The authorities are keen to avoid a rerun of the queues that formed around Northern Rock in September 2007 if there is a sudden panic among customers.
Barclays is cutting 19,000 jobs in a radical overhaul of its business, including a dramatic scaling back of its investment bank that the chief executive said would avoid a rerun of last year's rows over bonuses.
Labour had been keen to avoid a rerun of Ed Balls's torrid experience in the chamber in December when the shadow Chancellor was drowned out as he responded to the Autumn statement.
"In the middle of winter we can see an extra ward of patients coming in on any day", said Frank Harsent, its chief executive, who wants to avoid a rerun of last year's "difficult" winter.
Microsoft executives said they wanted to avoid a rerun of the early days of automated teller machines, before common standards and a sense of trust, when each major bank had its own stand-alone network.
Unions criticised the government for backtracking on installing workers representatives on boards and opposition MPs questioned whether enough safeguards were being put in place to avoid a rerun of the debacle at the collapsed department store BHS.
While this may take some getting used to, it might at least avoid a rerun of the fiasco during flotation, when hundreds of thousands of share certificates were lost and some were found burning in a skip.
Gulliver, who took the helm last year after 30 years at the bank, said the bank was reforming its "federation structure" to try to avoid a rerun of the problems in the US.
But between them, they show just how much effort is going on behind the scenes to avoid a rerun of the disastrous format battle between Betamax and VHS video-cassette recorders during the 1980s.Related items Tech.view: The big pictureNov 17th 2006 Tech.view: Sony plays a dangerous gameNov 10th 2006Visually, there is nothing to choose between Blu-ray and HD DVD.
A year on from the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers and the height of the banking crisis, it does look as if the economy has avoided a rerun of the Great Depression – but it does not follow that from here on the UK is in for either a constant or a strong recovery.
