Good news, bad news and a little bit of hope

I had lunch with an old 'Fleet Street' journalist friend last Tuesday at a Wetherspoons pub located slap bang twixt our respective offices.

The place was heaving with builders, 'suits', shoppers and assorted students, although a Suffolk-brewed beer was disappointingly priced at £1.49, rather than the crowd-pulling 99p I'd been led to expect.

Our choice of venue was deliberate. Wetherspoons' numbers, revealed last week, caused even some doubting City analysts to acknowledge chief executive John Hutson and his team were doing something right.

As we chewed over the business news of the week we concluded that ordinary punters are getting sick to the back teeth of reading about the recession all the time. I admitted that whenever I watch the BBC News and they use that big red wavy arrow thing curving downwards I turn over to a shopping channel. Don't ask me why.

On the day we met my friend's newspaper had decided on a front page story about the imminent inauguration of Barack Obama, instead of covering the billion-pound losses at RBS, like its rivals. His editor had argued readers wanted to look forward with some degree of hope. I agreed with him.

Sure, here and elsewhere you'll continue to read news of a dark and depressing nature as hundreds of thousands of people lose their livelihoods and possibly their homes as a result of the recession.

But once in a while there is a glimmer of hope. I know he is a long way away, but Obama may just be the start of something. Here's hoping.

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With Punch Taverns shares heading further south, what chance the operator joining the insalubrious ranks of the 'penny stock' outfits in the next few weeks?