Robber Barons Flee as Brown Piles On Pressure

With his usual blend of courage and forthrightness, the Glorious Successor has let crawl what the Guardian is pleased to term an attack on naughtiness in the City. Besides such profundities as "It's a testing time and it's a time for being tested", Gordon was quick to proclaim that, unlike so many little problems under New Labour, this one "could be difficult to deal with ... through legislation"; which presumably explains why his main response to the City's gambling difficulties has been to throw taxpayers' money at them. "I think there's an element of the bonus system that is unacceptable," he said. Just one element? Well, I wonder what that could that be. "When you have got a bonus on your salary based on short-term deals that has no relationship to long-term profits, you have got to look again at what that system is doing." Certain bonuses are unacceptable because they bear no relation to the long-term profits of the companies that award them. Whether the said profits are earned by failing to run the trains on time, or wasting water, or losing confidential information, is evidently not a significant consideration for the Glorious Successor, who is now on record as saying that he is not complacent, wants to do better, and will still be leader at Christmas. Well, there's a comfort.