Gordon Brown was actually seen to smile today, as it became clear that his latest scheme to drive the ungrateful population of Britain into abject penury had sucessfully slipped through under the radar.
"By and large, everyone was so busy punching the air and shouting, "Yeah, fuck you..." followed by the name of their credit card providers that they completely failed to attach any significance to the last bit," said a banker, who sensibly never uses the damned things. "Freezing interest rates on existing debts sounded great, as long as nobody remembers that their current rate is quite significantly higher than the rate of inflation."
"Everyone's also cheering the stuff about paying off the higher-rate expenditure first," he went on, "Even though it would probably be news to a lot of them quite how badly they get stung when they use their credit card in a cash machine."
"Of course, what completely escaped their notice as they gleefully hugged complete strangers was the bit about whacking up the minimum repayment to Christ only knows what," he continued with a grin. "This, apparently, will encourage people to repay their borrowings swiftly. Except, of course, that people are feeling the pinch already - so many of them won't be able to afford the higher payments, meaning they'll have to cut their cards up and convert the debt into a loan."
"Result: with fixed-term loans replacing the never-never on our books, the banks' recovery plans will look more financially attractive to investors!" he added, as he opened another bottle of Krug. "Too bad about all the peasants waving bye-bye to any hopes of ever getting off credit blacklists. The important thing is that this should do wonders for our share prices. Cheers Gordon, you bum-faced Scots git - you're not as stupid as you look after all. Keep this up, and maybe we'll change our minds about calling in the Labour Party's overdraft before next year's election campaign."
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