From the origins of the Big Bang, the City species has always exhibited a high degree of ruthlessness. But now that the asteroid has officially crashed into our Square Mile, we find ourselves in a kind of Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' mode, an icy marketplace where only the strongest survive.

As front office recruiters rake through several hundred applications for each open job, this means that now - more than any time in the Paleolithic Era - ruthless, self-centered bankers must act in their own ruthless self-interest.

But the implicit assumption is that those bankers who have managed to keep their jobs amidst the crisis deserve all the wealth they can get, while those who got the sack were incompetent in some way. Hence, the preposterous headline this week: 'Bankers are demanding 10% pay rises to compensate for the clampdown on bonus culture'. I must set the record straight here. There are two reasons for getting laid-off:

1. You aren’t very good at your job.

2. Your job is no longer deemed necessary for the organization at large.

Indeed, some of the City’s brightest bankers were in the second group - extremely financially 'fit' Ph.D.s and Oxbridge graduates - the kind of guys, for instance, who cooked up instruments named 'snowball' and 'seagull.' Naming options after birds had its day. But when even the biggest City reptiles are going extinct, guys who made seagulls in the City have about a snowball’s chance in hell.

Ultimately, bankers most adaptable to this harsh new City climate will evolve, but they're not necessarily any better at their jobs. They’ve just made it through the City’s 'unnatural selection'.

In my office, for instance, there’s an English guy, let's call him Charles, who is expert at schmoozing the boss, spreading vicious rumors about colleagues, claiming credit for colleagues’ work, and generally alienating everyone with his maddeningly sycophantic moves. He doesn’t know a thing about finance, and has pretty much gotten by in the City on his ruffled charm. He’s kept his job while dozens of others have gotten their P45s. It’s gotten so bad that the rest of us have fantasized about ruffling his public-school feathers after work one day, to see how he survives after-hours in a pub brawl.

But ultimately, evolution is descriptive. It tells how things are, not how they should be. Critics of evolution have argued that 'survival of the fittest' loosens morals by letting the bullies dictate to the weak. And never has that been clearer in the City than now. If evolving means I’ll be surrounded by twats like Charles, I’d rather become an endangered species.