Have you been out today?

Heading to buy foodstuffs at little Sainsburys yesterday I observed the long queue of (mainly oldish) people outside Northern Rock and briefly thought that the sign in the window ("Come in, let's talk") was proving to be amazingly effective. But then the half listened to news item from earlier in the day came back to me and I realised that these people were actually panicking to get all their money out. They'd formed an orderly (and seemingly stationary) queue to do so but they were, nevertheless, panicking*.

Have these people never seen "It's A Wonderful Life"?

I was thinking that the whole situation was very like that thing from game theory, The Prisoner's Dilemma, but actually on closer inspection it doesn't quite fit. There's the possibility in the dilemma for a better personal outcome through taking the unselfish option, just so long as the other guy does too, whereas everyone getting their money the hell out of Northern Rock I guess has nothing to (personally) lose by doing so. Apart from the day they spent standing in a queue (and actually, given how few days some of those people looked like they had left, maybe they should have considered this more fully).

The woman on the checkout in little Sainsburys enquired as to the state of the Northern Rock queue as she bipped my foodstuffs and a Grauniad before lapsing into a reminiscence of the wartime/post war queues of her childhood (a lot of semi-retired types on the checkouts in little Sainsburys - normally a better bet than the bored teenagers). Not quite the all in it together/Dunkirk spirit vibe to all this though.



* At least most of them were. Maybe there was somebody near the back who just wanted to pay in a five pound postal order and wondered what the fuss was about.