Doorstepping the great and good

Last Modified: 09 Oct 2008
By: Channel 4 News

Inside the morning meeting.

There's only one story at the moment - and it's not the one about the man who started swimming naked in the moat at Tokyo's imperial palace (although if you're interested, it featured in yesterday's Picture of the Day.

Yesterday's announcement of a rescue plan for UK banks has thrown up all sorts of accountability questions - primarily, if any of the seven banks and one building society nominated in the treasury's statement takes up the offer of funding in return for an issue preference shares, will the UK government (and thus the British taxpayer) become a stakeholder in that institution?

It's a question we'll be pursuing in the course of the day. The fact is that the men in charge of most of the banks at the centre of this crisis have been conspicuous by their absence in recent days. Someone at today's morning meeting suggests doorstepping one, or several, of them, on the assumption that they will almost certainly be in the vicinity of the City of London today. So to all the bank chief executives reading this piece: you have been warned.

We'll also be following up the issue of which local councils in the UK have compromised investments in Icelandic banks. The story emerged yesterday in the wake of the Icebank collapse, and it now appears that at least 20 councils have been affected.

The FSA's Lord Turner has been a regular guest on Channel 4 News in recent weeks. But the Icelandic banks saga has in turn raised the question of whether or not the FSA has power over European banks operating in the UK. It's another strand we'll be pursuing tonight at seven.

At any other time, the opening of two major trials - those of the Glasgow airport bombers and of Sean Mercer for the murder of Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones - would have vied for top spot in the show. But money continues to talk loudest. To quote Jon Snow's introduction to the programme two nights ago, it's the world turned upside down.