Thomas Cook going down the pan ?

[Dedworth]

For me it will be a shame to see them go, as they have a lot of history in my part of the world. For years their HO was in Peterborough, my local city and Thomas Cook himself was from Leicester, my adopted city. I also use their on line flight service www.netflights.com for my long haul flights.
Forgetting the local and personal connections, they were bought out by a Belgian rail company in the 1930's and have been owned by a German bank since the 1990's, and with more and more people booking their holidays independently on line it's no great surprise the High St Travel Agent has had it's day.

I just looked at Wiki and it seems that since 1995 they've been bought and sold untold times by foreign spivs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook_Group