BAILED OUT BANKS MAKE FOOLS OF GOVT

Vince Cable gets front page billing in today's Guardian ( which probably means someone on the Labour Left told him about it originally)
The Libs' finance spokesman rails at the fact that the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is being bailed out with £20bn of taxpayers' money, has signalled it is preparing to pay bonuses to thousands of staff despite government pledges to crack down on City pay.
The bank has apparently set aside £1.79bn to cover "staff costs" - including discretionary bonuses - at its investment banking division .
The government had demanded that boardroom directors at RBS should not receive bonuses this year and the chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, is walking away without a pay-off. But below boardroom level, RBS and other groups are preparing to pay bonuses to investment bankers who continue to generate profits.
This is a nonsense - we need controls , regulation and representation for the taxpayers whose hard-earned cash is paying for these people to carry on laughing all the way to the partly-but-not-properly nationalised bank.

GRANITE ISSUE WON'T GO AWAY....

It's quite extraordinary how the media airbrushes the Labour left out of the equation when it comes to coverage of key issues. Having made this the subject of my General Studies A Level essay 30 years ago i suppose I should no longer be surprised. But here we are again. Vince Cable may have got the credit from the BBC but the gaping £40billion Granite hole in the Northern Rock nationalisation was actually uncovered in the Commons the other day by John McDonnell MP. The details of the Hansard debate ( nothing more objective than Hansard...) are on Union Futures. John has now gone on to explain why the Granite issue is so important and it now looks likely it will be investigated further as the Lords have demanded key amendments to the nationalisation legislation.