If you’ve arrived here expecting to find a well-researched and informative article on the modern banking system and the current mire within which it is sinking ever deeper and deeper, I would turn back now, my friend. You won’t find anything in the next few paragraphs that’s backed up by a single shred of researched evidence.

To be honest, I couldn’t be arsed, as I didn’t particularly wish to sully myself any further by peering into the festering pit populated by the scum, the Flash Harrys, and the hooray Henrys that make up the world of banking. Plus, any attempts at reading more than one line of information regarding the world of banking veers me ever closer toward that coma I promised myself in No. 29 So Bored my Eyes Bled.

If however, like me, you don’t need evidence and just go on instinct, then read on. After all, isn’t that how real journalists work?

Anyway, Jeffman was reading an article by the late, great Hunter S. Thompson entitled “The Hellfire Club” where he discussed the phenomena of ‘Rake’s Clubs’ in 18th Century England in relation to the disgraced 1980’s evangelist and vile hypocrite, Jimmy Swaggart.

These ‘Rake’s Clubs’ were made up of the sons of the aristocracy, who after getting mortally drunk would pile out onto the streets beneath the cover of darkness and rape, maim, and beat any other human being unfortunate enough to cross their path, regardless of sex or age. They got away with it for so long, because back then only the rich were allowed to carry swords, meaning they wouldn’t meet with any opposition, not even from the Watch (pre-cursor to the police force), who were also fair game for a right royal rogering.

Eventually the law of the land did catch up with these loathsome lords and banned the forming and membership of such clubs…

… But it would seem that they are very much alive and well in this day and age. Where the son’s of the aristocracy carry on this tradition of rape, maiming and beating with equal disregard and arrogance, albeit at a hypothetical club called the stock exchange where the unfortunate victims have been the savings of you and I.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…

Hard to believe, I know, but this nonsense doesn’t write itself. There’s a crack team of writers, blacklisted from every other writing gig in town following an ill-advised attempt at writing the definitive Gary Glitter biography, who labour day and night to assemble the dandy delight that sits before you now.

But obviously, such frivolity and complete lack of respect for grammatical law has to start somewhere. And indeed it does. With the humble Pukka Pad. The thinking man’s writer’s weapon of choice. Hot dingle!

But horror of horrors, it would seem that not even as innocuous a slice of stationary as this is immune from the ravages of greedy businesses hiking their prices and laying the blame firmly at the door of the credit crunch/ economic crisis/ the price of oil/ impending recession/ the end of the world. Please delete as appropriate.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…

Another day and another bank I’ve never heard of collapses. More chinless wonders face up to the fact that it’s not just the working classes who can lose their livelihoods.

I’m expecting this to have a knock-on effect which will ultimately see me out of pocket, and leaves me wondering how all these high-paid merchant bankers (cockney rhyming slang) find it so easy to lose something that doesn’t exist in the first place. A few zeros on a computer screen shouldn’t be too hard to retrieve. Have any of them actually thought of looking in the recycle bin? I’ll wager a double-click on that little icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen will put a swift end to this economic crisis and we’ll all be back to normal.

But until those merchant bankers (cockney rhyming slang) pull their heads out of their arses and implement Jeffman’s patented financial rescue package, we have to make do with the continued talk of credit crunches, recession, housing market crashes, the cost of petrol, and the end of cheap food. But there’s another major casualty we all seem to have neglected in this time of economic uncertainty. One that doesn’t make the headlines or fill the column inches of the national newspapers. I refer, of course, to Jeffman’s drinking budget.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…