The City or the EU? That is like having to choose between syphilis and gonorrhoea.
It is good to see UKIP's true colours: the party of the City, a state within this State where the writ of Parliament does not run, where muncipal democracy does not exist, and which the Queen may not enter without special permission, all in the service of (largely dodgy) foreign money.
That said, the banks were not too big to fail. They were big, but that was not the point. They were too important to fail. Like the East Coast Main Line.
They ought to have been subjected to as much control as it is again, and as it will be following its inevitable third renationalisation. The no-strings bailout was wrong. But the bailout itself wasn't.
The City of London should be a London Borough, like the City of Westminster. It could continue to have all the charity and pageantry that it liked. That is normal in normal local government.
Even the separate lieutenancy and constabulary could, should and would remain, with the latter's distinct red and white check, and with its brass badges and buttons. Why not?
As for the "Lord Who?" brigade, he was a Cabinet Minister until he became a European Commissioner. Whereas anyone in UKIP or on the Conservative Right is, ever has been, or ever will be what, exactly?
Think on.
The bailout itself was wrong.
ReplyDeleteBanks in public ownership cannot invest in small firms who badly need loans because they can't take such risks with taxpayers money.
In America the banks were swiftly re-privatised and have now paid off their public loans and are lending freely to small businesses again.
Our nationalised RBS meanwhile was recently found to be starving small firms of cash and killing them off by demanding last minute instant repayments to seize their assets.
That is a political failure by the Government, which ought to be making it lend.
DeleteYou can't have no banks, the way you can't have no trains between London and Peterborough, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh or Aberdeen.
I agree. But letting these failed enterprises collapse would have allowed new ones to take their place. Instead we created "zombie banks" like RBS which eat taxpayers money and small businesses to stay alive.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a solution. Banks can only help small firms when they're free to take risks which they can't be if they're spending taxpayers money.
There wasn't the time for any of that. We were hours away from the cash machines' no longer issuing banknotes.
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