Klepturition 3 - by Richard...

Klepturition 3 - by Richard...

Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester has seen his controversial £7.7 million pay package rubber-stamped by the Government as the bank insisted it had to pay staff "fairly". And I don't really give a damn. No-one is worth that amount of money, and especially if he is an employee of a bank that has been bailed out by the taxpayer and we are still paying £5 billion in interest charges for loans to keep his and other banks afloat.

This raiding of the public purse is a refined and sophisticated form of theft. The fact that it is legal makes not one whit of difference. It redefines public morals, and our relationship with state institutions. There is no moral obligation on us fund a state which is so reckless in its guardianship of public finances, or so careless about its approval of state-funded institutions which indulge in larceny.

This comes into sharper focus with a Public Accounts Committee report due today which reveals that the banks which benefited from taxpayer largesse failed to meet their commitments to providing lending to businesses, many of which have been struggling to survive in adverse trading conditions, when overdraft and other loans have been arbitrarily withdrawn.

Lloyds and RBS fell £30 billion short of their government target, two banks which are still floating on taxpayer money to the tune of £512 billion, with RBS 84 percent and Lloyds 43 percent owned by the taxpayer. And yet, despite them reneging on these conditions, the Treasury have decided not to take sanctions, arguing that not taking any action outweighed the benefits of punishing them.

Somehow, one can imagine this argument getting short shrift in front of the magistrates, when one has to deal with the next round of state-inspired theft – usually occasioned by yellow-encased cameras left at the side of the road.

This all rather serves to underline the salient issue of the moment. Different rules apply to "them" and "us". Only "little people" are penalised and pay fines. The "toffs" and money men get rewarded and, when their enterprises go belly-up, the taxpayers are forced to bail them out. They get the profit - we are required to take the pain.

And while the world tut-tuts at overt criminal behaviour, such as smashing their taxpayer-financed windows (pictured), the banks' own criminal behaviour is dressed up in such technicalities that it is relegated to a footnote in an agency report. The obvious lesson is that, if you want to prosper as a criminal, join a bank.

The current criminal behaviour is now the subject of a civil suit, a conspiracy to manipulate Libor, the interbank benchmark used to set interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars of securities. Needless to say, both Lloyds and RBS are said to have benefited form the scam. But even if their larceny is confirmed, despite the best efforts of taxpayer-funded defence lawyers - there is not a single employee or manager who will suffer a penny loss of income. Sanctions are indeed for little people.

No wonder the likes of the overfed Simon Hester (pictured above right) can look so happily smug. It is "win-win" for him and his likes as they, quite literally, go laughing all the way to the bank. Another one for Madame Defarge, methinks.

COMMENT: KLEPTURITION THREAD

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The forgotten war - by Richard...

With so much emphasis on Libya, it is easy to forget that our troops are already committed to another failing venture, the one in Afghanistan. With little independent reporting because if the security situation – not that it would make a great deal of difference – we suffer the usual diet of spin, where MoD sources try to convince us that they are on top of the game, and everything is going swimmingly.

However, elsewhere, there are concerns that Britain risks losing the war in Afghanistan because commanders are more concerned with protecting soldiers than defeating the Taliban. That was very much the case in southern Iraq, where casualty minimisation in the later days took priority over effective operations.

An anonymous officer claims that soldiers are now so laden with equipment on operations that they are incapable of mounting effective attacks. The Taliban have dubbed British troops "donkeys" who move in a tactical "waddle" because they now carry up to 110lbs of equipment into battle. The consequences of this are that "our infantry find it almost impossible to close with the enemy because the bad guys are twice as mobile".

Furthermore, the thing about this insurgency is that while the multi-national forces each have their own areas of operations, the Taliban are not so constrained. Thus, if it gets a little too hot for them in one area, they can simply move to another – in order to exploit weaknesses in the defences. And this is exactly what they are doing. Thus, you cannot measure success by what happens in any one area – you must look at the picture as a whole.

And here, the signs are not good. Two days ago, we are told, marked a significant milestone in Kabul when the Taliban managed to penetrate into the heart of the Defence Ministry. An armed man with an Afghan Army uniform and a valid ID managed to gain access to the offices of the Minister himself, killing two and injuring seven before being shot by bodyguards. There is some dispute about whether he was able to detonate a suicide vest before he died.

What applies to the violence also applies to poppy-growing – another metric which is used as an indicator of success, or not. And, while production is down in the south, that is more due to anunexplained virus affecting the crop than through multi-national action. But the effect of that is to triple the price for raw opium, and to move production north (where the lighter, drier soils produce a better quality product).

Everything about Afghanistan, therefore, is more "nuanced" than realised, and even a best-selling author is under suspicion for writing demonstrable falsehoods. Greg Moretenson is accused of fabricating important parts of his stories and using his charity as "his own private ATM" by the CBS Documentary 60 Minutes. Nothing – or very little – can be taken at face value.

So it is with the war. The amount of misinformation, spin and error vastly outweighs useful information, all in the context of the multi-national powers desperately looking for an exit, and trying to create a narrative which will enable them to do so without losing face. Where best-selling authors lead, governments follow. The narrative is written. All it needs is for it to be rolled out.