Pop! goes the weasel

# 50

   To begin with, the answer was ‘yes’. Danny Boyle’s Opening Ceremony for London 2012 answered the Arcimboldo Question without difficulty. (Confused? See last week’s blog[1]). He had promised to show us ‘Isles of Wonder’ and we were not left wondering Why. Some of the theatricals were incomprehensible, most were memorable. Many were both. I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t succumb last Friday evening to the thumping pace, the drama, the passion, the seamless orchestration, the razzle-dazzle, the humour and the humanity of it all. And I don’t normally like fireworks.

   There has to be an opening ceremony to start the games, to gather everyone together and to welcome all those teams of athletes from everywhere in the world. Parading them in their thousands behind their national flags is necessary and traditional but it was the one part of the ceremony that really dragged. You needed only the most approximate knowledge of the alphabet to imagine the tedium yet to unwind as the flag of, say, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, swayed into view. Two hundred and five countries in total, strolling along behind their flags, this was always going to take a while, unless – being athletes - someone could have persuaded them to run. But then, having hordes of people running behind their national flags would be reminiscent of Mussolini… You can’t be too careful.

   From the moment they announced the entry of Kiribati (100,800 people, 810km². 3 athletes) – or was it Kyrgyzstan? (5.5 million people, 200,000km² with 14 athletes – and still only one vowel between them) - I realised that I did not know where (on earth) many of these countries were. Defeated by the new political geography, I tried to remember whether it had been Gore Vidal or Jon Stewart who suggested that George W. Bush should not be permitted to invade any country he couldn’t locate on the map, alone and unaided.

   Before all that, before the parade, indeed before darkness fell and The Show began, we had sat watching a rural idyll, sensing it was doomed. Sheep grazed, geese waddled, yokels played cricket or tangled ribbons around maypoles. Others followed the plough or harvested wheat from fields portentously stippled with poppies. On the dot of 20.12, over came the Red Arrows trailing coloured smoke and the light faded fast. Soon, this green and pleasant fantasy would be swept into the collective unconscious by the frantic drumming that heralded the onset of the Industrial Revolution. In seconds, the landscape was ripped apart and transformed. So too were the people, becoming the dispossessed, push-me-pull-you, appendages to the clamour of unseen machines. Enormous chimneys sprang from dark pits, already smoking. A new class of wide-eyed industrialists, set apart by stovepipe hats, gazed in awe upon scenes of Pandemonium[2]. From among their ranks stepped Isambard Kingdom Brunel, climbing to a vantage point to declaim Caliban’s lines from ‘The Tempest’:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again[3] ……..

Was it then, and at his direction, that a river of molten steel flowed across the arena? In one continuous movement, the metal became forged into huge rings which rose above the toiling blacksmiths and hung for a moment like haloes. Slowly they joined together in the darkness and became the five Olympic rings, showering their beneficence of illumination and golden sparks upon the people below.

…..and then, in dreaming,

The clouds, methought, would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me: that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.[4]

   Other dreams took hold, some slight, some substantial. Judgements were left for us to make. An NHS of dancing nurses brought in three hundred hospital beds complete with bouncing babies. Somewhere the Empire Windrush[5] docked and beyond that Yellow Submarines accompanied a parade of Sgt Peppers… J.K. Rowling read the opening lines of ‘Peter Pan’[6] and a host of puppet baddies from bedtime stories loomed above the sleeping children. But rescue came from a counter-attack led by Suffragettes – or were they the militant wing of the Mary Poppinses? No time to ponder, just send for Mister Bond and HM the Queen, then cue Mister Bean and Rattle his Chariots of Fire, and Dizzee Rascal singing Bonkers;

I wake up just to go back to sleep

I act real shallow but I’m in too deep[7]

Yes, that’s Dizzee alright. Dizzee and …and who? Try Tim Berners-Lee? And by then you thought, sure! Why ever not? He invented the World Wide Web, don’t ya know? That at least should set the Yanks a-twitter. And through it all “a thousand twangling instruments” hummed about our ears. For, as Ai Weiwei was to write in the following morning’s Guardian; “A nation that has no music and no fairy tales is a tragedy.”[8]

   Poignant anthems sung by children presented the four countries of the United Kingdom and when they were finished there wasn’t a dry eye on our sofa. Children from the north of Ireland sang Danny Boy on the rocks of the Giant’s Causeway. Eight to 21-year olds from the Broomhouse estate sang Flower of Scotland over the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. Welsh youngsters sang Cwm Rhondda into the tide and an English lad went live and solo with Jerusalem. It’s strange what moves us. But if you got the tears it means you felt something of the history however absurd, illogical or cruel events may have been. When all’s said and done, Danny Boy is a lament for a lost lover, or possibly a son, gone away in the great Irish Diaspora of the nineteenth century. Flower of Scotland, written in 1967, commemorates the dead from Robert the Bruce’s victory over the English at Bannockburn. In 1314. That was 698 years ago for God's sake, but up there the hurt still lingers… Cwm Rhondda (known in English as Bread of Heaven) is essentially a Christian hymn dating from 1905. It begins: “Guide me, O thou great Redeemer…”). Jerusalem remains a peculiarly English anthem. Words from William Blake’s poem of 1804 are sung to a tune composed by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The first two verses pose four questions concerning apocryphal events from the “missing years” in the life of Jesus. “And did those feet?...And was the Holy Lamb?...And did the Countenance? And was Jerusalem builded here?...” The final two verses commit the poet to a major urban building programme while inappropriately armed to the teeth with Old Testament weaponry. That has to be at least as English as a five-day Test Match enjoyed with eight pints of warm beer.

   Religion and History, one being the cauldron the other the fuel (you decide which is which), have furnished our national songs. The rest of the music came from the soundtrack to our modern lives. As you would expect the lyrics ranged from the stirring and poetic to the banal and ridiculous. We heard from classics such as ‘Time’ (Pink Floyd), ‘London Calling’ (The Clash) and ‘Heroes’ (David Bowie). Then ‘Tiger Feet’ by someone and ‘My Boy Lollipop’ by someone else. Other tunes fell in the middle. The Arctic Monkeys played a very presentable cover of the Beatles’ Come Together to accompany the gentle counter-circuits pedalled by winged bicycles. These were devised to imitate the release of doves of peace; the use of real doves having been discouraged since an accidental mass incineration involving the Olympic flame occurred at Seoul in 1988.

   And in the end? “And in the end,” according to Lennon & McCartney, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Can’t argue with that and everyone agrees that the opening ceremony was a triumph; albeit a very British triumph. We have to be careful. Historically, some of our greatest ‘triumphs’ were actually pretty much disasters[9]. Right now we’re told we need to project a national image of copper-bottomed reliability. This to safeguard the Treasury’s Triple ‘A’ rating for UK Government Bonds with Standard & Poor’s. Our creditors are allowed to know we’re only a little bit mad – in the nicest possible way. They’re likely to be happy as long as we stay safely, eccentrically and unthreateningly ‘bonkers’. They demand re-assurance that we’re rarely unpredictable and certainly not psychotic. Someone should tell them the Olympic Park at Stratford remains a good few stops short of Barking. Myself, on Friday evening I waited in vain to hear that traditional ‘olde’ London nursery rhyme:

Up and down the City Road

In and out The Eagle

That’s the way the money goes

Pop! Goes the weasel[10]

On balance it was surely a wise move by Danny Boyle not to use anything suggestive of our being but a whisker away from bankruptcy.

   When the smoke has cleared, the medals have all been handed-out and the flag-wavers all gone home; what will remain? Will we be left with our empty venues and a sense of anti-climax? Dare I say deflation? Therein lies the source of the diminishing returns encountered by governments which rely too heavily and for too long on spectacular entertainments as a means of diverting the public’s attention. History provided some useful pegs on which Danny Boyle could hang his show but history is not a tap, it can’t be turned off when we’ve had enough. It just keeps on coming – or going, depending on which way you happen to be looking. And it also offers lessons ‘though we rarely choose to learn them.

  

   Was it really only two millennia ago that the Roman satirist Juvenal[11] lamented the fact that his fellow citizens had given up on political engagement and sold their support to the Caesars in return for sinecure jobs, free grain and spectacular entertainments? Sound familiar? My, how time flies! “Panem et circenses” (Bread and circuses) was how he described the priorities of citizens who spent their days enjoying gladiator games, public executions and chariot races. But then, as Jérôme Carcopino[12] was to observe, “A people that yawns is ripe for revolt.” And,

Every night when I get home

The Monkey’s on the table

Take a stick and knock it off

Pop! Goes the weasel.

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[1] ‘That old Arcimboldo question’ #49

[2] Someone explained that ‘Pandemonium’ was the name Milton gave to the capital of hell in ‘Paradise Lost’.

[3] William Shakespeare, ‘The Tempest’ Act III, Scene II

[4] Ibid.

[5] The MV Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 22^nd. June 1948 carrying 493 passengers from Jamaica wishing to start a new life in the UK.

[6] J.M. Barrie gave the copyright on ‘Peter Pan’ to the children’s hospital at

Great Ormond Street

.

[7] I think it was his “hit single” ‘Bonkers’ and if not, well it jolly well should have been.

[8] The Guardian, Saturday 28^th July 2012.

[9] I’m thinking Iraq, Tony Blair, de-regulation, Thatcherism, Suez, de Havilland Comet, Dunkirk, Appeasement, Passchendaele, The Somme, Titanic…

[10] Interpretations vary but I like the one which suggests that we might take our best coat (Weasel & stoat = coat in Cockney rhyming slang) to the pawnbroker (ie ‘Pop’ it) in exchange for some cash to piss away down the pub (The Eagle).

[11] Decimus Junius Juvenalis, late 1^st and early 2^nd Centuries, AD.

[12] Jérôme Carcopino 1881-1970, French historian. Author of ‘Daily life in Ancient Rome’.

That old Arcimboldo Question

# 49

   This week, another trip to Dulwich Picture Gallery raises the old Arcimboldo Question[i]. A thorn in the deliberations of art historians for several centuries, contemporary critics still ignore it at their peril. Arcimboldo’s conundrum deserves revival at this seminal mo.…Hang on, the more assertive among you cry, the what question?

   Okay, sorry, it’s all bluff – there is no ‘Arcimboldo Question’, or rather there wasn’t until about five minutes ago when I invented it. I wanted something that sounded like an issue we would have affected to understand back in our sixth form days and which the intervening years have let slip from sight.  It needed a history of never quite being resolved (shades of Gladstone and ‘The Eastern Question’) combined with hints of a decent intellectual pedigree (an Italian-sounding name beats 'Reggie Plank' every time). Something that, in the nineteenth century, might have caused riots in the Latin Quarter (try ‘Salon des Refusés’[ii]). More recently, it could have underlain some totally esoteric dilemma – perhaps one hand- knitted by Tam Dalyell (try ‘The West Lothian Question’[iii]). Ideally, it would lead ultimately to a tantalizing paradox that might have been cited in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe[iv].

   Turns out (unless you’re Douglas Adams) it’s surprisingly difficult to manufacture a phoney theory and imply it has a convincing back-story, steeped in controversy. Douglas often hit the nail. He observed, for example, that civilizations tend “to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.”[v] By the last quarter of the twentieth century the central question confronting our technologically advanced societies was no longer ‘How can we eat?’ nor even ‘Why do we eat?’ but had become – in Douglas’ words - ‘Where shall we have lunch?’

   Talking of which, where was I? Oh yes, back somewhere four hundred years ago with Giuseppe Arcimboldo. As a Mannerist painter working in the late sixteenth century, what might his question have been, had history recorded that he asked one? He is mainly remembered now for his paintings of the Four Seasons in which each season is depicted separately in a portrait of a human head composed from seasonal vegetables, plants, fruit, sea creatures and tree roots. From a distance the paintings look normal. It’s only closer that they are revealed as still life paintings of fruit & veg arranged to represent heads. He chose his plants with care according to what they signify. Most obviously, in ‘Spring’ the nose is composed of flowers whereas ‘Winter’ uses tree roots to represent the annual retreat of life into the soil for survival and replenishment.

   The question that I believe arises from Arcimboldo’s work is not ‘How did he do that?’ but ‘Why?’ The ‘How’ is answered visually. It is plain that Arcimboldo worked in two stages. First, he assembled his chosen items into the form of a head, then he painted these from life. The portrait in oils is thus a depiction of previously arranged pieces of fruit and flowers and bark and roots etc. A more modern sensibility might have persuaded him to make several paintings of each assemblage, recording how the passage of time caused the fruit to ripen then decay and the flowers to wilt. Each face would be seen to age as the fruit and flowers decayed.

   We can only speculate as to why Arcimboldo decided to make portraits the way he did. Clearly, his inspiration came from an appreciation of nature. He also shared the general Renaissance fascination with puzzles, riddles and the bizarre. Interpretations might include ‘you are what you eat’ but I like the humorous possibilities that arise from his portrait of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor[vi]. Contrast the florid depiction of Rudolf with the Biblical observation concerning ‘the lilies of the field’[vii]. Surely the satire in that would not have escaped a sixteenth century viewer?

      Salvador Dali called Arcimboldo ‘the father of surrealism’. Picasso, George Grosz and Rene Magritte all acknowledged his influence. In about 1928, Rene Magritte painted a picture of a smoker’s pipe and called it ‘La trahison des images’. Below the pipe he wrote, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. The painting is not a pipe; it is a representation of a pipe. The image is not the thing itself. And now along has come Philip Haas and made four monumental[viii] sculptures in painted fibreglass of the heads in Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons. These are on view in the gardens of Dulwich Picture Gallery until 16^th. September 2012. And with Haas’ intervention my newly minted ‘Arcimboldo Question’ shifts decisively from How to Why?

   Inside the gallery are four maquettes, also made by Haas, presumably as preliminaries to the larger pieces. These are close to life-size and therefore close to the size of the original paintings. The maquettes work, the monumental sculptures don’t. The reason is that the fruit and veg represented in the maquettes are convincing. They are believably close to their natural size and so too are the complete heads. In the large versions the exaggerated scale only amplifies their unreality and everything reads as fibreglass not face or fruit or flower. There is no revelation of difference when you get closer, as there is with the original paintings. In fact the incorporation of a plinth into the body supporting each head produces a farcical effect. The four heads, free standing in the garden, look like a bunch of daleks preparing for the Notting Hill carnival. Philip Haas has not so much lost the clarity of Arcimboldo’s two distinct stages as missed it entirely. By opting for both fibreglass and monumental scale, he has focused entirely on How and failed to consider Why. What’s the point of such monstrosities?

    Hopefully, something akin to the “old” Arcimboldo Question has haunted film director Danny Boyle during preparations for the opening ceremony to the London Olympics. Back in June he unveiled a maquette of the proposed stage set. You may remember this; it took the form of an idealised rural landscape, a piece of ‘Merrie England’ complete with real horses, cows, sheep and ducks and Morris dancers and cricketers. Nothing at all urban, or modern or ‘Danny Boyle’. To throw us off the scent, Boyle talked about “Isles of Wonder” and cited Caliban from Shakespeare’s Tempest as his source. Simon Jenkins, for one, was not taken in. He wrote in the Guardian on 14^th. June:

“I smell a rat…Caliban, monster offspring of a witch, makes no mention of Isles of Wonder. Instead he inhabits an island awash in conflict, drink, sex and dark arts…(which) he is trying to seize and return to primeval anarchy…by driving a stake through saintly Prospero’s head, helped by two drunken hooligans.”

Ouch!

  More recently, aerial photos of preparations underway inside the Olympic stadium show a ground plan of London bisected by the familiar meandering of the Thames[ix]. The previous ‘rural idiocy’[x] is currently absent…suggesting that the opening tableau of a ‘green and pleasant land’ will quickly succumb to an underlying milieu more suggestive of ‘dark satanic mills’ and proper urban angst. The ceremony on July 27 will reveal somebody’s vision, somebody’s representation of London, of England, of Britain; of Londoners, of the English, of the Brits. At this late stage it’s all about the process and everyone wants to know How. Hopefully, somewhere along the way, Danny Boyle has managed to stand aside and address the simple question Why to each component part of the show. Be the ceremony ever so spectacular or utterly minimal, How it has been staged will not matter. Success on the 27^th will depend on a clear answer to every Why. If we can’t see Why, no amount of technique will save the day. It really has the makings of a useful little scalpel, this “old” Arcimboldo Question.

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[i] Giuseppe Arcimboldo (aka Arcimboldi). Italian painter, 1527 – 1593.

[ii] In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manet’s ‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’.

[iii] If you don’t already know, best not to ask.

[iv] The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Douglas Adams, 1980. Pan Macmillan, London. (Book 2 (of 5) in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series).

[v] Ibid.

[vi] See Arcimboldo’s portrait ‘Vertumnus’ (1590-1) in which the Holy Roman Emperor is painted as the Roman god of the seasons.

[vii] From the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:28-30 (KJV):

”Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these…”

[viii] Each sculpture stands about 4.5 metres (15 feet) high.

[ix] See opening or closing credits to ‘EastEnders’ on BBC 1 Television.

[x] See Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter 1. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. 1848.

I like to mention the old boys from time to time.

“To encourage the others . . .”

# 48

   It is a recurring delight to discover how vaguely known are the words to our national anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’. Millions will have enjoyed the familiar sight of England footballers struggling to mouth the lyrics shortly before their exit from the Euro 2012 championships. And there is always a temptation for interviewers to ambush ardent patriots and monarchists with a request to recite the second, or any subsequent, verse. For those needing a reminder; the second verse calls for the scattering of her enemies, ‘Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, Oh save us all…’  And the third begins ‘Thy choicest gifts in store, On her be pleased to pour…blah, blah di blah.

   These words and that tune were first combined in the middle of the eighteenth century when the continued occupation of the throne by the ample, Hanoverian, buttocks of King George II seemed less than certain. The anthem, first performed at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres in September 1745, was concocted to stiffen the resolve of Londoners against the Jacobite horde then pillaging its way, unchecked, southwards from Scotland.[1]

Confound their politics

   Two hundred and sixty seven years later, in this year of her Diamond Jubilee, HM Queen Elizabeth II enjoys one ‘happy and glorious’ attribute that sets her apart from the rest of the British Establishment – she alone is actually popular amongst the people. All the other traditional components of our governing elite – politicians, financiers and industrialists , senior civil servants, military brass, press barons,  judges and lawyers, chief constables,  top doctors, professors, bishops (need I go on?)… are regarded by large swathes of the population with indifference, disdain, contempt or – should they ever have the temerity to appeal for a more willing acceptance of greater austerity - outright, possibly violent, hostility.

                                                                                                                          

   This week, the pendulous bucket of public contempt has been emptying its stinking ordure over banks and bankers alike. No more of that dim, bespectacled, boring but respectable Captain Mainwaring[2] managing your bank. The real ‘diamond’ of this jubilee year – Bob Diamond – has emerged from an impressively disreputable field to achieve top (or should that be bottom?) ranking in the opprobrium stakes. Bob’s score may even undercut the record depths plumbed so recently by the late ‘Sir’ Fred the Shred Goodwin. But Bob-the-Banker could not even bring himself to resign properly. To do that might have involved an admission of some fault or culpability on his part. Instead, he announced he was “stepping down” because external pressures on Barclays risk “damaging the franchise – I cannot let that happen.” In a typically sharp, tactical, move Diamond quit because he was being targeted for blame, not because he had presided over a major fraud.

Frustrate their knavish tricks

   On 27 June, Barclays Bank was fined £290 million by US and UK regulators for fraudulent manipulation of the LIBOR and EURIBOR interest rates. Appearing before the Treasury select committee yesterday[3] , Bob stoically adopted the strategy of the Three Wise Monkeys. He had seen no evil. He had heard no evil. He could speak no evil. By the end of his evidence you might have wondered what he’d been doing, day after day, in his £20 million job as Chief Executive. No one below Bob at Barclays seems to have known that fraudulent manipulation was wrong or even that they should inform their boss about it – except, that is, for the ‘reprehensible’ fourteen who knew it was wrong but, plainly, didn’t give a sh*t. And then there was Bob’s deputy, Jerry the Chief OO, who probably knew it was wrong but thought (thanks to Bob?) that it had been sanctioned by a deputy-governor of the Bank of England and therefore wasn’t quite so wrong as it might have been… and certainly not wrong enough for him to check with Bob that Bob knew it was wrong and knew it was going on …. Give me strength.

   This was not a victimless crime. Individually and corporately, banks and bankers, made millions from this scam and the money came from someone, somewhere[4]. In the engine-room of the big rip-off are the traders in financial instruments. They receive huge bonus pay-outs[5] if they gamble successfully using other people’s money. And there is no down-side; they don’t lose their shirts if the gamble doesn’t pay off. Oh no, the bank pays, the shareholders pay…we all pay. Yet again, the essential felony at the heart of capitalism is exposed to the view of all who pretend it either isn’t there or doesn’t matter. Even its apologists have to admit that capitalism is a system based upon greed and therefore only likely to be truly regulated by fear. The select committee talked to Bob about the need for there to be a criminal prosecution of a banker, sometime soon. It was suggested that the fear of going to prison might be the only way to deter further reckless behaviour and/or wrong-doing... Time to haul ourselves back to the middle of the eighteenth century and another of George II’s battles for survival.

On Thee our hopes we fix

   In the year 1756, a loyal servant of the Crown, Admiral John Byng, was despatched with a small, under-manned, fleet to lift the French siege of the British garrison holding the port of Mahon on the Mediterranean island of Minorca. Byng was not an enemy of his king or country but was about to be treated as if he were. Byng failed to get his fighting ships correctly aligned to exchange broadsides with the French and – mindful that another officer had previously been punished for going into battle with some of his ships out of line – Byng broke off the engagement and eventually returned his damaged fleet to Gibraltar. For this he faced a court martial, charged with “failing to do his utmost’ under the 12^th Article of War; an Article which carried a mandatory death sentence. The court found him guilty but pleaded for clemency on the grounds that Byng was really only guilty of an error of judgement. King George would have none of it and Byng was duly executed by a firing squad of six marines aboard HMS Monarch in Portsmouth harbour on 14^th. March 1757. Thereafter, officers in the Royal Navy knew that although there was always a risk of failure in battle, not to risk battle would certainly be punished – and the punishment would likely be capital.

   Allowing Bob the Banker to wriggle out from under just by “stepping down” and to abscond with an obscene gratuity, underlines the weakness of any supposed accountability in the present regulatory system. In 1757, their Lordships of the Admiralty were seeking a system of self-regulation by which they could effectively control both the motivation and integrity of remote subordinates. It could take months to exchange messages with an Admiral at sea and London needed assurance that Byng’s successors would regulate their own behaviour within prescribed limits. The regulators of international banks need to instil an equivalent level of fear if they are to restrict the greed of the market manipulators. As Bob himself told us only yesterday, in banking “The culture is how people behave when there’s no one watching.”

Oh, save us all!

   In Voltaire’s satirical novel Candide, our hero and his travelling companion Martin (a pessimist) are returning to Europe from Surinam via Portsmouth when they witness Byng’s execution. Martin explains to the astonished Candide that the British execute an Admiral of the Fleet from time to time “pour l’encouragement des autres.” By making serious examples of a good few previously arrogant and unapologetic Admirals of Banking, the authorities could set a precedent which might truly ‘encourage the others’.

Blah, blah di blah.

  

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[1] On that occasion the Jacobites only staggered as far south as Derby before turning back. Rarely heard since 1745, Verse 6 of the National Anthem still summons us to support Marshal Wade:

May he sedition hush

And like a torrent rush,

Rebellious Scots to crush.

God save the King!

[2] George Mainwaring (55), Branch Manager, Martin’s Bank, Walmington-on-Sea, circa 1940.

[3] House of Commons, Wednesday 4 July 2012 .

[4] For ‘someone, somewhere’ read ‘British, European and American taxpayers’ who either own or have bailed-out failing banks.

[5] Laughably, they call their remuneration ‘compensation’ as if it’s given to make amends for some loss or personal injury they have sustained. What does that tell you?