I repeat my point above. The Government did not and therefore there is nothing to 'realise'. Please use facts instead of the sound bites fed to us all by the media.

I recommend the NAO July report.

This link is also interesting

[Link]

Another really crucial point is what would the Government have done with the money had it not bailed out the Banks. We missed out on a generation of investment.

I am not saying it was the wrong thing to do, in all probability needs must. But it has affected us way more than people realise.

Edited by Mapletree (29 Dec 2017 5.02pm)

Edited by Mapletree (29 Dec 2017 5.04pm)

Bailing out the banks was the best of a bad deal. The alternative was to let the banks go bust. I assume that Labour would have protected small savers up to about 75 / 85k. However
- Any individual with savings over the threshold would have lost the lot.
- Any investors / share holders / bond holders would have lost the lot meaning the markets losing confidence in the UK.
- Thousands of ordinary people who work for high street banks would have been laid off through no fault of their own. I worked at Barclays HQ for 3 years the average salary of the folks on the tills outside of London was 16k hardly big money.
- Thousands more people would have lost their jobs indirectly. There are many jobs in Canary Wharf which are only there because of the bankers e.g. shops.
- Thousands of businesses would be in jeopardy. The liquidator's only concern is to get back as much money as they can. Business loans would have been called in companies and people with cash flow problems would not get any leeway.
- Unemployment would go up and the economy would take a hit as less tax money to spend.
- Because the economy is tanking the Chancellor would need to borrow money from the markets to pay the increased benefits bill. Guess what? The markets are made up of the very investors the government knocked. They are not going to want to lend money and if they do they will demand a high rate of interest. I saw this when Argentina knocked the American banks in the 1980's. It killed their economy and of course the ordinary folk suffer.

I could go on as I have previously stated I wasn't happy bailing the banks out. At least this way we could borrow money at a low rate of interest and to some extent the governments (Labour and Tory) have managed the economy. As for getting our money back we will eventually and there is an argument that says the banks should be taxed more to compensate for the grief they caused.

Except Lyons is talking about Lloyds and the NAO report is about RBS.

NAO Report:

''Q: Did the support achieve value for money for the taxpayer?
We reported in 2009 that “if the support measures had not been put in place, the scale of the economic and social costs if one or more major UK banks had collapsed is difficult to envision. The support provided to the banks was therefore justified, but the final cost to the taxpayer of the support will not be known for a number of years.”

We have also produced a series of more focused evaluative reports on the value for money achieved by individual parts of the support schemes. Whilst we believe that the overall support package was justified, these reports look at individual aspects of the support. They include:

The first sale of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland (July 2017)
The £13 billion sale of former Northern Rock assets (July 2016)
The first sale of shares in Lloyds banking group (December 2013)
The creation and sale of Northern Rock plc (May 2012)
Stewardship of the wholly-owned banks: buy-back of subordinated debt (March 2011)
HM Treasury: The Asset Protection Scheme (December 2010)
HM Treasury: The nationalisation of Northern Rock (March 2009)
We will continue to update Parliament on the status of the support schemes and major transactions, where appropriate.''

The Channel 4 report is slightly more up to date.

I think that is a too specific point as in practical sense it cannot be ring fenced just for NHS at the front end.
There are many facets of the NHS so who decides which has priority.

I waz just responding to a no one wants to pay more tax comment.
Many people would if it were of benefit.