…who’d have thought we’d all get to become shareholders?
On fronts-other, you can get the latest misery from Mumbai here
UPDATED: 12.45
The latest from Peston here on RBS – the 9.45 update is quite enlightening at the foot of his original post
Much discussion that Woolies were not making enough money to justify survival.
Some of the banks and insurers who worked with the shop, are involved in the UK/US and Irish bank insolvency crises. It was these banks who foreclosed on Woolworths retail, who had over-borrowed and were seriously in debt.
Essentially, it was a cashflow problem for both Woolies and the financiers. Nobody appears to believe anyone can pay their debts and cashflow is one of the key problems which destroys businesses in recessions.
… and why we will keep subsidising the banking industry – from Peston at the Beeb.
Stephen King ( I am resisting the urge to make a cheap horror related joke), who is, apparently, managing director of economics at HSBC bank has a piece in The Belfast Telegraph talking about a feeling of nostalgia.
His closing line is high quality and rather funny.
UPDATED: Noon
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph asks the big question
UPDATED 5pm.
And both Woolworths and MFI are to go into administration
Cartoonists tend to be interested in things which are not what they appear to be and this interest often has a great relevance to human behaviour. In contemporary observation, Gordon Brown is not prudent and George Osborne is not obviously past puberty. This interest applies in day-to-day life and also, on the interweb. So, responsible and reputable blogs and websites have comment moderation (no, it is registration*) turned on so that people have to identify themselves before unburdening themselves of their knowledge or opinions.
The practice of deception, or, anonymous commenting on the interweb is a simple manifestation of playful human behaviour and the paraphrase, sock-puppeting is an extremely accurate dissection of what the anonymous commenter is doing.
Just like physical sock-puppeting, it can be harmless and fun, but, there are people who still like to ball the sock into a fist and then, anonymously, smash someone elses’ head in. I think this is deeply regrettable behaviour.
So, if anyone reading this would like to use the following pictures of sock puppets, whenever they spot this sort of anonymous behaviour going on, they should feel free to use these three drawings which I am returning to human nature.
CORRECTION and CLARIFICATION in the bold type; made at 15.30 Tuesday 25th November
Addition: 2nd September 2012 – Added colour Sock Puppet version
FREE! I spotted a sock puppet Cartoon graphic - Please use this image as you will
Published at Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News liveblog at 15.30
Jon’s Snowmail
A Snowcloud analysis of the Chancellor of Exchequer’s speech – which words he used.
Factcheck does the analysis on what it all means
More here (Reuters) on the US government intervention in Citigroup, which is rather like HSBC, a truly global financial thing. Some of the reaction from financial workers around the world is interesting too, some talk of cliffs and edges.
In cheerful news, my colleague Royston Robertson has rather a nice picture taken from his studio window – and he also talks about Turner sea and skyscapes
This one is called Seascape with storm coming on. (From Tate Britain)
The is-it-Andrew-Gilligan-or-not row rumbles on. To my knowledge, this has been a long one. Here is a link to Adrian Monck, Professor of Journalism and Media at City University, questioning some interesting behaviour on his blog way back in 2007.
Currently, there is much coverage of Andrew’s comment ‘friends’ here and here.
It seems sad to me that the UK’s Journalist of the Year can’t bring himself to engage in the results of the conversation you might have thought he’d like his writing and reporting to start. If you would like to ask him yourself, and you live in Greenwich, you could try and engage him in conversation here, because this column looks and reads like a nice piece of community focused, conversational journalism.
The attached joke is a speedy piece of photoshoppery in the spirit of my colleague, Beau Bo D’Or, who is far too efficient for his own good.
She’ll be in charge of the turkey. Was it called John? Via Huffington Post
These are some of the UK domestic aspects of the ‘global’ financial crisis which all ministers are so keen to talk about. Read it here
