…from the quill of Antisthenes the Younger
The British humour we used to know was dry, almost desiccated. P G Woodehouse, Jerome K Jerome … all the way down to Rowan Atkinson. The recent residents of that famous faith of peace brought with them to the formerly Great Britain humour of the wet variety. So it is refreshing that none else but the Prime Minister himself stepped into the breach:
“The Prime Minister revealed the Government would change the law to catch reckless behaviour in the City and claw back bonuses from banks which had been bailed out with taxpayers’ cash. The pledge came after a major report recommended bosses of failed banks should face jail or lose the right to claim bonuses for up to ten years for ‘reckless misconduct’. Prime Minister David Cameron promised to take action against reckless bankers and claimed Labour had failed to properly regulate the banks before the 2007 crash
The new criminal offence would make sure that top executives paid for their ‘shocking and widespread malpractice’, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards said.
Not a single British banker has been sent to prison since the financial crash began in 2007, but the proposed legislation would make sure they would be ‘on the hook’ in future, it added.
As well as prison terms, errant bankers would face heavy fines and bans from the financial services industry, as well as curbs on bonuses and the threat of pensions being cancelled.”
While there are no reports of any errant, reckless bankers leaving London for safer places like Damascus, John Cleese must be hanging his head in shame for being so easily trumped by a mere politician.
Back home a certain Kevin the Clown, anxious to revive his flagging tragicomic career in the Labor Theatre of the Absurd is so desperate for new ideas that he poses with a toilet paper on his face trying to look as that almost forgotten Australian comedian from the seventies. He is so desperate that he does not care that the obvious conclusions are a/ he is clumsy; b/ his hands shake in the mornings. (Could that unemployable Scot be his “ideas” man now? Will Kevin stab himself while knitting?)
Could he come up with something to upstage even that British comedy master Cameron? Say – politicians to be jailed for telling lies? It would be at least as hilarious as that Cameron’s jest.