“BUT THE REAL WORD IS FULL OF POOR PEOPLE”, Say Bankers

BANKERS last night rejected calls to live in the real world insisting it was full of badly-dressed poor people with only one house.


Senior ministers launched a half-hearted attack on the banks yesterday insisting they had to act more responsibly if they were going to let them invest the profits they made on all the houses and investments they bought with taxpayers' money.

But the British Banker's Association hit back, claiming it would be impossible for its members to inhabit the same world as people who do not own cliff-top property in Sardinia and float around the Med on 60ft yachts.

Tom McGreed, head of equity distribution at Donnall-Scams said: "I got into investment banking because I'm actually allergic to the real world and my doctor says that if I live in it I could die. None of this is real. If I stop imagining it we would plummet the equivalent of 50 storey’s to our certain deaths."

He added: "Allow me to explain this simply. Yesterday I used exchange-traded derivatives to buy 140% of a property development that hasn't been built yet - and, crucially, will never be built. I then converted the hypothetical profits into ratio-spread bond futures and invested it in oil that hasn't been discovered yet - and, crucially, will never be discovered. At no point did I come within 200 yards of anything resembling reality - and that's why I should get the really big bonuses."

Julian I.N.D. More, chief economist at Takeall-Haddall, said: "There are, essentially, two universes existing in parallel at the same point in the space-time continuum. This means that we can see all of you - queuing for petty trivial things, eating out of packets, rushing around in the rain and cold and coughing violently - and sometimes you can even see us - but you can't touch us. And of course we live with the constant fear that if we touch you, we could become one of you. Our tans would fade, our teeth would separate and we'd forget how to order good quality wine. What a nightmare that would be"

He added: "All this talk of reality is very dangerous. It would be like forcing Peter Pan to work at a call centre and share a flat above an off-licence with his chubby, flatulent mate from university. It would kill him. Do you want to kill Peter Pan? Is that what this is all about? What's wrong with you lot? Get some sense of reality puhhh……leeeese”

As Told to Andy Baxter