I do, however, have a vested interest in where and how much tax these people pay. My strong preference is that as much as possible goes to the UK Exchequer. I like the idea that traders in oil futures or currency options are, albeit unwittingly, funding a children’s hospital. This will not happen, however, if bonuses are, in effect, banned, or recipients treated like economic lepers. Neither is leaving the money inside the company a guarantee that the bank will become more stable: it merely invites shareholders to take bigger dividends. Nothing wrong with that, except in the case of HSBC and Barclays more than 50 per cent of the banks’ investors are based overseas. Thus half the payout would end up in foreign accounts. As Eric Joyce has discovered, squaring up to those with whom one has philosophical differences doesn’t always produce the right result.