the corner office

Gotta get 'em off my chest:

• The UK taxpayer does not own Northern Rock, nor does the taxpayer have a stake in RBS or Lloyds. The Labour-led government has stakes in these enterprises. If Labour gets hoofed, then the Tory-led government will have stakes in these enterprises. At no point do taxpayers have stakes in these companies. We just foot the bill for the government. Journalists and politicians who talk about taxpayers-as-shareholders are either economically ignorant or disingenuous.

• It is impossible to talk about bankers being irresponsible or talk up the idea of conservative banking and then insist that banks dish out loans they didn't want to give out in the first place.

• People get upset because Royal Mail is due to be part-privatised and it's a natural response to the idea of a national institution being peddled off to foreign investors, but how many people would be willing to pay twice as much for a postage stamp?

• The word 'spend' is a verb, not a noun. The word people are looking for is 'expenditure'. People who keep talking about their 'spend' sound silly, and I don't care if that includes half the financial world.

• If Jade Goody hadn't gotten cancer, she would have descended into well-deserved obscurity, and her marriage this past weekend to a convicted thug wouldn't be front-page news. Having said that, her impending expiry is sobering and thought-provoking, and it's hard to loathe someone who hasn't got long to live.

(Update: censored myself, hate the sin, not the sinner)