Lock, stocks, and 2 smoking Bishops

In an apparently co-ordinated assualt a fortnight ago, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York both waded into the fray surrounding the credit crisis. Dr Williams (in typically measured tone) called us to "recover some sense of the connection between money and material reality", while Dr Sentamu (in characteristically less-than-measured tone) called those responsible "bank robbers and asset strippers" and observed that "One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable".

They have a point. There is a current trend for comparing the money required to tackle global poverty to our spending on luxuries (America's annual expenditure on golf or Europe's on ice cream are two that spring to mind). But whether or not you are willing to forego your 4 iron or 99 flake, the sum is clearly dwarfed by what has been pumped into the banking system over the last few days.

This morning's Metro (London's normally celebrity obsessed free commuter rag) ran with a headline 'Bank Aid', and pointed out that the latest finanicial bail-out is alredy costing 30 times the amount raised by the global band aid / live aid initiative. Not bad for a paper who's other lead story involved Madonna's footwear. I blame the bishops, and a good thing too...