Bankers offered prostitution apprenticeships

The English Collective of Prostitutes is sponsoring a charitable initiative to give 35 bank executives the opportunity to retrain as prostitutes. According to a spokesperson for the Collective, many bank executives and their families suffer from social stigma as the result of a lifestyle choice which has left them trapped in a sleazy twilight zone where risky activities and casual criminality are the norm.

'Many naive young finance workers are drawn into this world by the promise of easy money' said the spokesperson, 'but all too often it's the first step on a slippery slope to a career in the notorious Square Mile district, turning tricks for a favourable Libor rate, taking clients' money for furtive assignations in seedy Swiss banks, or a life spent on benefits, supplemented by occasionally mis-selling dodgy financial products.'

She denied allegations that the Collective's latest initiative was a cynical token gesture, intended to burnish her profession's tarnished brand, insisting that retraining bank executives to rejoin the productive economy was 'the socially responsible thing to do.'

'Some people might question whether former finance workers have the right skill set to become prostitutes' she added 'but, although it may be hard at first for bankers to acquire as much dignity and compassion as the average prostitute, I'm confident that they can eventually do to their clients what they've already done to the economy.'