Two minutes' hate
"The prime minister has said that it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted,"

All rise for the worshipful dictator Brown...

I haven't been paying much attention to the news, so I may have missed bits. My current take is that it's £16 million out of £24 billion, which seems to be a tiny enough proportion for there to be little real financial incentive for recovering it. Was there a fraud involved in giving a false impression that it was contractually binding in October? Maybe, and if so that should be pursued. But the whole furore seems to be backwards and not about that, instead being driven by outrage at the idea of the large pension, not actual wrongdoing.

Do I like that somebody can be so irresponsible yet walk off with so much money? No. But is it much different from the vast salaries/bonuses other bankers were paid? Are we going to rewrite the law (!) to claw these back? Does "the court of opinion" really drive legislation so directly?

It feels to me like a big distraction. Forget about looking at the real problems, we can have our 2minute/48hour/(how long has this been in the news?) hate and everybody will feel better. I got the same impression of the coverage of the treasury committee questioning 4 bankers, or whatever it was that came up a few weeks ago.

Somebody reply telling me how I'm entirely missing the point, please.