its only temporary

I'm travelling this week and yesterday arrived at my current hotel around mid foggy evening. I've stayed here before and had a vague memory that the room service food wasn't very good, but it was late so I gave it a try anyway. My memory was right so tonight I'm holed up here with a carrier bag of salad dips from a nearby supermarket (there's not much else around here except a football stadium).

The thing was, as I arrived at the check-in yesterday, they seemed to know me and had all my details right down to the newspaper I'd like in the morning. The paper didn't arrive though, so I'm only catching up on the news this evening after a busy day from first meeting at 07:30 and the last one ending at 20:00.

So National Rocktastic has only just entered my thoughts, with the new excited, nationalised public servant Rockin' Ronnie in charge on £90,000 per month whilst he presides over the £55bn debt which is increasing at roughly £3bn per month. Of course the share price has zoomed south from £4+ to around 90pence over the last few months as well, so we seem to have the company equivalent of a nationalised death star in the midst of the British Economy.

The smiling Tweedledum and Tweedledee-like pronouncements from our arm and eyebrow waggling leadership restore confidence that everything is all right really, but I can't help wondering still where the money gap will end up. Now the taxpayers are directly involved, I'm sure we'll at least be forking out for the recent £100m of legal fees accrued, £55bn divided around the UK taxpayers is still quite a lot of per capita wonga.

So just as my hotel serves 'home made favourites', Gordon and Alistair are telling us that they've taken all the right decisions at the right times.

As the Northern Rock website says today: 'Business as Usual', then if you hit 'proceed', the next screen proclaims 'Catch it while you can'.