I’m raising two digits to the spivs and speculators

By Mike Lowson

Published:

THIS week, I am contemplating contacting a community of Trappist monks to see if they have a vacancy for a usually chatty, chirpy, cheerful chap who has recently developed a strong desire to escape to their world of silent contemplation.

There are times when the Trappists’ life of prayer and penance, coupled to a creed of personal poverty and few personal possessions, bears a growing resemblance to my own. I pray daily for the credit crunch to end while simultaneously suffering the penance of realising I should not have put my meagre savings in a shoogly bank, but instead in a secure kist under my bed.

The money-grabbing, low-life high-fliers who have been lining their own pockets by gambling with our money, not theirs, might have hastened a life of poverty and paltry possessions for millions.

Scotland’s only Trappist monastery, near Haddington, could soon have a lengthy queue of prospective members at the gate.

I wouldn’t be admitted, however, as a voluntary talking ban for me would be akin to asking Simon Cowell to take a vow of humility or asking Jeremy Clarkson to take a caravan holiday at the wheel of a Nissan Sunny. It just isn’t going to happen.

Most of our global money problems are based on too much talk, coupled with cynical speculation. If those greedy gossips who have brought the banking world crashing down had to remain silent, we would all be better off.

Rumours can be very unsettling. Imagine the impact of hearing a rumour that the two Jimmys had signed a 20-year contract to manage the Dons, or that Marks & Spencer was to focus on menswear only, or that John Prescott was to become Scottish secretary, or that £120million of funding for Aberdeen City Council’s school building programme was in the hands of a shaky Icelandic bank.

They are all unbelievable, of course, except the Icelandic one which is true, sadly. Poor old Aberdeen City Council. At times, it seems to be as much use as a one-legged man in a backside-kicking competition.

The spectre of the former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, being recalled to Gordon Brown’s government in any capacity is also unthinkable, although on a recent visit to Scotland he offered a glimpse of the best way to cope with the banking debacle.

As we live in a digital age, it was apt that Mr Prescott, heckled by SNP activists as he boarded a train in Glasgow, should provide a digital solution to the money mire.

In keeping with his colourful career and his “Two Jags” tag, he provided not one digital solution but two by raising two digits to the assembled crowd in a time-honoured gesture that causes amusement to some and deep offence to others.

Labour colleagues sprang to his defence, claiming that his gesture represented a Churchillian V-for-victory salute in a reference to the forthcoming Glenrothes by-election. Sorry, John, but I reckon you knew damn well it was a rather ruder gesture you meant.

The origin of the offensive version of the V-sign – palm inwards – is said to represent the defiant gesture of English longbowmen after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, but while that’s a good tale its origins could go back much further. In more recent history, Winston Churchill’s trademark V-for-victory salute – palm outwards – during World War II could certainly be interpreted either way, a fact of which he and John Prescott were well aware.

At risk of being hauled up before the beak for a breach of the peace, I intend to follow Mr Prescott’s lead and offer my own two-digit salute to one group of people this week. They are at liberty to interpret my gesture in any way they wish, of course.

In my sights are the fickle and fumbling financiers who have perpetrated this unnecessary financial mess in which we now find ourselves.

Were it not for their rumour-laden tittle-tattle and their appalling avarice, ordinary people’s money would still be safe in our banks and we would be concentrating on real world issues instead of the imminent collapse of creaky credit systems.

That UK taxpayers are now bailing them out is a disgrace, even if it is inevitable.

So to all those who are something in the City, I raise my fingers in a Prescott-style salute to show that your demise will be a victory for us all. It also indicates what I think of you.

If this sign of the times means the end of financial spivs and speculators, so much the better. That would be enough to make even a Trappist monk shout out in sheer joy.

Finally, to my heroes of the week, and it was with a mixture of pride, sadness and outrage that I saw five of the 400 surviving members of the Arctic convoys of World War II gather at Poolewe for the annual memorial service for their former shipmates. My sadness was that the number of these brave men is declining fast, but my outrage was that those who fought the twin evils of the enemy and the elements in unspeakably hostile conditions did not receive a campaign medal for their service on the brutal round-trips between Scotland and Russia, from which so many did not return.

In 2006, the veterans received an Arctic Star, a badge so small that it could have been a fairground trinket. It is an insult to their courage. Those who sailed in the Russian convoys deserve a real medal that can be worn on their chests with pride. They need it now, before it is too late.

The government should agree an Arctic convoy medal immediately. The whole lot would probably cost less than the wine list at a merchant bankers’ lunch, and do more good.

New defence minister John Hutton could do something really useful by the flick of a pen. He could transform the government’s vulgar V-sign to these heroic veterans into a welcome V-for-victory sign.

That would be a fitting tribute for those who gave so much to help secure the free world that our modern-day money men have since done so much to wreck.