Britain's Chancellor further undermines faith

Alistair Darling, another of Brown's scotty-poodle crosses, appeared on the Sky News, Sunday with Boulton programme and blamed international events for the run on Northern Rock BUT when pressed, refused to condemn the bank's mortgage lending practices of loans of 125 per cent of house values and allowing mortgage repayments equalling five times earnings. Is it possible this has really been maintained during the recent period of rising interest rates? Worse he then did not criticise similar lending policies from Abbey and HSBC thus tending to undermine confidence in two other very large financial institutions. If the private banks are to be forced to bail out Northern Rock, as reported in this morning's Sunday Telegraph, how long before another bank will fall victim to individuals scrambling to protect their savings from this bunch of incompetent politicians led by the man who created such a fiasco. It was after all only a few weeks ago that Barclays sought relief from the Bank of England. Ironically the Northern Rock might now possibly be the safest place for your savings at present, sitting as they are on an open-ended commitment from the British taxpayers via the Bank of England, how many more such promises can be made AND honoured?