The original modest proposal was written during the Irish potato famine by Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver's Travels. It's a satire where he suggests that the victims of the famine should eat their children in order to survive. It's written as if it is a serious proposal.
This proposal came to mind while I watched the BBC Panorama programme yesterday, Did the Bank Wreck My Business? Not only do they seem to have done some extremely questionable things, but then paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses to the people who did them. I also found a whole trail of articles on the Channel 4 news site - just type channel 4 rbs fraud into google.
The banks called to task of course deny any wrong doing. Well they would, wouldn't they? I was also angered by the recent clip of the Channel 4 news presenter standing outside RBS saying that he was tired of standing there saying that they had broken the law (this time deliberately defrauding customers if I remember right) and knowing that nothing would happen.
You can get angry about this, but because our country is run by a bunch of old Etonians who all went to the same schools it won't have much of an effect. There is one thing you can do though.
Buy shares. Then work with other people to bring these people to account. Fire them. Limit their pay.
If you can't afford to buy shares then I've been thinking we could start a Right Thinking Fund where we can all put a few quid in and the fund buys the shares. The fund's charter would be to hold the organisations whose shares it buys to account.
That's right - use their system against them. Call them out. Force them to have people with some moral integrity on their boards. Fire the bastards.
It only needs a little snowball. The legislators are too afraid to do anything serious - so let's go round them.