Why have corporate criminals got it so cushty?

The recent plight of Societe Generale and rogue trader Jerome Kerviel have only served to highlight the disparity between the treatment of corporate criminals and blue collar criminals.

The French banker lost his bank, and subsequently the shareholders of the financier, £3.7 billion - a staggering sum of money even for a global bank.

But what will be the fate of this untrustworthy crook?

If he follows in the footsteps of fellow swindler Nick Leeson who lost Barings bank £827 million back in 1995, relatively little.

His actions left the firm insolvent and he was sentenced to six and half years in a Singapore prison, serving just four and being released in 1999.

What does Leeson do now?

He's a minor celebrity, who is a well-known face on the after dinner circuit and has also been the subject of a major motion picture.

So is this what awaits Kerviel?

Imagine the different treatment that Kerviel and Lesson would have received if they weren't bankers and they weren't on salaries in excess of £50,000 a year.

What if they simply went in to their local bank in balaclavas and demanded the money in unmarked bills – I'm sure that Leeson would not be out of jail now if he had.

The Kent five found guilty of a £53 million pound raid on a Securitas depot, which admittedly involved a kidnap – but no injuries to their victims, will be sentenced tomorrow.

I bet they serve more than four years each.

Rant of the week: Casual xenophobia

Whoever said hooliganism was the English disease had obviously never heard the good folk from ol’ Blighty talking about the French...

Or the Germans, the Italians, the Australians and those fortunates from the other colonies - just what is it with the English and casual xenophobia?

It’s bizarre to think that the utterance of the odd sly comment about race, religion and gender are all frowned upon but taking someone to task about their country of origin is deemed perfectly acceptable and in most situations considered funny.

Anyone who has born in England, like I was, was raised on a diet of Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, the crude observations on foreign motoring of Jeremy Clarkson and the historical nationalistic misconceptions of Blackadder.

Everyone form these shores knows the old adages about Scots being tight with money, Irishmen being stupid, anyone from the Mediterranean being greasy and Austrlians being criminals.

The real question is that while we taunt the krauts with two World Wars and one World Cup are we making fatal mistakes?

Are we breeding the divine right of an Englishman into future generations? Mocking other countries for age old conflicts that will soon die form memory?

Maybe as a nation we suffer form illusions of grandeur.

Britain was once had a ‘great’ empire with a naval fleet the envy of the world but while the influence of the small island has died it seems in many ways the infernal arrogance still lives on.

Casual xenophobia is surely the national disease - perhaps this is the reason nationalistic slurs just roll of our tongues.