(Sorry, they went of their own accord but I couldn’t resist the misleading headline. Maybe I should work for the Fail.) Another church minister has resigned in embarrassment over the CofE’s behaviour over the St Paul’s anti-capitalism camp. A part-time chaplain resigned, shortly after canon Giles Fraser’s resignation the other day.
While the Church of England is siding wholeheartedly with Mammon, for fear of losing £20k a day from the sale of cathedral trinkets, it seems that there may be a few of its staff who aren’t comfortable about the alliance. Maybe they thought the terms and conditions of their job included siding with the poor. In that case, I’d love to see the industrial tribunal case that would take place if they were to claim “constructive dismissal”.
It still somehow seems a bit shocking – despite the evidence of centuries – that the Church of England should be behaving quite so shamelessly as “the Tory party” at prayer.
Unfortunately for the powers at the Cathedral, their moves towards bailiffs and evictions came at the same time that the salaries of FTSE 400 directors were reported to have risen by 50% in the last year, at a time when everybody else is getting poorer at a rate of knots. Maybe the Cathedral bosses naively believe that this tiny minority of mega rich will happily spend some of their windfall millions in the cathedral gift shop.
St Paul’s has claimed

• that they’d had to close the Cathedral on the grounds of “health and safety”. This is no blatant a misuse of the ideas of health and safety laws that you’d think the Daily Mail et al would be raging about “health and safety nazis” in St Paul’s. (Well. OK, you would never think that, to be honest.)
• that people might trip over tents on their way to pray
• that the cathedral is doing loads of good things for the poor in any case, so the protests were actually hurting the poor by stopping them getting in the wads of cash to do the aforementioned good things

This nonsense was clearly an embarrassment to those few clergy who had thought they were supposed to do something for society besides look after national monuments. Idealistic fools, who didn’t understand that they work for the big banks.
A commenter on Marina Hyde’s CIF column said:

Financial supporters of St. Paul’s Cathedral include:
Lloyds TSB Group plc, Goldman Sachs International, UBS Investment Bank, N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd, Prudential Plc, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange, HSBC Holdings Plc, etc. Is it a case of “follow the money”? http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Support-St-Pauls/Our-Supporters

So I followed it:

300th Anniversary Campaign 2000 – 2008
The Dean and Chapter would like to thank all those who contributed to our £40 million campaign to conserve and restore St Paul’s Cathedral in celebration of the cathedral’s 300th anniversary.
We would specifically like to thank:
Robin Fleming and Family
Sir Paul and Lady Getty
The Garfield Weston Foundation
The City Bridge Trust
The St Paul’s Cathedral Trust in America
The Lennox Hannay Charitable Foundation
The Cadogan Charity
Lloyds TSB Group plc
An Independent Trust Associated with Barclays
City of London Corporation
City of London Endowment Trust
The Schroder Foundation
Goldman Sachs International
Mark Pigott OBE
The Wolfson Foundation
The Garfield Weston Trust for St Paul’s Cathedral
The Worshipful Company of Mercers
The Sunley Foundation
UBS Investment Bank
Mr Richard & Miss Clementine Hambro
McKinsey & Company
Roger Gabb
The Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust
CHK Charities Ltd
David Mayhew CBE
N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd
Sir Brian Williamson CBE
29thMay 1961 Charitable Trust
Dr Yury Beylin
Brunswick Group
Mr and Mrs William R Miller CBE
Lennox and Wyfold Foundation
Hugh & Catherine Stevenson
Skandinaviska Enskilda Bank
Roger Carlsson
The Clothworkers’ Foundation
The Headley Trust
Nicholas Oppenheimer
Prudential Plc
Simon & Virginia Robertson
The Capital Group
Lexicon Partners
Slaughter & May
Barry Bateman
Charterhouse Capital Partners LLP
Cinven
Cognetas
Electra Partners LLP
Land Securities
Standard Chartered Plc
JPMorgan Cazenove
J.P. Morgan
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P.
BGC Partners
Dulverton Trust
CMS Cameron McKenna LLP
The Freemasons’ Grand Charity
David Barnett
Len Blavatnik
Canary Wharf Group Plc
Lord Cockfield Memorial Trust
The Drapers’ Company
Man Group Plc Charitable Trust
London Stock Exchange
The Worshipful Company of Grocers
Stewart Newton
Sir David Walker
Sir Roger & Lady Gibbs
Sir Robert & Lady Finch
Peter and Stephanie Chapman
Fidelity UK Foundation
English Heritage
Wyfold Foundation
American Express
The Coutts Charitable Trust
The British Land Company Plc
HSBC Holdings Plc
Morden College
Aldgate & All Hallows Barking Exhibition Foundation
Jon B Lovelace
Richard & Ellen Sandor Family Foundation
The Scholl Foundation

£40 million towards the upkeep.

plus thry have ongoing Corporate Partners:

Lloyds Banking Group
Fidelity Investment Managers
CMS Cameron McKenna
London Stock Exchange
Sarasin & Partners
BGC Partners