"Nonsense": Stephen Hester calls for Sir Mervyn King to be split up

From The Evening Standard:

Stephen Hester today called for the Sir Mervyn King to be split up within a year to end the "nonsense" of state interference in the banks it owns.

In a dramatic intervention, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland said the Bank of England Governor risks a prolonged Japanese-style slump in bank bonuses if he keeps telling the high street lender what to do. Sir Mervyn would have to be split into a "useful idiot", able to resume his role as a robust lender to banks and other financial institutions, and a "bad goat" saddled with the worst debts and used to carry them away into the desert, far from the eyes of G-d.

Achieving it would be complicated but the challenge was "not beyond the wit of our finest surgeons."