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New Boss Same As Old Boss, Confirms RBS

MEET the new boss – same as the old boss, the Royal Bank of Scotland said today.

As the bank outlined a package worth £9.6m over three years for chief executive Stephen Hester, analysts said the deal could be a serious obstacle to the public's determination not to get fooled again.

The package is made up of £1.2m in annual pay, up to £2m in bonuses, and up to £6.4m in long-term incentives linked to share performance which in turn is based mainly on luck.

Chancellor Alistair Darling, who approved the deal, insisted the best way to end the culture of greed which brought the UK's financial industry to its knees was to pay someone £3.2 million a year to go to a lot of meetings.

He added: "To these guys that kind of money is distinctly average. Don't get me wrong, to someone like you it's huge, – it's instant retirement, piss-your-pants, settle-scores-with-those-who-have-wronged-me kind of money – but remember, you're nothing."

Bill McKay, banking analyst at Porter, Pinkney and Turner, said: "Stephen Hester has a proven track record of going to meetings and getting paid an awful lot of money while the businesses he is in charge of fail or succeed based largely on events outwith his control."

Meanwhile an RBS spokesman insisted: "I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, smile and grin at the change all around me, pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday, then I'll get on my knees and pray."

He added: "And no, actually, we don't get fooled again. Mainly because this time it's performance related and the bonuses are paid in the form of non-cash incentives. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Steve Jobs Forced To Accept Badly Designed Liver

APPLE boss Steve Jobs was last night recovering well despite being forced to accept a transplanted liver that was badly designed and with limited scope for expensive upgrades.

The billionaire businessman had asked medical staff at the hospital in Tennessee to find him a liver that was small, sleek, beautifully white and effortlessly stylish.

But after six months of searching he was forced to accept that a liver is an ugly, misshapen purple blob with the unmistakable look and feel of a large piece of slippery meat.

Dr Tom Logan, the hospital's director of livers, said: "He gave us a sketch of his ideal liver and I have to admit that if livers were made of shiny, moulded plastic it would have changed the way we use livers forever.

"He then asked if the liver could at least be transplanted inside a sleek, white box with a small LED screen and a single white button that activates each of its 243 functions, but we said no, if we did that he would die incredibly quickly.

"While his new liver may not have the exciting functionality and sleek user interface of an iPod, an iPhone or an iSpleen, it is quite good at plasma protein synthesis, hormone production and detoxification, which is pretty much what you want a liver to do."

Dr Logan said that if the hospital had used Mr Jobs' liver design, 'it would be bit like designing a mobile phone which could take photographs, surf the internet and give you directions to trendy restaurants, but would not actually be a particularly good phone'.

Despite its lack of sleekness Jobs is understood to be fascinated by his new liver and has asked Pixar, his hi-tech animation studio, to begin developing Organ Story, the touching tale of a young boy who keeps a box full of kidneys under his bed.

Dr Logan added: "We gave him a liver which basically does the same thing as all the other livers but charged him twice as much as all the other hospitals. I'm sure he won't mind."

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