I knew that Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and his predecessor Gordon Brown were creative, but when I saw this item on eBay, I knew they had reached a new depth in the sharp practices arena!

“How come?”, you ask.

Well, have you heard of the Bank of Labrador? No? Neither have I. And when I conducted a straw poll around my neighbours, I couldn’t find a single person who had an account with the Bank of Labrador. Even those who banked with the Northern Rock - and they’ve recently had a reason to research the banking sector - none of these people had come across the Bank of Labrador!

So, who could be behind this new bank?

Because I’m a cynical old so and so, I thought it might have something to do with the government. So, I rang up a pal of mine who happens to be a civil servant working in the Treasury, and I asked him if he had heard anything about this Bank Of Labrador.

You would have thought I had caught him with his pants down in the storeroom with teacher!

“How did I know about this?” he demanded to know. “It wasn’t meant to get out.”

I thought it might be prudent to protect my sources. So I just said I heard a guy talking about it down the pub.

“Did you get his name?” he asked.

“No I didn’t”, I said. “I’d never seen him there before.”

“Well”, he went on, “you’d better not tell anyone else about this, or the sh*t’ll hit the fan in a big way!”

He wasn’t going to tell me any more about it, but I persuaded him to let me know what was going on. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else. And you must promise the same. OK?

Alistair Darling came up with the idea of helping out the Northern Rock by the Treasury setting up their own bank. The idea was that the Treasury’s bank would back into Northern Rock - I believe that’s the correct takeovers & mergers term - and so the loss of credibility of Northern Rock would be nullified in one clever swoop.

Now, in order for this to work, they had to find an attractive and honest name for the new bank. On checking it out with their focus groups, it was found that not too many people liked the idea of calling it the Government’s Bank. Hmm. Can’t imagine why….

And so they came up with the idea of calling it labrador First as the symbol, and then the name of the new bank.

Bank of Labrador - the bank you can trust.

But just before they were due to announce the plan, the government found out that the conservative party had also come up with the same scheme!  So the idea was quietly scrapped After all, the government wouldn’t want to be seen to be copying any ideas from the opposition, would they?

And you thought politics was boring!

Go to this auction now.

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