The tragic victory of the carpet-baggers over the future of the Bradford & Bingley Building Society casts a shadow over the whole community, not just in Bradford district but right across the country. Yet again simple greed has won the day. Those who sought to make a quick killing will find themselves a few hundred pounds better off - potentially at the expense of hundreds of jobs.

The most likely outlook in the medium term is that mortgage rates will increase so that borrowers, who largely voted against the B&B's conversion to a bank, will be the ones to suffer first. However, the vote casts a huge doubt over the future of the whole building society movement. There are already widespread forecasts of the impending demise of mutuality.

What it may mean in the longer term for the B&B is that following its conversion it could be bought out by another, larger institution. That would inevitably mean rationalisation with branch closures and job losses and the real danger that the headquarters of the merged organisation could be sited in London, leaving the workers at Crossflatts and Bingley looking for new jobs.

This, of course, is a worst-case scenario. For the sake of all those people, and for the sake of Bingley, we hope it does not come to this. But however much spin we try to put on the decision, however rose-tinted the glasses might be through which it is viewed, it is impossible to see this triumph for carpet-baggers' greed as anything other than bad news for the local community.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.