Rock Rock & Shell - the P & L Lottery

[Guest David Guyatt]

The government has announced it is to nationalize Northern Rock, in order to stabilize the rescued bank. This before placing it back into private ownership. I actually doubted Brown had the balls to do this. The dictum of free enterprise frowns on nationally owned industries. However, with tens of billions of taxpayer pounds at stake, nationalization was the only sensible option. Turning over the Rock to private ownership would mean that profits accrued to the owners while losses were soaked up by the taxpayer -- clearly a win-win situation that couldn't be permitted, in my view anyway.

In contradistinction to this, when British motorists have suffered punitive petrol prices (that remain) in excess of £1.00 per litre over the last year, Shell announced the highest profits EVER at £13.9 billion, a whopping rise of 9% over the previous years performance.

Who says crime doesn't pay?