Beware the company you keep

Excellent letter in today's Glasgow Herald re Brown taking tea with Thatcher. The letter is short and sweet, it points out that the last time the writer saw Thatcher taking tea it was with Pinochet and reminds Gordon about being judged on the company he keeps.

This will now make a great pub quiz question, eg

Q. What do Gordon Brown and General Pinochet have in common?

A. They've both quaffed Earl Grey with Margaret Thatcher.

Meanwhile the Northern Rock thing rumbles on. I wish I was a cartoonist, I'd draw Alistair Darling rowing out in stormy seas to relieve a battered Northern Rock light, while his Mam, Gordon, looks on anxiously from the shore.

I wonder when mortgage holders will be told how they stand? If it is sold off will they incur new rates from the purchaser(s)? The people should be told, as the papers like to say.

There's a lot at stake here, not least Labour's credibility about being good with money.

And the banks are quick to charge their customers, so it's about time they all came clean and at least told each other and the Treasury just how exposed they are to this mess.

Where's the Gordon bounce now? Foot and mouth is back, including WA's appointment north of the border and one in five British mortgage holders don't know what's going on with their single biggest investment, upon which is predicated their old age pension and probably their kids tertiary education, given we have to be self-sufficient in all things these days.