BANK ON THE ROCKS
Mark Anthony took a long time to die, as did Bottom the weaver mechanical playing Pyramus, but neither can equal the death throes of Northern Rock as it finally slid into the arms of public ownership for the kiss of life. O my Darling, O my Darling, O my Darling Alastair, art thou lost and gone forever? Will those dark brows now whiten to match that snowy head? Here is a nationalisation too far for the architects of New Labour ideology and an arrow in the quiver of those who believe that the private sector, especially, but evidently not exclusively, those avaricious banks, are there for themselves and do not serve the public benefit. Where were they when the Rock faltered, where the insurance and protection financed from the obscenity of their profits? They are there when the sun shines on their greed, but nowhere to be seen when asked to feed the cow they milk. They pocket and privatise the profit but socialise their losses with the taxpayers. It is not an isolated phenomenon for we have the scandal of the Railways, the Water Authorities, the Post Office not to mention the abomination of PFI and the creeping privatisation and marketisation of the NHS. Northern Rock clearly places public ownership back on the agenda but you would not know this from the press. Now you see Paxman and Humphreys for what they are: slaves to the ideology of market freedom. Here was an opportunity for them and the rest of the media to stress the public benefit and castigate the private sector. Only Vince Cable could penetrate the smoke screens of reaction, whilst Gordon and Alastair uttered the tosh of the year: Northern Rock has been taken into temporary public ownership which means its future profits will belong to the taxpayers. When it regains full profitability, it will be returned to the private sector. There’s logic for you. It used to be said that we should nationalise the top 200 companies. Well one is a start. Only 199 to go. On this rock, we should build the people’s church.
BANKING ON THE BISHOP: ROWAN RORY ON THE ROCKS
I cannot be the only person who thought that Rory had kidnapped Rowan of Canterbury, gagged and cuffed him and placed him in a barrel of marmalade, when that deep speech was muttered. The venerable scholar, like a person in slippers about to prepare their late night Horlicks with the strike of a match in a room full of leaking gas, produced a mighty, off the scale, richter explosion and then looked surprised. It takes a special kind of 'academic' skill to launch in innocence a nuclear warhead into the heart of the multicultural debate and unite virtually the whole world against you, including allies in your own church. The Sun shone with typical warmth: 'What a Burkah' as it contemplated the 'inevitability' of sharia law on the shores of England. At last Labour was off the front page for multitudinous cock-ups incarnadine and the sea rolled over Moby Rowan as he sank under a downpour of harpoons. Thanks be to God of whatever variety.
