It was inevitable I guess. Once the banks had been offered a bail out they'd ask for the cash without conditions attached. Which is exactly that the FT has said has happened:

Britain's largest banks are pressing the government to rethink the terms of its £37bn bail-out of the industry as investors take fright at the requirement for the banks to stop paying dividends to shareholders.

Under the terms of the bail-out, the three banks are prevented from paying dividends to ordinary shareholders until they have fully repaid the preference shares, which have a combined value of £9bn.

Bank executives have told ministers that the conditions attached to the preference shares, which pay a fixed interest rate of 12 per cent and cannot be redeemed for five years, will encourage the banks to rein in their lending - the opposite of what the bail-out plan is designed to achieve

The last point makes no sense at all, unless of course it is the reining in of lending for abusive purposes, at which these banks are expert. So we have to look for a different motive, which is easy to find. They want to take the money and run.

When will Brown, Darling and Cooper realise that they are now in the business of running these banks, and had better get on and do so, as this lot will bot act in the shareholder's inetrests, whether it be the shareholders before the bail out or those after the bail out?

And let's be clear: that is the key point in all this. These people have failed shareholders successively. That is why they need to be replaced, and not with their own sort.