NatWest, in their ultimate wisdom, now take the interest on overdrafts two week earlier each month than they have done for the last ten years. Apparently all customers received a booklet in January explaining this. Well I didn’t. I have also been informed that they put this all over their statements, but I bank on-line with paper-less statements (on their recommendation). Therefore NatWest took money from my account without my knowledge and have sent me over my overdraft limit. This will cost me £28 in charges. This is nothing short of theft.

When I phoned to complain I was informed by a sanctimonious NatWest robot that this was done to help all customers. Hmm! Yes please, NatWest, take money from my account earlier I insist! What a load of bankers! They took this decision on a purely commercial, money grabbing basis and bollocks to their customers.

Mr Brown was defiant in the face of City outrage despite the UK government’s annual operating loss of £100bn, rising to £1.5 trillion when the write-down of its banking assets is taken into account.

The prime minister said: “I’ve been building up this pension since I became an MP, it’s all completely legal and now you want to take it away because I’ve been catastrophically bad at my job and you’re looking for a scapegoat. What gives?”

He added: “Yes I’ve been in charge of financial regulation for 12 years, yes I encouraged the housing bubble, and yes I pissed billions up the wall giving pointless jobs to Labour voters, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me being incredibly well off.”

Brown’s £3m pension pot is expected to cast the spotlight on the extravagant retirement packages of other failed politicians including Alistair Darling’s inexplicable £1.7m and the £1.5m awarded to John Prescott for being a national disgrace for 10 years.

Meanwhile Margaret Beckett has a fund worth £1.7m, and Tessa Jowell has £1m even though no-one has the faintest idea what either of these actually do.

Critics insist Mr Brown has a moral duty to hand back his pension fund as he will inevitably receive a multi-million pound advance for two volumes of eye-gougingly tedious memoirs which will end up in the bargain bucket at WH Smith within a fortnight.

Martin Bishop, head of pension rows at the Institute for Studies, said: “It’s a fascinating dynamic. The politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians, and the ordinary taxpayer is down on all fours with a confused look on his face, being fucked at both ends.”

• Get the banks (we own) to pass on the interest rates to us with no penalties. (Don’t ask – Order them!)

• Wholesale gas is now down to 2006 levels – force the utility companies to pass on these savings.

• Freeze Council Tax – It can’t go up in line with inflation (there is none) as is the excuse each year.

• The last time a barrel of oil was this cheap (comparatively) unleaded fuel was under 75p a litre. Someone, somewhere is profiteering.

• Sort out credit card and overdraft interest rates – I am paying more on these now than I was last year. How can this be allowed to happen?

• Hold up the people that got us in this mess to public ridicule. Bring back the stocks!

This would give the average household anywhere from £150 – £500 per month extra to spend at struggling businesses. Struggling businesses would then have money to spend with other businesses. We might even put some of the extra money in the bank – you never know.
It all starts with the consumer and doing it this way would cost the Government time but very little money.
I now this is very simplistic but what else do you need to do?

Ministers, in their ultimate wisdom, believe the only way to get the credit system moving again is to give billions of pounds to the banking sector and then threaten to take it back from them, bit by bit, in multi-million pound fines.

Chancellor Alistair Darling said: “We will use the money raised from the fines to recapitalise those banks that have been forced to pay very heavy fines. The banks must then use that money for lending and if they don’t they will be fined. We will then use the money raised from those fines to recapitalise the banks that have been fined and if they don’t lend that money they will be fined. Again.” Glad that cleared things up!

Mr Darling went on to say that those fines would then be used to recapitalise the banks that had been fined, before he was interrupted by a senior Treasury official. The chancellor was then wheeled into the corner of the room where a heavy woollen blanket was draped over his head.

Now, by all means please do stop me if I’m being a total and utter idiot, but if we control the banks and we know what the banks are supposed to do, why can’t we just tell them to do it?

• As much as I hate Gordon Brown could you imagine David Cameron in charge at the moment?
• Why have the government demanded Banks keep loans to homebuyers at 2007 levels? Wasn’t that the reason we are in this problem?
• This bail-out thing – when and how do we get our money back?
• Who the hell would put their life savings in an Icelandic bank for the sake of an extra .25% interest rate?
• How does Gordon Brown think he can stabilise house prices when they are still over-priced by 10-20%?
• Let me get this straight – the Government has given the banks MY money so they can lend it back to me with interest? (fact is stranger than fiction).
• If you are wondering where the money has gone, look no further than BP with profits of £1200 a second. So we privatised BP and nationalised the shitty banks. Thank God for politicians who obviously have brains the size of planets.
• If the Government want to pass on interest rate cuts to the public why are banks (some of which have had OUR money used to rescue them) still charging up to 30% interest on approved overdrafts and horrendous amounts on credit cards.

‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.’
Thomas Jefferson 1802

Lehman Brothers employees staging a protest

Sympathy for Wall Street

The new dollar bill