The people critcising share purchases and the ike seem to have forgotten that the majority of pension funds, even in the public sector, are reliant on their shareholdings and dividends for income, since contributions do not get anywhere near the payout figures.
Irt needs, too, to be remembered that this situation is a government engineered one. the share prices had dropped. So what. It's a paper loss. the directors would quite possibly have sorted the problem out, but Gordon Brown had to show how clever he is with money. Having spent twelve years running Britain into the ground and selling off anything profitable, felt he had to show he actually understood what was going on, which of course he didn't.
Slowly but surely he wants to take banks into public ownership, even though many of the banks are now owned by foriegn groups. The decision to go along the route he has taken was political, not sound financial judgement. He hasn't actually got any sense of judgement.