Tomorrow Alistair Darling will (apparently) announce that the government is going to take stakes in some of our banks to help re-capitalize them. The method chosen is preference shares ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_shares ).
The problem with preference shares is that you have no say over the business. You get priority over ordinary shareholders if the business goes bust, but you have no influence over the decisions taken. Since this is part-nationalization, I assume we don't plan to allow the banks to fail, so we should be looking at ordinary shares. If Alistair wants to give my money to the undeserving rich, I expect at least significant input over where and how the money is spent, and who is in charge of it.
It's nationalization without the advantages.