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Gibbering lunacy about banking in The Guardian

Ooooh, yes, we need a radical reform of banking.

So, what should that radical reform be?

The truth is, we won\’t get a banking system that is socially and economically useful until we harness public anger at what banks have done – and continue to do – with a determined political class that asks banks what measures they are putting in place to avert another catastrophe. This determined (and as yet mythical) political class should also tell the banking sector that its job first and foremost is to be a public utility. One which looks to long-term investment, which nurtures its customers and its local economic bases and does this through offering a real choice of banking (another reason Northern Rock should be kept either as a mutual or as a publicly owned bank with clear objectives, including support for our ailing local economies) and which is far more transparent about what it does with our money.

Umm, that\’s it? We really ought to do something?

So, what was the financial markets training of the one who brings us this pearl of wisdom?

Lindsay Mackie is a consultant for the New Economics Foundation. She is on the board of English PEN and chairs its Readers and Writers Programme.

OK, so it\’s a numptie from the nef.

Lindsay has worked as a journalist for The Guardian, specialising in race and home affairs, film critic with The Herald and arts feature writer with The Scotsman.

She subsequently worked on Hansard campaigns with Lord Lester, young people\’s citizenship campaigns, an education campaign to set up Reading for Pleasure clubs in secondary schools and Reading for Pleasure seminars for schools at The Guardian Newsroom. She is currently working with UK Film Council on a programme to set up film clubs in all UK schools. Lindsay also sits on the board of English PEN.

At nef Lindsay leads work on the Campaign for a Post Bank and the 10:10 Cities project.

Umm, right, so now we\’ve an arts journalist informing us all how to reform the financial system. As we can see, decades of useful experience can be brought to bear here.

So, err, why is one of the nation\’s great newspapers offering column space to someone so woefully uninformed?

Could it be because Ms. Mackie is in fact the wife of the editor of the newspaper, a certain Alan Rusbridger?

Actually, that might explain why The Guardian prints so much drivel from the nef in general, eh?

At which point an evil thought occurs: if you really wanted Ms. Mackie\’s head to explode you could get one of the nef peeps to point out to her the following. \”We don\’t actually care what you write love. You\’re only here because of who your husband is.\”

And given that they\’ve got an arts journalist running their banking campaign it\’s difficult to shake off the idea that that\’s the real situation.

8 thoughts on “Gibbering lunacy about banking in The Guardian”

  1. When they came for the Guardianistas, I did not speak up. In fact, I laughed like a drain as they were herded into camps where they had to eat their own locally-grown food.

  2. So Much For Subtlety

    On the other hand she does serve a useful purpose – she marks out, clearly, every single organisation that needs to be abolished or at least defunded.

    How else would we recognise the trash?

  3. A lot of very nasty people have got away with saying that the recession is the fault of the bankers. It is barely more honest that the German claim that losing WW1 was the fault of the Jews.

    The recession is because half the economy is money spent by the government which not only net priduces nothing but has an enormous negative effect on the economy through bureaucracy criminalising wealth creation.

  4. My God this stuff is frustrating. In the first place, she is confusing Virgin’s “lounge” concept – which is entirely related to customer experience – with some very different, and much more complicated, issues such as lending practices and securitization. Secondly, it is pretty clear that her litany of complaints is not backed by any knowledge whatsoever of the economics or institutions that make up the modern banking system.

    The press here in the States is rife with it as well. The frustrating part about it is that the 24/7 blather about “social justice” (not to mention the demands that bankers be locked up by attainder) sucks all the air out of a needed conversation about real banking reform. The result is an unending, undirected, uninformed and innumerate conversation about critical economic issues that goes nowhere yet goes on forever.

    The irony of her article, though, is that despite Richard Branson’s billions, I don’t think he is someone whose beliefs are necessarily in opposition to hers. But by taking every opportunity to kick sand in his face, she just exacerbates the problem rather than seeking the kind of consensual solution that all leftists claim to love.

    Heaven help us from these entitled, self-appointed, know-it-alls.

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