When Bankers Were Good: BBC2 Tues 9pm

bendix

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Cheers for that Bendi.

Now try watching the program & you may want to look up the history of purchasing your place next to God.

Devoid of all facts you most definitively are. You may want to try educating yourself.

Start with churchs & donations & the history of. Then apply the same logic to charitable organisations.

Oh..... Don't bother then.... Just be a rude *anker.

Devoid of all facts? DEVOID of all facts??

That takes the biscuit.

You make a ridiculously trite assertion that bankers don't believe in heaven, and you accuse me of being devoid of facts.

OK . please point me to a few things:

1) What factual source you used to make this claim, and

2) How you have become to omniscient as to claim to have a grasp of the average 'bankers' religious beliefs?

I'm genuinely intrigued. Add to that the fluffy thinking around what defines the term 'banker' - is it Fred Goodwin and the head of Goldman Sachs, or is it the tens of thousands of counter staff who work in banks also - and you'll understand why your assertion deserves to be scrutinised a bit more than you're comfortable with.

Please educate me.

John_Pierpoint

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

Another thought was how real is the need in say the UK compared with real poverty (as distinct from relative) in the 3rd world.

Yes we have made some progress in London since this retired merchant/sea captain was disgusted by finding babies bodies thrown out on the midden pile at the corner of the street.

[Those were the days of shouting "gardae loo" (dog French for "watch out for the water") before emptying the chamber pot out of the window) and major junctions had the predecessor to the lolly pop lady called "a crossing sweeper".].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coram%27s_Fields

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coram_Foundation_for_Children

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundling_Hospital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_sweeper

Interesting to see the trade of crossing sweeper going the way of the hand loom weaver, as the omnibus made city travel more available to the middle classes, thus depressing the pay to sweepers.
[For those who watched the records of the Old Bailey dramatised as Garrow's Law last Sunday].

Kennyboy66

bendix wrote: »

Devoid of all facts? DEVOID of all facts??

That takes the biscuit.

You make a ridiculously trite assertion that bankers don't believe in heaven, and you accuse me of being devoid of facts.

OK . please point me to a few things:

1) What factual source you used to make this claim, and

2) How you have become to omniscient as to claim to have a grasp of the average 'bankers' religious beliefs?

I'm genuinely intrigued. Add to that the fluffy thinking around what defines the term 'banker' - is it Fred Goodwin and the head of Goldman Sachs, or is it the tens of thousands of counter staff who work in banks also - and you'll understand why your assertion deserves to be scrutinised a bit more than you're comfortable with.

Please educate me.

I'm guessing you didn't actually watch the program.

However, it is self evident that religeous belief in Victotian times as much greater than now. You could see this from church attendance (50%), literature, dominant morality at the time and the scale of charitable donations which had a religeous dimension or olbligation (accepting Mr Mumbles point that the state has usurped this through redistribute taxation starting with Lloyd George).

Unless bankers as a group are so special it would follow that faith has declined amongst them as well as the rest of the population.

There were also many businesses run and owned by Quakers (Lloyds, Barclays, Rowntree, Frys Clarks shoes etc) who took a leading role in many social campaigns (abolition of slavery and much more)

It would be a rarity these days for any company to identify itself as overtly religeous.

Diffilcult to educate anyone with a close mind though.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

I'm guessing you didn't actually watch the program.

Nope he never even bothered watching. Hasn't got a clue about history. Just feels the need to biatch whilst still remaining an ignorant *anker.

By the way bendi. It is not my job to educate the thick only to point out the massive (& I mean massive) gaping holes in their education.

Watch the program & then comment back & you might have half a clue as to what you are talking about.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I enjoyed the programme. I didn't know about the Quaker origin of many UK banks or the Peabody homes, or the woman on the £5 note (had a sudden realisation I couldn't name anyone on any note, and I pride myself on my bank of useless trivia), so felt well instructed. I'm sure there's mileage in a series about Victorian ideals of philanthropy and society compared with modern attitudes to wealth, welfare and charity.

I think Bendix's original point was that stating bankers should "cough up" or have a rude word on their tombstone is a lazy and unhelpful contribution to the wider debate. Should benevolence be forced, painful and public? What about people who become ridiculously rich in other spheres?

mustrum_ridcully

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

I enjoyed the programme. I didn't know about the Quaker origin of many UK banks or the Peabody homes, or the woman on the £5 note (had a sudden realisation I couldn't name anyone on any note, and I pride myself on my bank of useless trivia), so felt well instructed. I'm sure there's mileage in a series about Victorian ideals of philanthropy and society compared with modern attitudes to wealth, welfare and charity.

I think Bendix's original point was that stating bankers should "cough up" or have a rude word on their tombstone is a lazy and unhelpful contribution to the wider debate. Should benevolence be forced, painful and public? What about people who become ridiculously rich in other spheres?

There is Ian Hislop's Age of the Do-Gooders a series examining what 19th Century "do-gooders" did the help the country (last nights programme could be considered a part of the series)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wkmh4

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Thanks mustrum, must have missed that. It was an interesting era, what with the Fabians and all the moralising and the immense wealth on the back of the Empire.

Kennyboy66

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

I think Bendix's original point was that stating bankers should "cough up" or have a rude word on their tombstone is a lazy and unhelpful contribution to the wider debate. Should benevolence be forced, painful and public? What about people who become ridiculously rich in other spheres?

In Victorian times those who didn't "cough up" could find themselves in a Dickens novel or satirised in a cartoon regardless of where they made their money.

I didn't know about Lloyd George's attack on Lord Rothschild - which seemed a splendid speech (people budget 1909).

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

I think Bendix's original point was that stating bankers should "cough up" or have a rude word on their tombstone is a lazy and unhelpful contribution to the wider debate. Should benevolence be forced, painful and public? What about people who become ridiculously rich in other spheres?

No.

Bendis' original point shows his complete lack of understanding & knowledge.

Also I fully support having the word "tw@" inscribed on tombstones of all bankers that received massive amounts of gold for selling vast amounts of muck painted as gold. I am even more in support of it for those who feel they do not have to give it all back because they.... don't have to......

TruckerT

I think Hislop's programme illustrated the idea that 'however much things appear to change, they actually remain the same' - (there is a natty French phrase which I cannot right now remember!)

So maybe we are actually in some kind of economic cycle which has not yet been identified because it is something like a 200-year cycle, which is only just completing it's first revolution since Capitalism began

In the 19th century, the Capitalists accepted the need for them to provide for 'Society', in some shape or form...

In the 20th century, that responsibility was assumed by Government and Local Authority

Towards the end of the 1900s, Mrs Thatcher declared that there was no such thing as 'Society'

In more recent years, the Tory leadership has been actively trying to promote the idea of a Big Society, just at the same time as Government and Local Authority has been bankrupted by the Capitalists

Yesterday - the same day as Hislop's programme - the High Pay Commision warned of the corrosive effects of the widening class divide, and that within 5-10 years we would be back to Victorian levels of division. The Dean of St. Paul's, interviewed on Hislop's programme (before his resignation), also used the 'corrosive' word

Today, the coalition government has announced measures to weaken the concept of secure employment

Sometime soon, maybe, the Banks will work out that they do actually need some kind of empathy with ordinary people

TruckerT