Bankers Rule, ok?

BELOW is a picture of some typical bankers. Well, pig bankers at least, but you get the analogy. So what would you do if you got your hands on them? Throttle them? Hang them up by their toes? Lock them up in some deep dark dungeon and throw the key away. Have them flogged in a public square until they repented of their sins and converted to being decent human beings? Sentence them to 20 years' community service? They certainly deserve any one of these punishments. BUT of course in the real world most of them get off scott-free, keep their ill-gotten gains, continue with their opulent lifestyles and the trappings of wealth and hang on for better times round the corner when they can get into some other scam to cream off the wealth of the country and fleece the proverbial man-in-the-street.

BANKERS and financiers at all levels indulged in an orgy of unseemly and reckless profiteering from shady and questionable deals, not just the upper echelons. Lots and lots of them had their snouts in the trough of easy pickings, though now they have run for cover and exhibit wide-eyed innocence for those who are gullible enough to believe in them ever again.

THEIR deep-seated greed and avarice and overweening ambition to enrich themselves beyond all measure have brought the world to its economic knees, causing untold misery and hardship to millions of people all over the planet. And, make no mistake about it, unless the banking ethos were to be radically transformed and the bankers and their like were to be reined in, they would do it all over again, perhaps not in the same way, but certainly in some other equally morally questionable and financially unethical manner. Because the truth of the matter is that they just can't help themselves.

I wonder if there is anything in the fact that 'banker' and 'wanker' are such a perfect rhyme? Could they really be more wanker than banker or does it just seem that way? Or am I just being unkind to them? Perhaps they really have a heart of gold and it was all just a horrible mistake that tooks us all by surprise, including the bankers and all the other money-men. Perhaps they are really misunderstood as a species and deep down inside have a heart of gold just bursting with fellow feeling. Perhaps too they're worth all the billions of pounds we've given them to keep them afloat and in business even though they won't lend us a penny of it now to keep us in business! It's a funny old world, isn't it?

BELOW is another image of a banker, this time in recognisable human form but still up to his old tricks, as he prepares to give us the slip and run off with the takings. We never had that sort of trouble with the old bed mattress, did we? It may not have paid us interest but at least our hard-earned money was sure to be there the next day when we looked under it.