Pour encourager les autres

It's all very well hauling bankers before the House of Commons Treasury select committee, but it's not much of a deterrent. Neither is removing their bonuses. The Royal Navy showed how to deal with aberrant leaders when it made an example of Admiral Byng.

It prompted the French writer Voltaire's famous remark, in his novel, Candide, that in England 'it is thought good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others'. Ah, those were the days....