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The pace is picking up on the banking bailout, as Lloyds TSB management and shareholders come to the north bank of the Clyde on Wednesday, to decide whether to take on £5.5bn of government capital injection.

The Royal Bank of Scotland meets on the Mound in Edinburgh this Thursday (in the Church of Scotland's Assembly Hall, of all places) to vote on the plan for £20bn of bailout cash.

The crunch vote for Halifax Bank of Scotland comes on 12 December, when it faces the toughest criticism from shareholders - not only for getting itself into its current mess, and the need for £11.5bn in taxpayer bailout, but also over the deal it struck to merge with (or, to be realistic, be taken over by) Lloyds TSB.

In his ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ business blog, Robert Peston explains that Chancellor Alistair Darling has placed a very large warning sign over the idea of an alternative plan.

As Robert puts it, it is a "swingeing kick" to Sir George Mathewson and Sir Peter Burt, the knights attempting to ride to the rescue of HBOS as an independent bank based in Edinburgh.

The momentum of their initiative has lost ground since its launch 10 days ago, and this latest development carries the risk of stalling it altogether.

The Chancellor's statement reads as if it's been written to do so, showing he is keen to put banking stability above all other priorities.

But it has raised questions over whether HBOS shareholders are getting the best possible deal in the new Lloyds Banking Group's shares.

Their case is that HBOS could survive on its own if it had the same access to government capital.

But looked at another way, the banker knights have basically argued: if you think HBOS is bad, Lloyds TSB looks worse off, being proportionately more dependent on government bailout.

That has been described as "reckless", and it's firmly denied by Lloyds TSB.

The Burt-Mathewson figures are seen by critics as selectively looking at shorter-term debt, whereas HBOS's exposure is much higher over the longer term due to the dominance of its mortgage products.

But the accusations may add some spice to the Lloyds TSB shareholder meeting in Glasgow.

One might ask, for instance, why the current management are remaining in place, while other bank chiefs that required bailouts have had to stand down.

Perhaps it is because chairman Sir Victor Blank has such a strong story to tell about the HBOS takeover.

Only in crisis circumstances could he hope to get round the competition rules and create such a large bank, with particular dominance in Scottish retail and business markets.

That, after all, is the trade-off the government faces in handling the deal: reduced instability and less money required for the bailout, but at the cost of less competition on the high street.

And for the bank that thought it could get away from the clutches of government by appealling for foreign capital to shore up its balance sheet, it's not looking quite so smart now.

Barclays is in all sorts of trouble over the deal it struck with semi-sovereign investors in Abu Dhabi and Qatar.

With institutional investors in revolt, it's so bad that management have offered to forgo bonuses next year.

That could really hurt them, after one director secured a cool £14.8m last year, and as the right to give themselves bonuses was one of the main attractions of avoiding Treasury cash.

The other tactic to counter the criticism is for the entire Barclays board to put itself up for re-election, which is something of a nuclear option. So much for stability.