G20 Summit RSA Third Sector Dunfermline Spawn Stitch-Up

They even have their own website: the G20 gabfest. You, too, can listen to Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Exec of Oxfam answering questions on climate change, etc, and wonder why.

The Dame isn't the only one pontificating about things which are technically not within the remit of their business. Over on his blog, Matthew Taylor, RSA supremo, pontificates about the need for robust governance in the 'third sector', ie charities, voluntary organisations and pretend charities subsidised by public funds. What this has got to do with the RSA is beyond me. It's another case of ideologically motivated people interfering in areas outside their expertise, proposing solutions to problems which, as far as I can see, don't exist and which are none of their concern.

As for the shenanigans over the breakup of Dunfermline Building Society, for once I'll actually believe a banker. Jim Faulds, chair of the Dunfermline, appeared on Channel 4 news yesterday in an angry mood, saying that he had had no contact with the Chancellor or Gordon Brown, that the Society was in fairly good shape and only required a loan, not a bailout, and that the Scottish parliament had offered it one.

Tonight's Channel 4 news mentions none of this, doesn't have Jim Faulds on it but does have bits from Brown and Darling. That caps it. There's something fishy going on here. My current theory is that the government wanted to scupper the Society so that the press could point the accusing finger at another greedy banker/chairman/board, blame them, meanwhile bunging a small amount of cash at Nationwide, etc. The press are obviously briefed up on this approach as well. In other words, Dunfermline has been sacrificed for purely political (ie save Gordon Brown and the government) reasons.