People still unsure how banks work

THE £6.5m bonus paid to Barclays chief Bob Diamond was last night criticised by people with no real grasp of capitalism.

Angry online word-flingers roundly condemned the sum which coincidentally was the jackpot amount won in the weekend’s lottery by somebody who did approximately 12 seconds’ work buying their ticket.

Julian Cook, from Donnelly-McPartlin, said: “I will cheerfully give a weeks’ wages to the first internet Paxman complaining about our bonus system that can even vaguely explain what it is we do for a living.

“Bob Diamond earned his bonus by maximising Barclay’s equity differential market by a factor of six whilst ensuring their contingent capital base stayed under 2.3% Or have I just made all of that up? You haven’t the faintest idea, have you?”

But taxi driver and part-time financial analyst Roy Hobbs said: “It’s all about fat cats and bailouts, isn’t it? We own Barclays along with all the other banks so where’s my £6.5 million? That’s the question I’m absolutely convinced I’m the first person to ever have asked.”

But Cook stressed: “Arsing off about the capitalist system is rather like a fish complaining about the preponderance of water in its life.

“Unless, of course, you’re somehow venting your dreary, uninformed fury on the internet via a computer made from twigs by a worker’s collective.

“And complaining that bankers are obsessed with making money is like saying lions are obsessed with eating gazelles.

“Perhaps you’d prefer us to sit around weaving fair trade wicker baskets and then use the profits from that to lend you cheap money so you can buy all those things you simply have to have.”

He added: “We could try communism but then Bob Diamond would earn millions from being in the politburo, only you’d know nothing about it because the newspaper has just the one story and it’s about how fucking great your community tractor is.

“You could try complaining, just like you are now, but then someone who works for Bob Diamond would shoot you in the face.”

 

 

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Everything boring except computers

THINGS that are not computers are little more than a tedious diversion from computers, according to new research.

The Institute for Studies compared things like all organisms, objects and every other aspect of the natural world to a computer with the internet on it and found them to be a load of rubbish.

They also conducted experiments where humans were made to choose between a series of things that might be once have been considered diverting – including a basket full of baby seals, an attractive, naked woman and a short time travel jaunt to witness a fight between a triceratops and a tyrannosaurus rex – and access to a computer with the internet on it.

Professor Henry Brubaker said: “The computer won each time, except in the case of one 30-year-old test subject who briefly chose the time travel trip but then immediately changed his mind after realising that without internet access he would be unable to immediately show off about it.

“Objectively we must conclude that a computer with the internet on it is better than anything else except perhaps a computer with slightly faster internet on it.”

He added: “Perhaps it’s because they don’t ask annoying questions like ‘Why don’t we ever have sex any more?”

Father-of-one Stephen Malley said: “What I like about computers is how they blur the line between doing work and wasting your life.

“I also enjoy waiting until my wife has gone to bed and then masturbating over low resolution video clips of depraved situations involving sad-eyed girls with heavily processed hair and a disproportionate number of men who look like naked armed robbers, while the cold, relentless glow of the LCD monitor illuminates my expressionless face like a sad moon.

“Well, not exactly enjoy. But I do seem to keep doing it over and over again.”

Housewife Nikki Hollis said: “I was wondering the other day whether, if the house burned down, I would save my laptop or another object, such as my husband.

“Then I realised that the house had in fact burned down around me and that I had been too engrossed in Facebook and pictures of nice tops to realise.

“At that point I saw my husband’s charred remains among the smouldering wreckage and rapidly updated my relationship status to ‘single’.”