Bastard Bankers and The Russian Pax Man

The Recession (everyone's capitals) is a pain in the neck subject because we're not sure who to blame yet and which is why Newsnight always spend a lot of time on it. Is it Brown's term as chancellor what did it? Is it an economy that has been leaning on London for too long? Is it the Polish? Can we blame it on America, please? How about the world in general? The bankers, though, seem to be exacerbating the situation and now resemble the little shit that, though he may not have knocked over your glass of wine, then decides, after careful deliberation, that he should splash about in it and spread it about the walls and in your spaghetti.

There's been talk that, along with Northern Rock and a number of the bailed out American banks, RBS are thinking about using millions of taxpayers' bailout money as bonuses for senior staff. Rewarding failure is always odious. Take my friend John. He's in prison now. And what's Lord Fangleson's response? The guy who brokered the deal that I thought meant we owned these cunts?* "Please, please, please, don't do this. It may not look that good." The banks have also been accused of, while using this money to reward their scumbaggery, cutting the wages of their cleaning staff. Bastards.

And, by the way, last night's metaphor for the recession, which wasn't nearly as articulated as it could've been, was a pistol.

Liz MacKean, standing in for drug-addled Paul Mason, introduced her report, Don DeLillo style, thus; "The skyline of the city remains solid enough, but the culture within it has been shaken to its roots." The point being, of course, that bankers now have to confront how bad they've been at their jobs and realise they now have more responsibility than they'd applied for. I like being critical of people who have jobs because I don't have one myself.

Back in the studio, Kirsty Wark, Vince Cable and a financial 'gardener' of some kind had a good old natter about the whole bloody mess. Oh no, wait, a 'hedge fund' manager called David Marrow. I mean, Yarrow. Who thinks that we should let the greedy swines get away with it because "the goose is cooked" and "it's happened". Not the best defence, which it definitely was, seeing as these gardening types are such dicks themselves. Vince The Cable (his darts, his wrestling, his porn star name) spoke sense as usual in his possibly-a-secret-agent way.

BANG! And the interest rates are nearly gone! David Grossman killed MacKean in the metaphor stakes, saying that the Bank of England is quickly running out of "conventional ammunition" (POW!), and "firing off" (ZING!) interest rate cuts to stimulate the economy. But it's completely useless, according to George Magnus, an adviser to UBS who possibly writes SF novels on the side:

The argument against lowering the interest rates yet again is that it sends the wrong message. Namely that "there's something really terrible out there", which there is, but we should ignore so that the banks will keep lending each other their money. Their lending practices are complicated. They're similar to when I lend my friend a tenner, who's borrowed it to pay back his friend, who in turn borrows another twenty from his friend to put on a bet, where he makes a decent return on a horse called Gandhi, buys everyone a drink, eventually falling out with me because I didn't buy him one back and so (after a week or so of fomenting anger) puts out a contract on me; meanwhile, my original friend pays back the tenner so when the hit man finds me to tell me he won't kill me if I meet my drunk friend's price, which I do with disgust, I'm also able to borrow from the horse winner with more credit because he tried to have me killed.

Meanwhile, in Russia, journalists are actually getting killed; the report was introduced by Rupert Winfield Hayes, John Le Carre style, thus; "As the snow falls, a group of policeman casually mill around a dead body, splayed out in a pool of blood on the pavement." The series of murdered or disappeared journalists in the last few years, and the implication that the Kremlin are directly involved, is disturbing to say the least. There are Russians on trial for the killing of Anna Polokovskaya, but not for the killing of her, but as accomplices (?!), whereas the killer and those that hired him have "never been found". Someone, I forget who, said that Russia is just too big for it to ever be humanely governed, and (don't hate me for it) I kind of see what they mean, but this behaviour is terrifyingly Kafkaesque**.

Yevgeny Kisyelov, touted by Hayes as the Russian Paxo Man, was a star in Russia when that lovable alcoholic was running (and running into) the country; but ever since that blue-eyed psycho succeeded him, Kisyelov was forced to (I presume) be sarcastic to politicians and occasionally funny elsewhere, in a "scruffy backstreet warehouse in Kiev". His perception of the lack of press freedom was that it's not part of what his English called the "minimal consumer basket"; i.e. that there's no demand, rather than there being a Kremlin crackdown on any opposition or criticism. I couldn't help disagreeing, and vaguely detected an ulterior yet altogether understandable motive to his logic; he just wasn't that passionate about being shot, poisoned or electrocuted as he was enjoying his morning Кофе. That blue-eyed nutbag sent his agents as far as London; Kiev is just over the hill.

* I am angry.

** I will try not to use this term for at least another year.