The public

The great British public. You know who that is, don't you? Yes, it's everybody else. It's not your family or your mates, but it is that amorphous mass three or four times removed from you whose collective IQ is several points below that of the average Daily Express reader.
Christ, we're supposed to advertise to those fuckwits who swallow every lie told in the Madeleine McCann "story", and who are now queueing outside branches of Northern Rock, waiting to withdraw their cash from the otherwise solvent bank. Why can't selling cars, chocolate bars, clothes and shampoo be as easy as that?
To a financial services company, there's no consumer action more devastating than a mind virus that compels the average numpty to ditch logic and then cut and run.
Before you sympathise with these tits, consider the exasperated Northern Rock staff interviewed on BBC radio this morning. They weren't showing worry over their increasingly shaky job prospects, but over the idiotic, self-destructive mindset of their customers.
The majority of people in these queues had savings of just a few thousand pounds. According to British banking law, the first £2,000 of a customer's savings are 100% guaranteed. If the bank goes under and you have £2,000 in there, then you get it all back. After that, the next £33,000 is 90% guaranteed. Most of these panic-stricken lemmings were withdrawing savings well below that limit, meaning that the penalty clauses meant to prevent early withdrawal from higher interest savings accounts were kicking in. In other words they were paying to get their money out quickly.
It's easy to blame the media. And yes, the penalty issue should have been explained better, as well as the implications of a competitor taking over the bank. But you can explain 'til you're blue in the face when collective numptyism takes over.
It's enough to make you weep.