In 2007 more than ₤15 billion was paid in bonuses to bank staff in the UK at a time when some were lending too much and marching their respective businesses into unchartered waters.

Now, the British Government has announced a review of banks and the way bonuses are paid, it seems as a response to the persistent media coverage of remuneration in the industry.

The UK is highly sensitised to all things economic at the moment, for example, there are strikes in oil refineries in northern cities because new developments are being populated by Italian workers which the company has literally shipped in and is housing in converted Oil tankers.

The broader sensitivity of all things economic is not without good reason, the economy is in a perilous state and for the first time in almost living memory the middle and upper-middle classes also risk losing a great deal.

After almost 10 years of highly aggressive lending (remember it was only a year ago burningpants reported that British banks were lending up to eight times earnings) the wheels have well and truly fallen off the wagon.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, Britain’s peak mortgage body estimate that 75,000 more people will have their homes repossessed this year and this is on top of the 4.5 million people already waiting for public housing.

In an attempt to alleviate this some councils are taking the extraordinary step of offering long term council housing residents money to leave by giving them ₤30,000 on the provision that they never ask for council housing again.

The news isn’t much better from the financial services industry.

In the UK there is no compulsory pension scheme so there is no guaranteed driver of growth as there is in Australia.

Therefore many financial planning firms we have spoken too are trying to build niche offers to help people understand where they invest their redundancy cheques.

What the UK investment firms have shown remarkable skill in is rushing to launch a series of new “safe” products to market with titles like the JPMorgan Cautious Total Return Fund and the Fidelity Enhanced Income Fund and offering IFA’s training in how to preserve their business in a collapsing market place.