I have been banging on about Northern Rock's foreign subsidiaries for the past weeks, both here on CentreRight and in Parliament.
Today, Northern Rock Denmark has announced it will close.
Yesterday, Alistair Darling approached the European Commission to extend the Government's state aid to Northern Rock for a further period. The Chancellor may not have known that I got in there first, writing to Commissioner Kroes last week about the bank's anti-competitive practices in other EU countries.
The UK taxpayer should not be subsidising or guaranteeing high interest rates for savers in Denmark or Ireland, nor even in the UK for that matter. It's only a pity that we need to go to the European Commission to get this obvious point enforced, as our own Government refuses to act.