Isn't that how most soccer clubs are financed?

In fact I've got an idea.

I should be able to tog you out with a decent Savile Row bespoke suit, Ede & Ravenscroft or Hilditch & Key shirt, a pair of Cheaney or Barkers and I've got some Canali ties knocking around to top it off. If we divvy up what loose change we've got and what we can find down the back of the sofa, we should be ablt to punt on the RBS or Lloyds giveaway. Might be a problem if we get invited to Mansion House though, I've only got one Kilgour, French & Stanbury white tie ensemble

Well I'm normally a strictly a jeans and rugby shirt (heavy cotton only) sort of bloke these days but you can introduce me as a Richard Branson sort of chap, tell you what I have got in the wardrobe though - a couple of Newcastle Falcons shirts with Northern Rock plastered all over the front of them - that'll help won't it ?

From what I remember of TV programmes made after Nthn Rocks demise three (four?) years ago their asset sheet was very healthy (being a traditional sort of building society) until they took on bank status and started trading in all sorts of pieces of American debt - from what I recall Nthn Rock were left holding the parcels when the music stopped, albeit that they still had a very "safe" side of the asset book left over from the good old days.

Don't tell me, let me guess which bit Branson walks away with and which bit we get stuffed with.

I don't know but I do know that in a drawer upstairs I have two building society account books, both with a few quid still "invested" in them.

One is Northern Rock and the other is Bradford & Bingley.

Form a queue if you want some more of my marvellous financial advice.

After the pensions fiasco? No ta

...and the ISA's, invest ten grand in ISA's and five years later get ten grand back, having had to wait five years for them to climb their way back to ten grand.

This time next year we'll all be millionaires...

Amazing, isn't it, how banks and building socs started offering traditional savings accounts, with an interest rate (albeit below current inflation, by and large) after 2008?

Before then, they'd been as rare as hens' teeth, and your only real 'savings' option was an investment ISA...

It was also around that time that NatWest stopped sending around their "Personal Financial Advisor", I think at that point even they had to own up to the fact that most "Financial Advice" is far better garnered from a ouija board, which is apparently how they had been doing it up until then.

They've confirmed that this year by selling the whole of their pensions division to Aviva, NatWest having apparently decided that they don't want to do investments any more, which begs the question, what the fook do they do ?