Why condescending? You mean I don't get hot under the collar about disagreements but try to keep reasonably polite?

How I'd put it would amend your formula, Ringer: "No one but a fool denies that the government, under whose regulation the banks were acting, were at fault but banks have the ultimate responsibility for their own actions". Not an enormous difference really.

But for the Tories to talk as if they had not backed deregulation all the way and then some is breathtaking chutzpah.

But more significantly, the issue now (and the one the thread is set out to discuss) is not how we got here, but what should be done now, and what should not be done.

Is it actually true that there is no alternative to eating the weaker members of the crew ?