Mark Steel: Let's ask florists for a credit rating
Governments should be made to recite their policies in front of a panel on TV every Saturday
Mark Steel
Commentator and stand-up comedian Mark Steel has presented several radio and television programmes, and appeared on Have I Got News for You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. In 2006 he published 'Vive La Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution', and in 2000 stood as a candidate in the London Assembly elections.
Wednesday 07 December 2011
Latest in Mark Steel
Opinion blogs
The Iraq Canard
The anti-war Blair rage is subsiding. The proof is that Lord Sumption’s lecture at the London ...
Victory over the “foreign court”
Jack Straw and David Davis have a joint article in the Telegraph today, urging the Government to ign...
Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market?
Pronouncements on sexual inequality in the UK are normally met with an eye roll by my generation. As...
Here's my question about economics – why should it send countries into panic when the bankers make pronouncements about countries' credit ratings, as they did yesterday? You could choose any layer of society at random and most people would trust them more than bankers, so it would make more sense if the BBC News started, "Private sector growth must be the priority for Europe, said the scouts today, although canoeists and wrestlers disagreed, and there was strong opposition from people with fetishes that involve celery. Robert Peston, what does this mean for the Government's inflation target?"
And banks aren't neutral observers, they're banks – the people who caused the mess. It's like someone who's wet themselves in a public building insisting they choose which mop the librarian fetches to clear up the puddle.
But the future of Europe has been entrusted to finance companies and institutions such as the IMF, and governments agree that the most crucial part of any strategy is to keep the financial markets happy. Otherwise, the government becomes helpless, as if they're stood by a cashpoint machine that tells them: "You have insufficient funds. Please contact the IMF for instructions."
So we might as well ask the IMF and banks to make all our decisions to start with, and not bother with the hassle of holding elections. We should at least make this process entertaining, and make governments recite their suggested policies in front of a panel from the financial markets, every Saturday night on ITV. Then someone from Goldman Sachs can say, "David and George you were MARVELLOUS, cutting pensions is delightful and, as you were shutting libraries, I could FEEL you growing. Next week, I'd like to see you try a little cut in the top rate of tax, just to show you can do it. I know you can do it with just a bit more practise. I'm giving you NINE."
Maybe the problem is, by some sort of coincidence, that all the people who run the financial institutions we have to keep content are rich. So it might be more democratic if the directors of these companies were chosen at random by lottery numbers. Seeing as they make all the decisions, it seems fair they should be run by a cross-section of the society affected by those decisions.
This would be much more representative of public feeling, as we were told on the news, say, "The head of Deloitte & Touche today gave his sternest warning yet on executive pay after studying the figures, saying 'HOW MUCH DID YOU SWIPE, YOU THIEVING GREEDY PARASITE, HOW MUCH, HOW BLOODY MUCH? YOU COULD BUY EVERYONE IN EUROPE A CURRY FOR THAT, YOU BURGLAR.' We're going over live to the Bank of England where the governor, Joyce the florist from Sheffield, is about to give her reaction to this statement in a press conference."
- 1 Hardeep Singh Kohli: For me, it is all about 'Gregory's Girl', a record of first love
- 2 DJ Taylor: How to spot a leftie – an idiot's guide
- 3 Paul Vallely: America and Pakistan do their dance of death
- 4 Patrick Cockburn: I fear this terrible massacre will be the beginning of a long civil war in Syria
- 5 The Daily Cartoon
- 6 Leading article: Ten questions for Jeremy Hunt
- 7 Dom Joly: Eurovision's host likes things puny or phoney. Perfect
- 8 John Rentoul: A textbook case of how not to defuse a scandal
- 9 Ben Chu: Europe has to become a 'country' – a new beast – if the euro is to survive
- 10 Alan George: The world waits for Damascus to go a step too far
- 1 Robert Fisk: The going price of getting away with murder... would $33m be enough?
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 Hardcore, hard-wired: How the prevalence of porn is changing our everyday lives
- 4 Principled Skinner rises above the fray
- 5 Fat? Really? Olympic hope laughs off official’s jibe – but others aren’t amused
- 6 News International 'tried to blackmail select committee'
- 7 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 8 Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
The secret life of the red carpet
Up and away – how '7 Up' went global



Comments