Royal Bank of Scotland has taken a strimmer to the plant life, saying its first-half net loss widened and earnings may not recover substantially until 2011.

Stephen Hester said: “overall results may not substantially improve until 2011 and full recovery will take time.”

The 70% nationalised bank, world famous for reporting the biggest annual loss in UK corporate history at £24.1bn, reported a £1.04 billion ($1.75 billion) loss for the first half. That is worse than analysts had expected and came in spite of cash from disposals and a £3.79 billion gain related to buying back some of its own debt below face value.

Well at least there’s only one way from the bottom.