The board of the Bradford & Bingley Building Society is right to be opposing the organisation's conversion to a bank, after announcing yesterday that it will ask its members to vote on the matter.

Chief executive Christopher Rodrigues has pointed out that if the Bradford & Bingley goes the way of various other building societies and abandons its mutual status it will have to pay dividends to shareholders, and that those dividends will have to be raised through either higher mortgage charges or lower rates to investors.

The main winners would be the carpet-baggers who have opened accounts with the society with the specific aim of cashing in on conversion windfalls. The short-term gain for established members could eventually be lost again.

The board had no option, legally and democratically, other than to put to its members a resolution submitted to it calling on it to take steps to convert. Those members would perhaps do best, in return, to back its judgement rather than be swept along by the opportunists.

Freehand art

Fibre swirls made from railway lines in St Blaise Square, a seaside-theme square at the back of City Hall - and now a £14,000 light-bulb sculpture outside the second phase of the Forster Square Retail Park that hasn't cost the Council taxpayers a penny.

Some people might sneer at these artistic embellishments to the city centre, but more, hopefully, will enjoy the much-needed sense of fun they inspire and appreciate the way they provide a talking point for visitors to Bradford.

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