I work for the glorious Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) or more colloquially the Co-op Bank.

I understand that in that foetid swamp of unfettered Kapitalism known as the United States of America co-ops are small scale affairs run by hardy groups of hairy rebels bravely spitting in the face of the corporations, sticking it to "the man", doing things involving the words 'organic' or 'ethnic' whilst wearing sandals.

On this side of the Atlantic we do things rather differently and 'The' Co-op is a shining example of the glowering monolithic socialist model of 'co-operation'. We do pretty much everything, farms, funerals, food, online electrical retailing, travel agents. We even used to have our own political party.

Recently, we spend the vast majority of our time laughing at this misfortunes of businesses that have suffered during the credit crunch, economic downturn or as I like to think of it "The enormous monetary kablooie", due to their laughable system of "shareholders". And then buying them.

To reflect our newly recognised freaking awesomeness a new shiny Headquarters Building is to be built, by mid 2012, on the site of what is presently a car park. As you can see it will be very, very shiny.

So me and Chris went to that car park. There were cars.