Questions, questions, questions

Ben Brogan in today’s Daily Mail goes on precisely the right theme: translating these squillions into the real money – £16,000 per punter. The “that’s our money” anger picked up in the vox-pops around the country from members of the public has no echo in Parliament. This worries me – there’s something like £400 billion at stake here, and more scrutiny is required. It’s times like this I wish we had an American system, with a directly-elected prime minister, appointed Cabinet and separate legislature with its own mandate. America had plenty voices speaking up for its deeply suspicious taxpayers. In Britain, we don’t. I’m not saying I’m against the bailout. From what I’ve seen, I prefer it to the Paulson “liposuction on toxic waste” plan and, as the Daily Mail editorial argues, there was a case for doing it a year ago. But we have just written the biggest cheque in British peacetime history and we don’t know:

a) How it came to pass that banks were okay last week, but desperate now.