Are you ready for the seventh of December?

Image by edwin.11 via Flickr

Tuesday the seventh of December 2010 is when you can make a stand.

You are, no doubt, somewhat less than appreciative of government action which preserves the ability of bailed out banks to pay vast bonuses to the crooks they employ at the expense of the general taxpayer...who is, no doubt, suffering from the said banks' unwillingness to advance one kopek of the money garnered from said taxpayer to assist same in promoting its business affairs despite the general creditworthiness of the taxpayer concerned.

Eric Cantona has a suggestion.

You remember Eric Cantona...surely?

The footballer whose psychoanalyst suggested that he play football in England rather than in France after calling each and every member of the French Football Federation  'an idiot' at  a disciplinary hearing after throwing the ball at the referee on disagreeing with that august person's decision....he got a three month suspension rather than the one month normal on such abnormal occasions..
I reckon the panel was lucky he that he wasn't  carrying his football boots at the time of the hearing given his reactions to disappointment while he played for Nimes.

He then played in the English Football League with much success..the English are used to eccentrics...until, after being sent off for a foul that managed to attract a referee's attention, he encountered some antagonism in the crowd which he countered by a Kung Fu kick...

Subsequent media attention was countered with the quote

'When seagulls follow the trawler  its because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.'
This alone tells you that he was French footballer, not an English one, even though his family's origins are in Sardinia and Spain...so that he, from an immigrant family, was a forerunner of the famous 'Black, Blanc, Beur, (Black, White, Mahgrebi) team which won the World Cup in 1998.
The team which was supposed to represent the triumph of integration of foreigners into French society.

Just don't look at the Paris suburbs since.

Well,since his glory days Cantona  has appeared in many commercials, has been a small part film actor and has produced a film himself.

Cantona has reacted to the economic crisis too....

He is of the opinion that the lack of  effective control of the banks...because the big banks control governments...has let banks, rather than governments control economic policy..to the detriment of the average chap.

Well the IRA could have told him that banks control governments years ago...recent experience just confirms it.

The IRA contested British control of Northern Ireland...and they took  heed of the  tenets of public international  law, which lays down characteristics which enable a state to be recognised as such....control of its borders, taxation, police functions - thus the kneecapping operatives and slush finds - but finding this not to be sufficient, they attacked the British mainland.

I have never been altogether clear which bombings were the work of the IRA and which were the work of British security services....and Wikileaks wasn't around at the time to enlighten me....but one of the few happy memories of the time was the picture of the cabinet ministers emerging from 10 Downing Street after the IRA had landed a mortar bomb in the garden of the Prime Minister's official residence, launched through the roof of a builders' van from a road nearby.
They all looked as though a swift change of underwear would have been in order and I remember thinking that a few more near misses might make them a little less happy to send poor people's children off to fight America's wars.

However, attacking civilians in pubs or government ministers in their bunkers brought no results...so the IRA turned their attention to the City of London...home of the banks and the financial services industry.

Two bombs in the City was all it took to bring the British government to heel.
A more impressive demonstration of the power of the bankers could not have been desired.....

Until the round of bail outs in recent years.

Anyway, Eric Cantona has had enough of banks... their greed, their criminality and their deleterious effects on society.
Not for him demonstrating in the streets, though.
He, being French, knows just what a con that is apart from which he doesn't have a union to design the placards. (here)

He  has a much better idea.

If everyone were to withdraw their money from the banks, he says, the banks would collapse.
This would be, in the words of 1066 and All That, a Good Thing and Utterly Memorable.

He wants everyone to go to their bank on Tuesday the seventh of December and withdraw their ukkers.
The idea being that if everyone does it on the same day the banks can't play pass the parcel and shore each other up while waiting for governments to ride to the rescue once again.

Fiendishly clever, Monsieur Cantona....and you notice it has a very French twist to it.

I suspect that Monsieur Cantona is a customer of Credit Agricole....which generally does not open on Mondays.

So, get that mattress slit open...it's hour has come!