Gordon Brown helped fuel Britain's banking crisis by pressuring City watchdogs into 'light-touch regulation', MPs were told today.

In damning evidence to the Treasury select committee yesterday, Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Turner said there was clear 'political' pressure not to question the business models of banks such as Northern Rock, HBOS and Bradford and Bingley.
The phrase 'light-touch regulation' was one often used by Mr Brown when chancellor and his then City minister Ed Balls. This was the headline news last tonight.

The truth is finally coming out bit by bit in this inquiry and flash Browns greasy fat mitts are all over this financial crisis. Unlike, America where there's a real attempt at having impartial oversight committees, in Britain it all goes back to the political party in power and with Liebour being the one in the frame we should have known it would all end in tears.

We'd like to think that the FSA & Treasury were independent as flash Gordon proclaimed them to be but the reality was an extreme political pressure put on them by liebour ministers. Just as the democrats before Bush drove the mortgage lenders to give mortgages to people that couldn't afford it so did Brown do the same to the Northern & Scottish banks where his power base lay.

As RBS prepared to announce a record-breaking £28bn loss today, its executives remained locked in discussions with the Treasury to establish how many shares the Edinburgh-based bank would need to issue to pay for the insurance, and how big a loss on its toxic assets it would have to bear before the protection took effect.RBS is due to announce its participation in the long-awaited scheme tomorrow when it releases the extent of its losses for 2008. Its bankers were finalising details of the deal to insure assets with the Treasury last night. The £300bn-plus of assets is more than previously expected.

And then we learn that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive and one of the cronies of flash Gordon Brown, is already drawing a pension of £650,000 a year, even though he is only 50, it emerged tonight. Goodwin was awarded a £16m pension pot by the bank when he left last year, allowing him to claim the pension with immediate effect.

I'll make this VERY personal. How can it be that Goodwin, who has contributed far more than most to the economic devastation being experienced by hundreds of thousands of our people, can walk away with a pension, at the age of 50-ish, of over half a million pounds a year.

I will settle instead for Goodwin and flash Gordon. If we can't string the bastard's up by their goolies from a lamp-post then let's at least claw the pension pot back and remove the other one from his office. After all, in principle, it's but a tiny fraction of what they "owe" to the tax payer for the damage which been done and is continuing to effect everyones life.