Don’t you know men never admit they’re wrong, ever?

http://dictionary.die.net/ducking%20stool (no mention of witches)

http://www.foxearth.org.uk/SwimmingOfWitches.html (treatment of witches)

I once slept in a converted courthouse dating back to the 17th cen. My host (the bitch) pointed out that my small, snug room was once the condemned cell, where the prisoners were garrotted before gibbetting down the road (there is a pub there now called the Caxton Gibbet). That experience probably explains a lot.

This thread has gone delightfully O/T, but that’s Trolls for you.

Enough Kerry-bothering for today.

Bristol Dave said...

NL:
When said private business comes cap in hand to the Government for public funds to bail out their failing enterprises

Fair point. But why are they apologising to politicians? They should be apologising to the general public. Selected politicians (cough BROWN cough DARLING) are partly responsible for this mess anyway - especially if you (as I do) doubt the independence of the MPC, and especially BoE, etc.

This has "Government PR Excersise" (Mandleson?) written all over it. It's clearly a deliberate attempt to try and hide how badly the government have managed the financial situation, by diverting attention to the banks and trying to place the blame firmly with them.

Kerry:
So you think everything should be so tightly controlled by central government that there is no possibility of people 'doing all this in the first place?'

Not by central government, no. They've made enough of a mess of things. But I do think the FSA should have grown a backbone and remembered who they should really be acting on behalf of (consumers, not the banks) a long time ago - then maybe I'd trust them to regulate the banks a bit more. Had they been doing this with any degree of success things might not be so bad now.

Kerry said...

Someone once photocopied a page from a book about a very old pub called 'The Honest Lawyer', which used to have a gallows outside where highwaymen were hanged. The pub sign was a picture of someone holding his decapitated head under his arm.

They dropped this delightful missive through my letterbox the day after a whole bunch of council election leaflets had gone out, telling people I was a lawyer. It was the day Jill Dando was shot.

Even more O/T but thought I would share that with you.