BLOODY BANKS! BLOODY BROWN!

Only a few weeks ago, the UK's Chief of Pathetic Quick Fixes (AKA The Prime Minister) told us that we, the tax payer, had got an amazingly good deal that would make us ooodles of cash for years to come, by the fact that he, Brown, had given the banks £60 BILLION of OUR money to help them out. But, being so wonderfully clever as he is, he had forced the banks to accept the money with many conditions, the main ones being that the money was guaranteed to make a profit in the future for the tax-payer, and that the banks wouldn't really take the money anyway, seeing as how they are such nice guys and the international banking system is so benevolent.

A few days ago he told us how he was dealing with an escalating international crises (none of it his fault, of course) by giving the banks ANOTHER £200 BILLION of OUR money.

It seems that the first payment wasn't enough and has already been lost. That's the money that they were not really going to take, remember?

But the new give-away has had a few extra clauses added to it. The main ones being (in the interests of International Trade, by which they mean bailing out the banks and their hangers-on) that the 'onerous' clauses of the first give-away have been removed. So now the banks don't have to repay the money, what they do re-pay is at considerably lower interest rates, the government loses even its notional control over what the banks do with the money, and all pretense that they won't simply put it into their own vaults has been removed.

Way to go Gordon! The economy is safe in your sane hands!