George's broken wand

I'm assuming that "project Merlin", was about Georgie Osborne working his magic to get cash out of the banks in exchange for shutting up about that awful subprime/toxic debt business.
Well, the batteries are surely flat in the glow-stick wand stored in the No 11 umbrella stand.
First, I was distinctly underwhelmed by the £800 million boost to the nation's coffers which resulted from the increase to the the bank levy on Tuesday. Ok, so there was a day when that would have sounded like a lot of dough to your man on the street. But the populace is far more clued up about the cost of things these days - we've all seen those graphics in the Times and the Guardian about how much the Government spends on defence/education/forests/wallpaper. We all know that Goldman Sachs earnt more than $13bn in 2009, just by messing about with our wonga.
Then there came the big "agreement" between Georgie and some of the banking big guns. Their bonus pools would be smaller than last year. Except for employees abroad. And they didn't really have to lend all those extra billions to small and medium sized businesses if they didn't really want to. They would throw the poor £200million for Cameron's Big Society Fund. Perhaps this will pay for tea and cakes for the jobless volunteers who will now be running the nation's children's homes, drop-in centres and police stations.

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