Cash carousel just isn't slowing down.

Byline: Joan Burnie

TERRIFIC: It's Bolly and bonuses all round at the banks again. The greed carousel birls on. Let the good times roll.

Not that they've ever stopped for the top bankers.

Tough, of course, that they're not rolling for everyone else - unemployment rising, decent businesses going bust because the banks refuse lend to them, But hey, pull up the ladder, we're always all right chaps.

So when the bankers make short-term profits by taking enormous risks with other people's money, which may - or there again may not - in the end come off,they get handed big bucks.

When they make a miscalculation and bring the country to the brink of bankruptcy, there's no need to worry either, because the Treasury will keep throwing money at them.Which means bankers coin it in sunny financial weather and do ditto when it pours.

Profits? Loss? It's much the same to them.

The taxpayer picks up the bill because the banks have got us by the short and curlies. They know no government will ever let them go bust.

Nor does it matter how much ordure we heap on them. They're the biggest benefit junkies going, but they're totally without shame.

It's not just Fred the Shred and his grossly inflated pension - mind you if we go to court to grab back wounded soldiers' compensation, why can't the lawyers take him on too?

We, supposedly, own RBS, don't we? But then, why have none of the bank bosses paid the price for their gross mismanagement and profligacy?

They should, at the very least have been booted out for their incompetence, if not put in the dock and forced to explain exactly how they managed to mislay trillions.Where did all that money go? Is there some large pot of gold sitting under a rainbow somewhere?

As far as I can see, most of those responsible are still in clover. If they did get the push, they either, like HBOS's Andy Hornby waltzed into nice new jobs or leave, like Fred, with enormously enhanced pensions.

Of course, the little people in their organisations, those who were in no way responsible for the crisis, will lose their jobs.Thousands of them are expendable.

Get rid of them and it means another few millions for these masters of the universe who still think they're worth their money.

We had one of them this week, John Varley, of Barclays, explaining that bankers are like world-class footballers who have to be tempted to perform with multi-million pound packages.

Leaving aside the fact that a star player who doesn't do the business gets kicked out with little more than his boots, what appears to have passed MrVarley by, is that those who never saw the crash coming, were already earning mega-bucks.

And they are still there. What makes him think that filling these chancers' boots with even more cash - our cash - will make it any different next time?

For as far as I can tell, no one is prepared to do a damn thing about ensuring there won't be a next time. See, if we tightened the rules, stopped the bonuses, it would stifle the bankers' enterprise.

The very same enterprise which got us into this mess. Thus, the mad money merry-go-round keeps spinning.

GOOD to see it's all change at the Commons, where the new Speaker, John Bercow, is settling so well into the job.

Bercow, who replaced Michael Martin, promised if he was elected that the expenses culture would no longer be tolerated. So that's why he's just spent close on pounds 21k of our money on the already lavishly refurbished, rent-free apartment that goes with the job.

Obviously the pounds 6800 he claimed for a new sofa, the pounds 760 on cushions, the lamp shades at a modest pounds 275, the pounds 3880 on planters and so on and on, are absolutely essential to his position.

Yes, with someone such as Honest John in charge, we can expect no more bath plugs, moat cleaning and duck hoses.What a Berc.