Royal Bank of Scotland gets more state aid and lays off more staff

Edinburgh MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is about to pump a massive £38billion into the Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Government is keen to get these two banking giants to restructure and sell parts of their empire off - as Tavish Scott and the Liberal Democrats first demanded over a year ago, as we were in the run up to the Glenrothes by-election.

One year on, in the run up to the Glasgow North East by-election the Labour government once again listens to the wisdom of the Liberal Democrats.

So, the Royal Bank of Scotland's response to getting another handout, this time £25billion, with a further £7billion available as well - yahoo - let's make another 3,700 people redundant.

The taxpayer, you and me folks now own 84% of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

As 2009 as gone on there has been a wave of redundancy announcements from RBS totalling around 16,000, and now on the day the government pumps in a further £25billion they announce a further 3,700 redundancies, this time from the branch staff.

There are currently 25,000 retail staff within the RBS branches across the world, but not now 14.8% of those are about to lose their job - great Christmas present from the bank.

Let us not forget their slogan - make it happen - well perhaps now with nearly 20,000 being made redundant and the fact the we own most of the bank perhaps the management team at RBS could get off their backsides and make it work.

They should be ashamed of themselves. Let's hope they don't award themselves any bonuses.