Can we have an ode against greed, please?

Is it possible to hold a literary award these days without igniting some sort of controversy? The latest storm in an inkwell surrounds the TS Eliot Prize, whose shortlist shrunk after two poets dropped out in protest at its sponsor, the hedgefund Aurum.
 
John Kinsella and Alice Oswald have boycotted the prize, explaining ‘the business of Aurum does not sit with my personal politics and ethics.’ The poetry world is holding its breath to see if any remaining shortlistees, which include heavyweights Carol Ann Duffy and John Burnside, will follow suit.
 
The news has been met with an inevitable online backlash. ‘Pagey’, a commenter on the Guardian website asked ‘How can someone who writes for profit be anti-capitalist?’, while ‘jackie_potter’, a visitor to the Telegraph online pointed out: ‘Principles are not always good … The men who flew planes into the Twin Towers had strong principles.’
 
To suggest Oswald and Kinsella’s actions are morally comparable to those of Mohamed Atta and co.