Popularity League

[Mike Cranny]

The Guardian reports that Bankers are less popular than asylum seekers and benefit fraudsters.
The ancient greeks had the idea of ostracism - you voted for who you wanted to be banned from the city.

My top five in the unpopularity stakes for a one year ban from the UK would be.

1. All Bank Directors
2. Loan companies plus those who spam me every day asking me if I have had a trip or a fall
3. The directors of insurers that allow PPI to be mis-sold
4. Everyone at the FSA that refuses to talk plain English or answer questions, or who has no experience of markets they are regulating
5. The England football team, manager and journalists

After this we could draw up a new list - any suggestions?

[Martin Friel]

Surely you're not including all journalists in your list?

[Mike Cranny]

Originally Posted by Martin Friel

Surely you're not including all journalists in your list?

No, only those sports journalists that ever gave England a chance of winning, however, it would be good to add to the lists all journalists who put truth last and a story first, or that pretended to have knowledge of a subject when they had none.That would reduce the "profession" somewhat

None of this applies to you Martin. You are not a citizen of England but a guest with voting rights.

[Guilbert53]

Originally Posted by Mike Cranny

The Guardian reports that Bankers are less popular than asylum seekers and benefit fraudsters.

Originally Posted by Mike Cranny

My top five in the unpopularity stakes for a one year ban from the UK would be.
All Bank Directors

Britain is the 6th largest economy in the world.

Much of our wealth comes from finance and financial services (particularly now manufacturing in the UK has dropped so much).

If all the banks (and bank directors) decided to up sticks and move to Amsterdam, or New York, or Hong Kong, or anywhere else, this country would be in big trouble.

If you think the Government is having to cut back now, then I hate to think what it would be like if all the bankers left.

(I dont work in financial services, but do appreciate how much money they bring to the UK).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy...intermediation
.

[spitfire]

Originally Posted by Guilbert53

Much of our wealth comes from finance and financial services (particularly now manufacturing in the UK has dropped so much).

If all the banks (and bank directors) decided to up sticks and move to Amsterdam, or New York, or Hong Kong, or anywhere else, this country would be in big trouble.

Yep ... very true.

We don't really want to squeeze or regulate this sector too much in case we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Just enough to remind them that we must never again allow them to devastate the world's economies.
Have we learned our lesson ? Time will tell.

Spit

[James Sharp]

I'm not very keen on people who play golf and I get awfully cross when BBC 2 fills its schedule with hours and hours of it.

[Mike Cranny]

A lot of these people are gamblers with other people's money.
They take a large slice for themselves, and like a lot of high earners believe we couldn't manage without them.

We could - just as we could manage without some of the high earners in the NHS and the councils.

We could survive without horse racing and bookies shops as well.

This is what the Chairman of the FSA said today"Large bank bonuses for selling over-complex and risky products of little real use to humanity were a major problem"

A lot of what takes place in financial services is socially useless but we have built a house of cards on it.

[Guilbert53]

A lot of these high risk bankers are indeed modern day pirates.

They see a ship passing laden with gold (metaphorical ship) and will board it and grab anything they can.

They buy and sell things they dont want or need (sugar, oil, tin, wheat etc), hoping to sell it on at a profit and earn money for themselves. They add nothing to the transaction and just take a cut for themselves.

It then means that the rest of us (the general public) pay more for our petrol or bread or whatever, because they drove the price up to "earn" themselves a few million.

With the ability to do this with computers I am not sure what the answer is.

[James Sharp]

Yes, but at least bankers don't necessarily wear bright yellow tank-tops or lurid pink Kashmir cardigans. Golfers do... and that's just one (or two?) of the reasons I hate 'em.

[davidmd]

James, I have my golfing socks on today. There is a hole in one.