By James Hickling

Following on from Lord Turner’s comments last week, bank bonuses are once again in the news. I trust I’m not the only one who finds the government’s hypocrisy on this issue nauseating. They’ve been wasting taxpayers’ money on all manner of frivolities – funded, in large part, by tax from City banks – and now they have the gall to talk about investigating the problem of “excessive pay” (however that’s defined) and “socially useless” (again, defined how?) banking activity.

This is topped off with calls from Brown and others for greater “international cooperation” on this issue, presumably so that banks and hedge funds can’t just bugger off to Switzerland or Singapore once the EU and the US have finished regulating them to death. How these countries are going to be coerced into cooperating is another question. If they have any sense, they’ll tell Brown, Obama, Sarkozy et al to take a hike.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that hedge funds are starting to relocate from London. Anyone who wants to live in a prosperous Britain should hope that this trickle doesn’t become a flood.