Dear Richard Branson,
Unsurprisingly some of the papers today are already trying to portray you as the ‘bad guy’ in the mess that is Northern Rock. Yet again, their logic misses some rather salient points.
Northern Rock has already become one of the biggest financial disasters this country has ever seen. For the taxpayer to be exposed to a £54 billion loss is mind-boggling. Even so, I find it incredible that your Virgin group, and indeed the other major bidders for the Northern Rock bail out, are being portrayed in the media as the evil ones in this situation. This has apparently come about by the private sector bidders not wanting to take on any serious risk as part of the deal for taking over Northern Rock. What a bloody surprise!!! Who would want to take on such a massive risk? Yet again, the liberal media have no concept of how the real world operates and desperately try to label yourself and other individuals as taking advantage of a bad situation.
Honestly, it just winds me up no end. If you can salvage a decent deal for yourself and the taxpayer (and by decent, I mean minimising the losses to the taxpayer, because the Government is clearly going to be massively out of pocket on this one) then good on you. Thank you for being willing to even go near the mess that is Northern Rock.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
3 responses so far ↓
AH // January 21, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hear Hear I say
Google Meister // January 21, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I just don’t get why companies should get bailed out like this at all. They made a bad decision and should pay the consequences - surely this has nothing to do with the tax-payer. If Branson wants to bail them out then that’s fine and I hope he makes a good job of it.
It should be left as a completely private matter and not be left to the public to fund bad decisions within private companies.
Matt Wardman // January 25, 2008 at 4:39 am
I think that it is pertinent that less than 12 months ago a Branson company (Virgin Atlantic) defrauded its customers of a sum of perhaps £100m plus, and - as far as I know - has not paid the money back despite a confession to the authorities.
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