The Grumpy Old Blog

Very depressing news. It would appear that some of the "uneducated masses" who have flocked to Syria on a 'Jihadiholiday' are less than impressed with the brutality of the IS regime and its management. Leaving behind good honest regular meals such as Chicken Cottage and Subway (Halal) in favour of sweet and sour gravel and camel dung au lait is not going down too well. Also, not being allowed to glue to facebook, instagram and twitter (there's the thing to do - bomb the reg ion's phone masts into oblivion) 24 hours a day in favour of praising the local kebab shop Alah's Akbar is really not going down too well at all. Plus, not being allowed lippie, having to wear a black bin-bag 24/7 and the only available TV being "Stars in their Semtex" , "The only way is Sharia", "Breaking Backs" and "I'm an Ayatollah get me out of here" is slightly aggravating some of the nice young female suicide bombers ...

So the publicly-owned (i.e. bailed-out by the Government during the banking crisis of 2008) Royal Bank of Scotland announces its 7th successive annual loss, this time one of £3.5billion, for 2014, as near as makes no difference now a total loss of £50billion over the seven years. Yet the bank is still to pay out bonuses from a pool of £421m, which, hey, big deal, is some 21% smaller than it was in 2013. So despite 7 years of losses on a scale that you and I can’t really com prehend, it continues to hang on to its HR-orientated pathetic statement of ‘bonuses and salaries to attract the best’. Any fool can take a huge salary and enormous bonus for helping to sustain a 7th successive annual loss that’s the equivalent total of the combined GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of Afghanistan, the Bahamas, Cyprus, Greenland, Iceland and Malta. Yet no one does anything about continually rewarding total and abject failure.