Wizard Wheeze

Thanks to the Government's firm response to the culture of rewarding failure in the banking sector (said response being a finely judged combination of wagging finger, blind eye and mugging of the proles), the banking sector has again failed to live up to its obligations. Stephen Hester, whose life has a bonus-shaped gap which appears to have filled up alarmingly fast with moral flatus, castigated the unappreciative taxpayers for expecting an institution which they own to perform according to agreement: "There is no bank in this country coming close to punching above their weight in the way we are." To Hester's credit, this comes quite close to the Standard English version, which is approximately "Well, they didn't do even more of their homework!" Hester then ordered his employers simply to ignore the terms of the contract: "Forget Project Merlin and how it's defined" because, whatever may have been promised in return for mere money, doing slightly less badly than other people is "damn impressive".

For its own part, the Government said that it would "take some time for things to return to normal" after the economy's recent reduction to the Bullingdon Club's idea of a safe haven.