Disgraced chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland Sir Fred Goodwin has been forced to step down as chairman of the Princes Trust, Prince Charles’ personal charity.

Goodwin leaves in June after a six year tenure and amid concerns that a business charity for young people should not have a man responsible for so much economic damage as its lead and role model.

Meanwhile a 22-year old man in Falmouth has hanged himself after a £2,000 bank loan mushroomed, through unpaid interest and bankers penalty charges to £25,000 in two years, although this has nothing, of course, to do with the above.

The head of the children’s charity Barnardos, Martin Narey has attracted passionate criticism for seeming to suggest that had Baby P not been murdered his background suggests he may have grown up to become “feral, a parasite, helping to infest our streets”.  (Private Eye).  Reportedly Narey, a former head of the Prison Service, had previously stated that to label children was to reinforce their disadvantages.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph Narey also suggested that more, not less children from problem families should be taken away from their parents and placed in care, rather than keeping the family together at all costs.

A promoter of charity events has been ordered by a court to pay back £2.8 million to the sponsor.  (Audience).

British born promoter Tory Hollingsworth was successfully sued by the Singapore Tourist Board which paid the money for a Listen Live charity concert in aid of disadvantaged children, and which failed to take place.

Hollingsworth still hopes to stage his event in some other part of the world before the end of 2009 but another Listen Live due to take place in June last year in Los Angeles also failed to take place due to “the US sponsorship market turning very weak”.

Lifeboats were called out more times in 2008, and more people rescued from the water than in any of the 185 other years since the voluntary service started in 1824.

According to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) a total of 6,509 adults and 1,024 children were rescued, (average 21 per day) and lifeboats were launched 8,182 times from 235 stations.

Biggest increases were from the Tower crew on the Thames with a 52 per cent increase in call-outs over 2007 and at Poole in Dorset with a 38 per cent increase.