That Irish bail out which they say isn't going to happen

How much are you on the hook for, dear tax payer?

Well there is the EU bail out fund to which the U K isa 13% contrbutor.  Chances are thy will tap that for £70 billion, so that's £9.1 billion right of the top, courtesy of Mr Alastair Darling who signed us up for that just before he got booted out of office.

Then there is the small matter of the government shareholding (84% as it happens) in RBS who say they have Irish bad debts of £4.3 billion, so I put £3.6 billion of that down to you dear reader, but of course, there may be more to come.

And then we have another £4billion of ‘impaired loans’ in Ireland over at Lloyds, so you can chalk up another £1.6 billion to the tax payer their through their 41% stake..

So I make that a tidy sum.  It may not seem much these days (5 years revenue at al-Beeb, or 2 months cash flow at the NHS), but some of us can remember the time when £16,000,000,000.00 was serious wonga.