Credit Crunch Rant Of The Year - Al Murray

Published on UK Sun: Why bankers leave a bitter taste

By Al Murray

• FIRST thing’s first, I am not one to shy away from the big stories.
  It’s time for some Credit Crunch Blah Blah, and what a surprise, the banks have screwed something up! Who’d have thought it, eh?
  
  The people who make sure your cashpoint card doesn’t work when you’re abroad, who write you a £20 letter about your £10 overdraft, have cocked it all up.
  
  No one knows how or why or when — least of all them — but somehow they’ve lost more money than anyone has lost before.
  
  Thing is, when you take a step back and think about it, you realise just whose money it is.
  
  Yes. IT’S OUR MONEY! They lost our money. Whose money? OUR MONEY!
  
  So what do they do about it? Long before they apologise, long before they put their own money on a horse and hope it comes in (which is what anyone normal would do, let’s face it) they go to Gordon Brown, cap in hand and ask him to help them out.
  
  They say: “We’ve lost a load of money, we don’t know where the money is, help us, please!” (Whose money? OUR MONEY!) And then Gordon Brown says: “Aye, laddies, I’ll help ya oot, here’s a cheque for 70 ballion poonds, that should cover it.” That’s nice and dandy of him, but whose money is he giving them? That’s right, OUR MONEY! So he’s given them OUR MONEY to replace OUR MONEY that they’ve lost.
  
  But the trouble is he’s not got enough money because it’s been spent on Health and Safety and second houses for MPs, and so he’s had to borrow some more money.
  
  So he goes to another bank and borrows a load more money, and whose money is it that he borrows? — OUR MONEY!
  
  So he’s borrowing OUR MONEY to replace OUR MONEY, that he’s already spent, to replace OUR MONEY that the banks lost.
  
  And how’s he going to pay off that loan? By raising taxes — which come out of OUR MONEY!
  
  So he’s going to insist we cough up more of OUR MONEY to repay the loan of OUR MONEY needed to replace OUR MONEY the banks need to replace OUR MONEY that they lost. In other words, we pay four times over. Thanks for that.
  
  But here’s the part that really gets my goat. I don’t have a goat, but feel like I should buy one just so it can get got. The banks’ one job is to look after our money — that’s it, it’s not like they’ve got anything else to do, is it? That’s what they do, look after money.
  
  Stick it in a safe, sit a bloke next to the safe, fill up the cashpoint machine as and when. It can’t be hard, can it?
  
  If I can figure it out, why does a bloke who gets a million Pound bonus at Christmas not realise any of this?
  
  Banks look after money, full stop. A bank that doesn’t have any money in it is just a building, the same way a pint without any beer in it is just a glass.
  
  What’s worse is we don’t hear the bloody end of it, it’s all over the telly and papers. Ironically it’s the financial experts who are raking it in.
  
  It’s lucky the media doesn’t charge us a tenner every time they tell us the country’s gone overdrawn like the banks do, otherwise we’d have even less money.
  
  I might start it. You’ve got no money mate, there you go, I’ve just provided you with a service.

Pricelss mate!