From Bankers To Cleaners

It turns out, then, that the people who were supposed to be looking after our money were playing a ridiculously risky game of financial Jenga.

Their little wooden blocks tottered for a year or two, before coming crashing down.

Loans and mortgages were caught up in a constant, dizzying whirl of monetary pass the parcel, combined with round after round of kamikaze musical chairs. Now, there are perilously few seats left. Bankers' backsides are crashing to the floor.

Natural justice might demand that the money men who've bought houses with a single year's bonus should hand their cash to the Treasury, to help the tax-payers who are now bailing the financial institutions out.

But what sort of jobs should they then end up doing? For the minimum wage? 

First, the tables could be turned - they might start serving champagne in bars, instead of quaffing it. 

And why not send them back to their old offices - as cleaners. But the bonus culture wouldn't necessarily need to end - for every 50 toilet pans they scrub, a free loo roll could be provided.

Of course, one place they wouldn't be able to help out would be a maths class, because their arithmetic is clearly suspect.

They could, however, be allowed to serve school dinners, as long as someone else had worked out how many meals were needed.

It's a good game, all this, but the reality is that many top bankers already have enough money to retire.

They only kept working to pay off their third home.

Now, they won't be able to buy a new Ferrari every year, and the wine might have to be contemporary rather than vintage, but, bless 'em, they'll find a way to cope.

The rest of us can only look on with incredulity, as the people who've done their best to wreck the financial system watch the news in detached, five bathroom houses, on 48 inch plasma TVs.

There's no point in envying them - that won't get you anywhere. And to take their money away would be a little petulant.

But a certain sense of schadenfreude seems entirely understandable.