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@AdamM
When the banks collapsed it was suddenly no problem to get hold of £600bn
Actually, I think you'll find that your grandchildren will still be paying for that £600bn... maybe if the government had pissed away their extraordinary income from stamp duty, inheritance tax, etc on the back of unstainable increases in property prices (as well as continuing to increase government borrowing almost every year) the country would have been better placed to weather this downturn. But oh no, we had Gordon's 'Golden Rule' (the rules of which kept changing year on year so he could borrow more as Treasurer).
Gordon may keep saying that 'it's not my fault' that the world economies have ended up as they have, but it was his influence that resulted in years of easy credit and light touch regulation together with excessive government spending. It's not his influence that will result in the UK's national debt being a burden on our grandchildren. Fuck him. I'm with the French and Germans at the moment: we can't afford any more increases in spending, but we definitely need better regulation in future. I'm not too bothered by the bonus stuff, I am worried that any bank thought that mortgages to the value of 125% of house prices or >4x salary were in anyone's long term interest. What people need to realise is that houses are grossly overvalued right now (~120% increase in house prices over the past decade while salaries went up ~20%) and a medium term reduction in their price, while undoubtedly painful now, will be in everyone's best interests.