Billy Bragg Takes Bonus Campaign to Bank's HQ

Billy Bragg is taking his protest against excessive banking bonuses to the headquarters of RBS in Edinburgh.

The singer now has over 31,000 members to his Facebook group NoBonus4RBS and continues to withhold filing his tax return until Chancellor Alistair Darling imposes the bonuses cap he promised when the government bailed out the failing bank a year ago.

Speaking to BBC News from St Andrews Square, Edinburgh Bragg said: "I'm doing this to draw attention to the fact that the bankers seem to think it's business as usual now. They're starting already to talk about paying the kind of excessive bonuses that got us into all this trouble in the first place, whilst the rest of us are being softened up for public sector costs."

RBS is almost entirely owned by the British tax payers, making the investment bankers at the company the highest paid public servants in the country.

Bragg's campaign has found support from some unlikely sources.

According to Scotland On Sunday, the Duke Of York, Prince Andrew, is among those who object to the bonuses and feels the bankers need a reality check.

"It would not be a bad idea if bankers were to go and sit occasionally with politicians in their political surgeries," he said. "They might get a sense of the injustice that some of the community feel about the banks. It may then change their tune as to what is meant by restraint."

"We've save their jobs, saved their livelihoods, saved their houses," said Bragg about the RBS investment bankers yesterday. "Now they're saying give us more money. It's like the L'Oreal ad, they want this money because they think they're worth it, well I don't. I think they've got a job to do and that job is to help us get out of this trouble rather than to pocket bonuses and clear off."