Charity set up for Old Etonians - Donations welcome

This has got to be some kind of sick joke...

Eton, Harrow, Westminster etc (the "top fee-paying schools") have admitted breaking competition policy by exchanging "information" between the years 2001 & 2004. As a result the Office of Fair Trading has let them off lightly - fining them £10,000 each.

So far so fair enough. But get this; The Independent Schools Council their representative body is said to have proposed the deal that got them such light treatment. Part of that deal is a "charitable" donation of an average of £50,000 which is to go to a seperate charitable body.

Now my first thoughts were that this money would be used to let in some more pet poor people into these establishment safe-houses. That would at the very least be a nice gesture - even if I am innately suspicious of any attempts to legitimise ingrained privilege by giving it a "meritocratic" lick of paint.

But no. This "charitable" donation is going to a far more needy group. The BBC says

"A charity set up to help pupils who attended the schools during the years 2001 to 2004 gets £3m. The settlement was co-ordinated by a steering group led by Independent Schools Council general secretary Jonathan Shephard.

He said: "The settlement reached represents a sizeable cost to the schools for inadvertently breaching competition law by continuing to share information in a manner which had previously been perfectly legal."

So...in order to right a small wrong (infringement of a minor bit of regulation) we're going to perpetuate a much bigger wrong.

"It is estimated that roughly 40,000 people will benefit from the fund, which will be used for educational purposes and would pay out before the pupils' 30th birthdays. "

According to the Guardian the money "will be used to benefit students who attended the schools during the period that the cartel was in operation."

Well...I'm glad some good has come out of all of this.