Don’t bank on it Crackdown on City bonuses a pipe dream

I DO like the word crackdown. It sounds so brutal, so harsh and unforgiving.

Once the powers that be have cracked down on whatever misbehaviour you’ve been guilty of, then that’s your lot. You’ve had it. End of. I also like the word – which is beloved of newspaper headline writers – because it’s pretty much meaningless. Crackdowns never seem to work. Remember the crackdown on knife crime? Didn’t happen.

Fleeced

The crackdown on drunken disorder on the streets, when bladdered youths would be marched to cash machines to pay fixed penalties? Didn’t happen.

Loan sharking, fox hunting, telephone cold-calling… were all going to be subjected to relentless crackdowns – but weren’t.

I suspect we can add the promised crackdown on “Trojan horse” hardline Islamist infiltration of schools to the list as well. So I’m taking the Bank of England’s threatened crackdown on rogue bankers with a big bucket of salt. We’re told these arrogant Armani-suited crooks who have fleeced countless customers and businesses and helped bring Britain to the brink of financial ruin while stuffingg their pockets could be strippedd of their bonuses up to seven n years after they were awarded d – even though they may already y have spent the dosh.

This supposedly tough neww regime comes into force onn January 1 next year.

But i t won’t a pply y retrospectively because of fears s of legal action. And there you have it. If shyster bankers have it in their contracts that they will receive squillion pound bonuses and they’re then caught with their fingers in the till and told no, you can’t have the money you were promised, what do you think they’ll do? You’ve got it. They’ll call m’learned friends.

So more well-paid lawyers will grow even richer fighting cases of breach of contract on behalf of their fatcat clients.

These modern-day robber barons might think twice if they saw one of their number hauled into c court in handcuffs.

It’s not widely known the U UK has already passed a law m making “reckless behaviour” by bankers punishable by up to seven years in prison.

But while journalists are st still being rounded up in dawn ra raids for suspected phone ha hacking, not a single banker ha has had his white collar felt.

Long ago, when I was young an and idealistic, I remember su suggesting to my bank m manager that Labour might na nationalise Britain’s banks.

“Then they’d be like the Post O Office or British Rail,” he scoffed. “Inefficient, unaccountable and run entirely f or t he benefit of t heir employees.” Which is exactly what the banks are today. I’VE enjoyed the Commonwealth Games. Really. I have.

I’ve also learned a lot.

That men play netball, for example. I never knew that.

And at most things England is better than Wales – and Wales is better than the Isle of Man.