Someone has to pay the bill

I was in Sutton Coldfield today and passed Blacks, which is closing down and where the staff are trying manfully to stop it looking like a jumble sale.

The staff there are all facing redundancy next week as part of the closure of 89 stores and 1,000 job losses at the group. It was amazing that the staff were still helpful and polite as customers scrambled over stock in a 70 per cent off everything sale - everything must go . . . including jobs . . .

The figures wash over us these days; 1,000 more job losses . . . but bring it down to people and that is 1,000 souls who will be wondering if they can pay the bills and the mortgage, or buy toys for the kids at Christmas.

Go back a year or so ago and the world was being crippled by the greed, arrogance and recklessness of financiers and bankers when the sub-prime bubble burst.

In a sane world the banks would have gone bust and those in charge would have been unemployable and, in some cases, in jail.

Instead it was "Yes, Sir, No Sir, Three very large bags of cash full Sir" as Governments bailed them out. Since then Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have huffed and puffed a lot about excesses, bonuses, bonus culture and anything else that might catch the evening news but it seems that not only have they failed to blow down any of the houses of the little pigs but the little pigs are back in the trough as if nothing had ever happened. All helped of course by the fact that they have managed to sell all their junk, baggage and debts to us at no loss to themselves. To the financiers it was little more than a bad day at the office which has all been passed on to us.

All the empty rhetoric and threats of action and restraint from Gordon and Alistair seem to have had about the same effect, and indeed standing, as telling an alcoholic at a free bar not to drink too much.

Of course someone has to pay for reckless excesses and avarice on such a huge scale so perhaps the bankers will all raise their new bonuses and say thanks to the staff at Blacks, Sutton Coldfield, and of course the 1,000 staff of Blacks Leisure Group nationwide, as well as everyone else who has lost their job or had their life turned upside down, thanks for picking up the tab.