SO, Alistair Darling wants bankers not to pay themselves big bonuses this side of the election, does he? Adopting his best Dr Finlay bedside manner, the Chancellor has told them that large payouts could become an issue in the run-up to polling and is urging them to exercise self-restraint.

Yes, but why have City earnings become such a hot potato? Is it because politicians, including Darling and his colleagues, have been lining up to condemn them? The latest was Lord Myners, the City minister who occupies an office just along the corridor from Darling in the Treasury.

Bankers, said Myners, had failed to show “contrition or humility” over their role in the global financial crisis.

They enjoyed unacceptable levels of income, he added, because of poor policing of the City.

But who is responsible for the regulation? Only the Government. That would be the same one that has an election to fight and is now telling the bankers to do it themselves.

Could that be precisely because for all their bluster, ministers have no idea how bonuses should be controlled, that in practice any attempt at capping is unworkable and they may end up simply driving banks and financial businesses away from London?

The banks should tell Darling to put up or shut up.

Yes, my $1.2m office refit was in Thain

CITY Spy reckons John Thain, the former chief executive at Merrill Lynch, has never spent a Sunday struggling with an Allen key and impossible-to-follow assembly instructions. After being roundly condemned for overspending when he splashed out $1.2 million renovating his office as the bank teetered, he now admits the refit “was a mistake”, adding: “I'm sorry that I did that. If I had that to do over again, I'd furnish it in Ikea.”

Hmmm. His order included a $35,000 commode, which Thain claimed was “not a toilet, it's a chest of drawers.” John, Ikea has a three-drawer chest for £29.90.

* HAS Royal Bank of Scotland learned its lesson after spending £300,000 on wining and dining suits at Wimbledon? City Spy only asks because a corporate hospitality firm has been in touch, admitting that “due to a cancellation” it has space for 30 guests to attend next March's Cheltenham National Hunt Festival Gold Cup Day for “only” £10,470 — down from £17,550. No word on who it was that cancelled...

Portland in a spin over pay-TV

BAD blood in the ultra-competitive world of pay-TV where the dominant player, Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB, is coming under siege on two fronts — from media regulator Ofcom and from rival firms such as Virgin Media, BT and Top-Up TV. Sky dubbed the pay-TV firms “the Gang of Four” when they also included the now-defunct Setanta.

Theoretically, these firms aren't a gang and act independently of each other when complaining about Sky's vice-like hold over premium sports and movie channels. Yet uncannily, Virgin and Top-Up seem to be singing from the same hymnsheet.

Here's Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett, quoted in The Guardian on 18 September: “Ofcom's proposals aren't about subsidising Sky's competitors. They're about creating a competitive market in which consumers aren't harmed by Sky's ability to charge unfair prices or manipulate the distribution of its sport and movie channels.” And here's David Chance, chairman of Top-Up TV, quoted in the Financial Times on 27 August: “Ofcom's proposals are not about subsidising Sky's competitors. They are about creating a competitive market in which consumers are not harmed by Sky's ability to charge unfair prices or manipulate the distribution of its sport and movie channels.”

How very enterprising to recycle quotes word for word! Perhaps Tim Allan's Portland PR agency, which is rumoured to have links to both Virgin and Top-Up, can shed some light on this curious state of affairs...

* DESPITE being close to would-be ITV boss Tony Ball, Tim Allan has insisted to City contacts that he is not spinning on Ball's behalf. Instead it is said that Tim Burt of Brunswick has been leading the PR effort. The speculation is that if Ball is ultimately successful — and there's no guarantee of that — he could bring Burt on board at ITV as in-house corporate communications supremo...

* AH, the Goldman badge of courage. “I don't think I can take another day of this,” a Goldman Sachs banker confides to his chairman Lloyd Blankfein in the heat of the Lehman Brothers crisis, according to the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine. “You're getting out of a Mercedes to go to the New York Federal Reserve,” Blankfein responded. “You're not getting out of a Higgins boat on Omaha Beach.”

What a stink at John Lewis

OH no, what has City Spy started? A reader writes: “I've just read your titbit on the toilet stench emanating from Royal Bank of Scotland on Brushfield St. Has anyone thought of approaching John Lewis's Charlie Mayfield to ask him about the foul smell emanating from the men's toilet in his flagship store on Oxford St? It's been like that for months.” Over to you, Charlie.