Oh What A Beautiful Morning

Sorta nice to see the Government's sorrows coming not single spies, but in battalions. Not because I believe that anything would be any better if Call Me Dave or whichever priggish w****r the Lib Dims choose were Prime Minister, but it does 'em good to have it up 'em occasionally.

That some gormless civil servant has managed to lose 25 million people's personal data will not surprise anyone with any experience of the Civil Service. Know who the busiest person in Britain is today? Not the PM, or the Chancellor, or the Head of the Revenue - particularly not him, as he's resigned. It'll be whoever is Head of Human Resources in the Revenue and Customs. No doubt a lot of people would like to know who the berk was who caused the whole fiasco. And the Head of HR will be bending all her energies to giving this sad useless git all the protection that Dr David Kelly wasn't found worthy of. This is what public sector HR departments do - rally round their own to save them from criticism. Three times in my civil service career I got carpeted for using "inappropriate language" about my colleagues. Once it was for calling one lot "a bunch of brainless jobsworths". Now, that wasn't kind or helpful, and when ordered to apologise I did so with good grace, but does anybody really think there are no brainless jobsworths in the Civil Service? But this remains the official position, and as a result the brainless jobsworths have proliferated to the extent of driving out all intelligent life in some departments.

Who's using the Home Office brain cell today?


And then Northern Rock. Who's going to get stuck with the bill? Anyone might, with the exception of the bastards who caused the whole fandango in the first place. What caused the run on the bank as people queued down the High Street to get their money out? The belief - nay, the certain knowledge - that if things really went tits up the bank's executives would grab all the remaining money for themselves and say to the depositors and shareholders "Sorry, but there's none left for you, old chap. Didn't you read the small print?"

And now a new lot of sharks are circling, offering to get the bank and the Government out of trouble, on one condition; that they make a guaranteed profit out of it and that all the risks are borne by someone else - probably the taxpayer, as the has no right to refuse the deal. All banking works on this principle. Bankers risk everybody's money but their own. They are the polar opposite of proper entrepreneurs, and the negation of the argument that people who take big risks deserve big rewards when they come off. I don't particularly want Adam Applegarth (boss of Northern Rock who resigned far too late) sent to prison - I'd begrudge him the free porridge. I want him subjected to a one-man windfall tax depriving him of all assets except a two-bedroom terrace in Newcastle, a 20th-century Skoda, and an income capped at £10,000 a year. And the same goes for all other one-way-bet specialists who land the rest of us in the poo. I have a little song, to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain":

Oh, I'd love to see a banker on a bus,
Yes, I'd love to see a banker on a bus.
Oh I'd love to see a banker,
(sorry, can't think of a rhyming fourth line - any suggestions?)
I'd love to see a banker on a bus.