"Arms length"?

Alistair Darling has been at pains to insist that Northern Rock would be run at arms length from Whitehall. I thought this was unlikely and felt justified when I heard that Gordon Brown's ex-chief of staff and principal private secretary, Tom Scholar, was to be appointed to the Board of Directors. Now I learn that there's more: Philip Remnant, who was made non-executive chairman of the Shareholder Executive by Alistair Darling in June and Stephen Hester the Chief Executive of British Land Company Ltd, of which a subsidiary donated £1500 to the Scottish Labour Party last April. This is all in addition to Ron Sandler himself who was appointed by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor to run a review into Medium and Long-Term Savings in 2002. £90,000 a month for Ron Sandler, is this the sort of excessive payments to directors that this Labour government was railing against only a week ago?