Sir Fred Goodwin became powerful at the Royal Bank of Scotland during the good times. The money flowed and nobody knew nor cared who he was. However the crash came and the world banking system went into meltdown and the exploits of Fred and his kind came to public attention as front page news. Fred retired on a healthy pension of £760,000 a year, causing public outcry as people were beginning to feel the pain of recession by then, especially the 20,000 who had lost their jobs under his control! His house was attacked forcing him to move into a more secure accommodation costing a mere two or three million, depending on whom you choose to believe. After some debate his pension was lowered to a mere £360,000 annually and he went of looking for work as a taxi driver at the weekends. Recently the bankers habit of awarding themselves multi million pound bonus's, even while the bank shares are losing value and thousands are being dumped on the streets, individuals and small to medium businesses are failing to secure much needed loans. An outcry has arisen with bankers now considered among the low in society, alongside estate agents, MP's and tabloid journalists.
To this end a lynch mob has attacked leading bankers receiving the odd million or two bonus and a campaign in the media has seen a chairman or two refuse to accept his bonus and others forced to turn theirs down, although we all know this will be made good to them all in the end. For Sir Fred Goodwin this meant that an uproar has demanded he be stripped of his Knighthood and return to being mere 'Mr' Goodwin. The cynic in me finds this somewhat unsettling in a couple of ways. Apart from the fact that he keeps the money, position attained amongst his peers and while disgruntled will not otherwise be bothered,it smacks of jealousy and spite rather than justice. While Goodwin appears to possess the face and character that makes normal folk wish to slap him hard the lynch mob approach does not bring back the billions wasted worldwide. In the end it shows merely that once again the PR PM Cameron is responding to a public outcry in the 'Daily Mail,' while doing nothing to end the bonus payment culture that lines the pockets of those who pay vast sums into his Conservative party. Oh, could these be linked perhaps, surely no!
When the editor of the 'Daily Mail,' one Paul Dacre I believe, who is paid £1.65 Million a year complains about a banker £1.2 million wage plus a million pound bonus I begin to wonder what kind of bonus Dacre receives let alone the other benefits he gains from mixing in the same company as the bankers. It has been said that Dacre has earwigged Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and now David Cameron in an attempt to be made a member of the house of Lords, if so could this be for the sake of the nation, to benefit the world by his opinions or just for the sake of pretentious emptiness, I wonder? Goodwin and his kind participated in the great downfall (that began in the US) was encouraged by governments short sightedness and mostly by the public's greed, the one cause rarely mentioned. The demand for loans far outstripping what we could repay (I can talk!), mortgaged to the hilt and the loss of jobs has brought our world crashing down. Vengeance, not justice, makes us attack those responsible, but only the ones we know about, while we excuse our own mistakes and join other greedy, selfish men who give even less than bankers and take even more from us, as in the case of the media they take our soul itself, and we hang out Sir Fred by removing his Knighthood and feel a strange satisfaction by this.
Goodwin was guilty, other bankers and financial men are also. However the behaviour of many well paid bonus takers attacking another is not a way out of the troubles we are in. A failed PM satisfying a lust for vengeance does not reveal either leadership nor an understanding of a solution to the economic downturn. The media liars appealing to the lowest common denominator, and the 'Daily Mail' certainly is this, does no one any good either. Where do we stop here? A Knight in England in the past was knighted because of his service to the King, while in Scotland all Nobles could and did give Knighthoods to those they chose. Today this honour comes to those who have reached the highest levels of the Civil Service, or an MP who has voted the way he was told to vote for twenty years. Singers and anyone who keeps in the public eye can today become a Knight, even an actress or two can receive the female version by being created a Dame simply by lasting at the top, and earning vast sums on the way, no matter how mediocre (Judy Dench!?). The nation does require to commend those who deserve such awards but what about those who have, like Goodwin, turned out to be 'Bad 'uns?' Do they also have the reward taken from them? Where do we start? How many would lose theirs? Goodwin and his kind may have been wrong but a lynch mob does not return us to a state of normality!
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