The Boy and The Coconut Tree

My bank is in trouble, the great and noble Cooperative Bank has fallen foul of something or someone and turn itself from a mutual into yet another plc, floated on the stock exchange and only 30% controlled by the original owners. A sad day. I've read many stories and many stupid comments but how a US hedge fund managed to be the driving force behind this is beyond me.  A blame game has begun, was it the takeover of the struggling Britannia BS, or the attempts at buying over 600 branches of Lloyds Bank or , as many believe, something more sinister?  We will never know unless there is a major investigation by the financial authorities (which I doubt will happen). As a mutual , Cooperative Bank, had to put customers first, this didn't always work but it certainly won't now. How can company directors at a plc put their shareholders 2nd, or 3rd. This won't work.  What puzzles me more is they believe their own lies.  I received an email (as all customers did) from Euan

It has happened to me before, in a village in Italy. I was wandering around a small shop and the old couple who ran the place started speaking to my friend Luca about me. I heard the word "americano" a few times and I heard him laughing. They thought I was an American tourist. Not that I was offended but I was more concerned at why they didn't think I looked like an Englishman. That was in 1997 and it happened to me again in Cambodia and in Vietnam and once in the USA which was very bizarre.  Me looking very non American at Montserrat How an American could mistake me for an American after hearing me talk is a mystery to me. It happened to me last week in Barcelona thus my little story. I am very British/English. My teeth aren't whiter than snow, I am not obese, I am not loud, well I am not THAT loud. I don't wear golfing clothes on holiday and I am probably way to left wing and liberal to ever be accepted by the political class in the USA but yet agai