Banana Republic mk 2

We've been thrown our bone.

Brian Cowen said something had to be seen to be done, and hence now we're getting some token action months after it might have been relevant.

The Gardai, at the instigation of the Financial Regulator (the new one, not the utterly incompetent one who quit and swanned off into the sunset with a big swagbag of a golden handshake), have gone into Anglo Irish Bank yesterday evening seeking evidence of wrongdoing.

They follow the path beaten by the Fraud Squad only a day earlier.

There is now a faint outside chance that some of the gobshite criminals responsible for the mess that we're in will actually face criminal charges.

But it's only a bone. The time for all this activity was four months ago not now. You can shred a lot of incriminating evidence in four months.

Don't forget, we still live in a Banana Republic. For those of you who forget that we had a country before the Celtic Tiger hallucination, here's a little bit of Bob to remind you:

Your Newsnight

Flagship BBC current affairs show Newsnight is inviting the public to vote on a series of 13 short films of 'citizen journalism', the best of which they will then show on the programme.

Whether you care to vote or not, the subjects are all fascinating, each film is only two minutes long, and every one of them is worth a viewing.

From a poor Cuban woman in a hurricane to the extent of immigration and integration in London and the now infamous video on how cocaine is made in Colombia, all the material on show is diverse, current, important and fascinating.

My vote? It's gone to this lad's succinct and searing expose of the British government's witch hunt against alleged dole fraud: