Vodophone (VOD), seems like it has decent div coverage, but has had a run up. They do seem to be winning the cut throat high street phone store wars.

Glaxo Kline Smith (GSK) is probably a better div grower than the old stalwart MRK these days (also has run up a bit) .

I am patiently waiting for one of the periodic summer food  contamination scares for a price break on Cadbury's. These scares happen here with great regularity and everyone dumps the stock at once! The yield was up around 3% a couple of years ago and I kick myself for not buying some then. They own the chocolate category world-wide, and their newish aquisition, Green and Blacks Organic is truly the finest chocolate I have ever eaten. It has snob appeal and a reasonable price. For the div-grower category, I agree with Josh Peters that this is one to watch.

As to Bank Stocks, Be in no hurry as there is alot of pain yet to be felt here in the land of self-certifying mortgages. Plus, speculative buy to let building in sh*tholes in the north make Florida's overbuilding seem modest and restrained. 

Some thoughts from Brit papers and general sentiment:

Barclays recently said they will NOT be needing to raise additional Tier 1 Capital (yes, we have heard that song before...). If they do, they are likely to do it via a rights offer that will yield new shares at a fair-ish discount. They are the Kings of High Street (shopping street for us Americans) and well diversified in Latin America.

Lloyds (A Josh Peters fave) is always in the papers for mis-selling and strong-arming their customers over various banking products and fee's. This makes them evil, but possibly very profitable.

I'm waiting for a train wreck for HSBC (big mortgage lenders so wait for the fall at least -but well diversified in Asia) and Allied Irish Bank (medium mortage-exposed, big in Poland, and Polish people are a huge new immigrant group here).

Usual Caveat:

I'm no Cliff, Copie, or Russ, knowledge-wise. I'm certainly no El Lobo. I'm not even a Statsguy (kidding). I'm just a timid buy and hold div investor who reads the papers here every day.