That was the headline, the other day, when the HSBC reported a fall in half yearly profits. It sounds bad and the usual suspects are on TV and in the papers telling us how the credit crunch is getting worse. Oh my God! This is Europe’s largest bank and even they can’t survive, what will become of us. Images of money men hurling themselves out of windows comes to mind.
Then you read a bit further and realise the bank made £5.2 billion in the first six months of the year. The people in charge must be shitting themselves. How can they survive, what can they do? Over five billion quid in six months and this is a bad thing, yeh right.
They lend money to people who can’t afford the repayments, they make huge losses in North America, they run crappy little branches with queues to the next town and zero customer service (apologies to the people of Bombay) and they still make huge profits.
This is not doom and gloom. The headline should read ‘Crappy business makes huge profits - hope for us ALL’.

Derek Conway paid his son £40,000 for doing nothing and was suspended from the house for 10 days and I am guessing he has to pay this money back at some time. This was our money that he used and what I want to know is when the police will be called and charge this man with fraud.
We then had the MEP Giles Chichester who funnelled, an alleged, £4450,000 in to a company where he was a director. He is being investigated by party auditors and has resigned as Conservative leader in Europe. He had the audacity to call this a ‘whoops-a-daisy’ moment. This is not an oversight - this is theft!.
We now have Caroline Spelman who paid her nanny £40,000 for secretarial work. The only problem is the Nanny says she didn’t do any such work. Mrs Spelman is saying she did. One of them is lying, and we are supposed to believe that the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner will sort this out. Let’s hope that if he finds any inproprietary he will call in the police.
We are being taxed to death in this country and these public servants are abusing that position and are fraudulently stealing our money.
Try doing something similar in your job and see how how long it is before you end up in court.

Gordon is a moron, but I think most Brits already knew that. Our idiotic PM is planning to raise tax on older ‘polluting’ cars to save “1.3m tonnes of CO2 and increase the number of clean cars” - his own words in parliament today.
This is a tax on people who can not afford a new car - plain and simple.
From a personal point of view, I have just sold my car and am thinking about buying an old cheap banger. It would be for emergencies only and would do very low mileage. It would produce a hell of a lot less CO2 overall than Joe Bloggs down the road, who has a lovely new car, but uses his car for every journey imaginable.
The Road Fund Licence is nothing but a tax on car ownership. We are already taxed hugely on fuel and this costs uneconomical (polluting) cars more. We do not need another ‘green’ tax when we already pay one.
Gordon Brown must really think we are stupid. He is earning extra VAT (which is a tax on the tax) on the fuel as it increases and the treasury coffers must be overflowing with this windfall. What the hell is he doing with this increased revenue that he could never have bargained for.
I. like many others, will vote for the lesser of the evils and I think Mr Brown is now the greatest of the evils.

OH MY GOD - I think I am becoming a Conservative supporter.

I watched Question Time for the first time in ages the other night. I guess it is correctly named but it would be nice to see ‘answer time’ occasionally.
These useless two faced politicians couldn’t answer a question if their lives depended upon it.
Next week they will have David Miliband on, so I presume it will be at an earlier time, so as not to interfere with the little boys bedtime.

I read with interest that Jacqui Smith is considering giving police in England and Wales the power to confiscate alcohol from under 18s who carry it in public.

Officers can currently take alcohol from youngsters in public only if they have “reasonable suspicion” they have been drinking or are going to drink it.

Hellooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What did you think they were going to do with the booze.

This is another example of politicians trying to fix laws that aren’t broken. For Gods sake woman you are the home secretary, it is your job to tell the police to enforce the existing law. A kid carrying a bottle of lager - I think you can ‘reasonably suspect’ that he will be drinking it at some time.

People through all walks of life are struggling to work hard for that promotion at work. Jacqui Smith shows us all that the answer is to be a moron whilst at the same time buddy up to the boss. Gordon Brown can stay - can you imagine Prime Minister Spliff (sorry, I mean Smith).