STRANGE PRIORITIES

A colleague of mine asked a good question today: Why is it that the UK government bought the debts of the Bradford & Bingley the other day (at a cost of £4000 per household, on average) - and yet sold the profitable part to a (privately owned) Spanish bank? Is this simply bad business sense or, more likely, knee-jerk neoliberal thinking by a government that has well and truly lost touch with its roots?