Fat Cat Bankers get £400million in bonuses as British pensioners starve By TITVS ADVXAS

Its been revealed that over ten per cent of the money used to bail out our banking system in the last year has been paid out in the form of bonuses to the 'Fat Cats' at the top of that most corrupt of trees.

It's a major embarrassment to both Chancellor Alistair Darling and City Minister Lord Myners, (picture left) who both pledged to halt these excessive and unwarranted payments.

Examples of the payouts come from banks that were given vast amounts of state money, collected from our hard earned taxes include:

• The Royal Bank of Scotland who are now 70% owned by you and I, and managing a reported slight profit, yet they give £170million in bonuses.


• The Lloyds/TSB/HBOS group that still has a red balance sheet, despite being given one of the larger payouts, £17billion (that's £17,000 million) and is now 43% state owned and will honour tens of millions of pounds in bonuses.

Now I'm a reasonably intelligent chap, having attended a grammar turned state comprehensive school (thanks Jim Callaghan!) and passing out with a handful of O' levels, including Latin of course, (to my younger readers, O' levels are what GCSEs used to be called when they meant something) but I can't understand giving a bonus to someone who has failed to deliver?

Banks that didn't need government cash are expected to grant even higher, more obscene amounts to their executives .

Barclays bankers are set for bonus and salary packages worth an average £250,000 from a total bonus pot of around £5billion whilst the HSBC group is also likely to pay out millions.

The worst performer this year is expected to be Northern Rock, which had to be saved by the taxpayer and is expected to reveal losses of about £700million.

The bonus figures will cause particular outrage because many banks are still suffering major operating losses.

Many have been forced to sell off parts of their business to boost their balance sheets.

This has enabled them to report massaged profits, even although the overall state of their finances is bleak, and as bonuses are linked to the headline profit, bonuses are paid at the expense of business loans and payment of insurance claims, which was the prime reason for bailing the banks out.

The banks claim that obscene telephone-number bonuses are crucial to retaining top staff.

Earlier this year it was revealed that London traders with the American investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was rescued by the U.S. government, will each receive £500,000 windfalls this year, and another bailed out U.S. giant, Citigroup, is increasing basic pay by up to 50 per cent to make up for lost bonuses.

This 'business as usual' attitude makes a mockery of the Government's claim to have 'eliminated the culture of greed and reckless risk that has tainted the banking industry'.

Another statistic, which although totally unrelated, is that up-to 5% of pensioner deaths in the United Kingdom is due to neglect, such as starvation and hypothermia.

Or is it unrelated?

What if we hadn't given the £40billion pounds to the banks?

£40,000million pounds divided by 10million pensioners equals a massive Christmas bonus (which if inflation linked from its inception would be nearly £100 instead of still £10)!

©TITVS-ADVXAS III-VIII-MMIX
As Published