We are all highly indignant of course over the way in which our banking royalty treat the English tax system and spend their time shovelling fistfuls of money into their own pockets instead.
So much so, that a whole bunch of us have taken to sitting in at various local bank branches, waving our placards and having a nice chat.
Sadly, viewing the situation from the umpteenth floor of Cynic Towers, I have to report that none of this is going to make the slightest difference.
Not least because said royalty do not live there. Don’t even visit. And the bank employees who do, have no more control over the situation than you or me.
In fact, we might just as well show our disapproval of Middle-East dictators by staging a sit-in at the the local holiday agency that offers trips to Egypt.
A club called the SE
The plain and simple – and seemingly unavoidable – fact is that the blokes with the money have exclusive membership of a plush gambling casino called The Stock Exchange. And from that place control entirely the prosperity or otherwise of us and our England.
This money – masses of it – comes from a variety of sources. The spare millions of the wealthy and the accumulations of pension funds and insurance companies for example.
Ignore behind the scenes
The sole function, the sole raison d’etre of these gamblers is to place this money around the world in places that return the highest possible profit.
Not for them to worry that the highly profitable gold mine employs slave labour, or that the booming clothes factory uses five year old children chained to their work bench in case they want to go outside and play instead.
Such affairs are the business of governments and charities. Not for them to worry either whether or not British manufacturers are starved of investment, that they can’t buy the machines or materials needed, or to pay the wages of employees.
If they can’t offer a high enough return – a return to at least match what the spivs can rake in from elsewhere – they can’t expect the funds. Full stop.
It’ll make no difference
No amount of marching or banner waving or furious letters to the press is going to make affect the way these guys think and act. Except to give them a bit of a laugh.
Quite simply they do not give a damn. For your opinion, for my opinion, for anybody’s opinion.
We haven’t got any money. And they haven’t got any particular country.
Their allegiance belongs to their clients, whether European or Arab, Chinese or Hottentot. Not to the place they have settled in for a while. And an integral part – and to them a completely ethical part – of that allegiance involves not only maximising the money returns but avoiding the pay out of completely avoidable taxes.
‘Squeezed a little more’
That is why, when Osborne announced he had squeezed a little more out of the bankers we can be sure he got it by begging for a hand-out, not by threats.
And when he tells us it is time to stop knocking the banks it is because they told the little man to f**k off.
Or they would. To another country and another gambling joint. Taking the money with them.
The plain fact is that for all Vince Cable’s huffing and puffing, and for all the valiant speeches made by the Eton mob, they as well as we are powerless to do anything about it.
Image: HÃ¥kan Dahlstrom under CC BY 2.0
