Redemption

That Titan of probity, Gordon's little Darling, has announced his latest uncompromising measure to keep the banks on the path to virtue. Gordon's little Darling has scribbled a code of conduct on the back of a bailiff's bill. Since it is meant to deal with banks, rather than with strikers, protestors, whistleblowers or anyone else who might somehow damage the economy, the code of conduct will not be compulsory; but Gordon's little Darling has made it plain that he will become quite considerably annoyed at those who refuse to sign up. Apparently it is possible that those banks "in which the taxpayer has not taken (sic) a stake", such as Barclays, may not feel obliged to pay their taxes like everyone else, and Gordon's little Darling finds this fairly unacceptable, more or less. Such banks will be "subjected to heavier scrutiny from the tax authorities", and there will be, according to a Treasury spokesbeing, "a lot of embarrassment and public pressure and trips to the Treasury select committee to be humiliated by a lot of MPs", before whose fiscal competence and moral fragrancy the usurers will doubtless prostrate themselves, wailing to be accepted into the communion of the righteous.