Bonuses

Have you heard about the new banker's bonus tax? Its a tax on bonuses over £25,000! Darling is bringing it in, to cut the amount of bonuses banks are going to pay their staff, and it was estimated that it was going to bring in £500 million. Strangely though, the banks have decided to just make its bonuses twice as big, to compensate their employees for the tax.. this means that the tax will instead raise £2-4 billions.

Banks have no idea about market forces.. sometimes it makes me wish that I worked for one! perhaps in a cushy non-executive directorship role. Barclays Bank, HSBC.. you know my number, give me a bell.

Sporting Corner

England are the new Pakistan.. I don't mean that the Taliban are roaming around the country blowing things up - I mean that our cricket team is generally useless, punctuated by occasional bouts of weird brilliance. I blame the one day series with Australia; they got fed up with constantly losing by 30 runs, and decided that from that day forward they'd instead lose by 150 two thirds of the time and win by 100 the rest of the time.

Anyway.. to cheer myself up after England's abject bungling I'm going to watch the snooker. Ronnie O'Sulivan is playing Mark Selby and as I understand it, they are polar opposites. Ronnie O'Sulivan is a tortured genius, twice as talented as any other player, but bemoaning how depressed he is. Mark Selby's neat quiff suggests he's like the chap you knew at school who never said anything, but always seemed to have a bafflingly pretty girlfriend, and who is now doing quite well at your old local Barclays bank, and going a bit bald.

Snow

Snow, snow, snow.. there's loads of snow everywhere.. great piles of it, tripping old people up and stranding cars.

So say the news anyway.. but I know better than that. I'm in Cambridge, and there's hardly any snow on the ground at all. I walked to the shops today and returned unscathed. Frankly I suspect the BBC have been showing pictures of Norway to whip up panic on the national stage. Why? So that Dave Cameron has an excuse to ride horseback up 10 Downing Street, seize power, and tweak Gordon Brown's nose.

Sometimes you have to look at the news behind the news to really get the news.. eh?

David Cameron

I have an exclusive interview with David Cameron for this blog! Don't get too excited.. its pretty dull stuff; here he is getting all red in the face..

".. Devil take him! The Devil with him, the handsome Devil! Devil take him!".

I'm not sure who that was about, but he seems pretty worked up! A real man of passions - and not just for stupid posh things:

"Its all just robots flying over the moon, Cap.. robots up there.. pointing guns.. Its like the sand omelette; you know it can't be done - then it turns out it can be done! Then you wake up depressed: it was only a dream"

I don't really know what he means here.. you'll have to draw your own conclusion. I think it was about the budget or something.