Sir Fred Goodwin knighthood: At long last, a fitting punishment for such arrogance

February 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Stephen Glover

Last updated at 12:53 PM on 1st February 2012

More than anyone alive, the man once known as Sir Fred Goodwin, former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, came to be associated with the reckless corporate spending of Labour’s boom years, and the greed, vanity and hubris that accompanied them.

There were many other guilty people, not excluding some leading ministers, and in an ideal world they, too, would suffer punishment. But because they have escaped their just desserts, that is no reason for sparing the overweening ex-banker, who was arguably the greatest villain of them all.

That is why stripping him of his knighthood is justified. Whatever we think of the honours system – and the more I see of it, the more it seems to me a Ruritanian nonsense – there is no denying that the loss of his gong will be a heavy blow to the man who led RBS into the abyss.

Stripped: Goodwin may feel some small discomfort in part payment for the enormous damage he has done

It would have been better if charges could have been brought against Mr Goodwin, as he must now be called, but they haven’t been, though the Financial Services Authority (FSA) recently blamed RBS for ‘multiple poor decisions’ during his stewardship, and described its £50billion bid for a Dutch bank in 2007 as a ‘gamble’.

It would also have been wonderful if Mr Goodwin could have been divested of some of the many millions of pounds he amassed as he drove the bank into debt, sacking thousands of people in the process, but that, too, was not possible. When forced to leave RBS, he took a £2.8million tax-free lump sum from his pension, which continues to pay him a hefty £342,500 a year.

So the Queen’s removal of his knighthood on the recommendation of Whitehall’s obscure Forfeiture Committee was the sole remaining weapon that could have any effect. In principle, this is a course of action that should seldom be resorted to, particularly where, as is the case with Mr Goodwin, there have been no criminal charges. A gong should be for life.

But there are precedents for taking away honours from people who have not been behind bars. A head teacher called Jean Else was stripped of her damehood – the equivalent of a knighthood – in 2011, two years after being found guilty of misconduct by the General Teaching Council.

The Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe has been deprived of his honorary knighthood, while the Soviet spy Anthony Blunt was stripped of his knighthood. Although Mugabe has undoubtedly been guilty of heinous crimes, and Blunt of sending colleagues to their deaths, neither man was ever prosecuted.

Mr Goodwin is obviously not in that league, but the case against him is very strong. Under his leadership the once prudent RBS embarked on a frenzy of reckless lending and crazy acquisitions which left the bank perilously short of capital when the bubble burst. It was bailed out at a cost to the taxpayer of £45billion.

He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle with a private aircraft and access to a fleet of limousines, as well as a suite at the Savoy for his visits to London. And he occupied palatial offices in RBS’s absurdly grand new headquarters on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

So far was this giant above ordinary mortals that he felt able to conduct an extra-marital affair with a senior RBS colleague. After he had left the bank, he took out an injunction to prevent this relationship being publicised in the media, though it was surely relevant to his appalling performance as chief executive.

Extravagant home: Sir Fred Goodwin lives in this luxury property in Edinburgh, Scotland

Mr Goodwin is nothing if not self-righteous. A reference in the recent FSA report to his having insufficient experience to run an international bank was excised at the insistence of his lawyers. A more humble man would have allowed that judgment – which has been more than vindicated by events – to stand. Though not guilty of any criminal offence, he was judged deficient by the FSA. It was only last week that this newspaper raised the question as to whether he should be stripped of his knighthood, and found that most leading politicians thought he should.

Probably the most decisive intervention was that of Sir David Walker, a respected City veteran, who told a Commons committee that the FSA report amounted to ‘censure’.

Of course Mr Goodwin was far from being the only culprit. Others at RBS must have also been greatly at fault. That said, he was the chief executive, with far bigger pay and perks than anyone else, and he should be the first to carry the can.

Disgraced: Fred now joins the ranks of such people as Zimbabwe's Ex President Robert Mugabe

Disgraced: Fred now joins the ranks of such people as Zimbabwe’s Ex President Robert Mugabe

Equally, there are many other figures who helped to ruin companies in the boom years who are happily out on the golf course. One such person is Lord Simpson of Dunkeld, a Labour peer, no less. Under his direction, Marconi, a once great British manufacturing company, collapsed into ashes more than a decade ago. No one has suggested that he be deprived of his peerage.

But if Mr Goodwin has been more harshly treated than anyone else it is because his mistakes appear to be greater. He has become the symbol of all that is wrong with incompetent, unfettered capitalism.

Obviously it would be foolish to expect that his humiliation will draw a line under this saga, any more than this week’s belated decision by RBS’s new chief executive, Stephen Hester, to forgo his near £1million bonus will. By comparison with Mr Goodwin, Mr Hester is practically angelic, having joined the bank after its collapse, and therefore being blameless for it.

But Mr Hester did take several days to grasp what a lot of people have being saying for a long time, sometimes to his face – that bankers and executives who pocket unwarranted bonuses are giving capitalism a bad name, and affording superficial credence to the growing number of critics, including some in the Labour Party, who declare that capitalism is finished.

There are morally deficient and incompetent capitalists, of whom Mr Goodwin is a prime example, and with whom Mr Hester briefly seemed to be associating himself. And there are morally upright and competent capitalists, including even some bankers, who deserve a reasonable portion of the wealth they create.

Morally deficient and incompetent: Lord Simpson oversaw the total collapse of the previous great company Marconi

If anything comes out of Mr Goodwin’s humiliation, let us hope it is a more widespread realisation that there is a distinction between the two.

We don’t want any more Sir Fred Goodwins or Lord Simpsons with their get-rich-quick wheezes and misplaced sense of their own invincibility, and such men should not be celebrated by credulous politicians. But if this country is ever to recover we do need clever, risk-taking capitalists who receive their just rewards.

Fred Goodwin will probably never understand the difference. His punishment is not a great one, but to such a man it is not insignificant. I like to think that when the former panjandrum of the Royal Bank of Scotland books a table in a restaurant, giving his name as plain Mr Goodwin, he may feel some small discomfort in part payment for the enormous damage he has done.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
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Goodman played at his job the way I play Zynga games, but in my case I know none of the money is real, and there are no real casualties. Just pretend ones. Goodman on the other hand, knew damned well the casualties would be real, just as the stakes were real. He deserves everything he has got coming. He should be behind bars.

– J.T., Spain, 01/2/2012 15:40

For heaven’s sake give him his knighthood back!
I don’t mind being swindled by Sir This or Sir That, but deception by a “Fred” is intolerable!

– EugeneEugene, Ourense, Spain, 01/2/2012 15:10

Agreed ,but how about de- knighooding the many useless politicians and peers who fiddled their expenses?

– Jim, London, 01/2/2012 15:08

I’ll repeat what I said in the main story about Fred. ………………………..Goodwin is just the fall guy. The government had to be seen to do something to appease the gullible public who are fed up with ALL bankers. In reality, Goodwin was given his knighthood long before he messed up RBS ( he built up RBS into the worlds biggest bank) Secondly, he committed no crime, which is normally the case for stripping somebody of their knighthood. If the government wanted to be realistic and punish Fred and other bankers for their incompetence, why not hit them financially, and hit them hard. But no ! just smack them on the wrists and say how terrible it is. So Fred and the others still have, and will keep, their enormous wealth.. We’ve been conned !……..PS why are there three stories about Fred on the same DM

– Bob, Tonbridge, 01/2/2012 15:04

Ask his mate Jackie Stewart he can see no wrong in him. WHY?
– Rob, Wales, 1/2/2012 13:55===============Eh ! that’s like saying Rhod Gilbert finds no wrong in sheep !

– Dan, Basildon, 01/2/2012 14:56

Excellent news about Fred’s Knighthood getting shredded.
Next can we have the Royal Bank of Scotland renamed to something that more accurately reflects it’s ownership?
RBS is 83% owned by the UK taxpayer, 80% of UK taxpayers are in fact English taxpayers – making the majority shareholder the English taxpayer.
Leaving the bank as the Royal Bank of ‘Scotland’ when it is clearly NOT a Scottish bank any more is an insult to those who have paid to bail it out.
It should be renamed. How about the ‘Mainly English Taxpayers Bank’?
– Alfred Wyrd, England, 1/2/2012 1:34……………………..it never was a Scottish bank, it was a British bank with headquarters in Edinburgh. But, don’t believe me – look it up in the Encyclopaedia.

– Pete, Brighton, 01/2/2012 14:53

Notice that other company directors are calling this rightful act “hysterical”. They just do not get it do they.Ordinary people working hard and paying their dues and being squeezed to the limit cannot understand why these people get very very well paid to do a job of work then on top of that get stomach turning amounts of lucre. There are world wide stirrings of disgust at corporate greed and they and the politician have still not taken note, yes lip service has been paid but no real action. I can foresee a time when ordinary people take the power back into their own hands and just withdraw all their money out of these companies and leave them with egg on their faces.

– Mary, Cornwall, 01/2/2012 14:23

Mr Goodwin will hardly even register the loss of his Knighthood. As for feeling twinges when ordering a table in a restaurant, since it will most likely be an establishment that has so many stars it rivals the milky way, I hardly think he’ll feel anything but sated. This is a person without a conscience, he isn’t likely to worry over something so trivial. As for this journalists descriptions of some of Mr Goodwin’s actions, whilst he was in charge, they are remarkably similar in many ways to descriptions that can be equally applied to a certain ruthless, arrogant bully who lives in Downing Street (at least for the moment). Fred Goodwin should have been charged with fraud, and jailed accordingly. But then another of the Idiot Brigade (name of Clarke), would likely step in and commute the sentence to two hours of community service, perhaps doing accounts for small businesses, which would then crash and burn.

– Tomlinson, Manchester, 01/2/2012 14:20

Brian L:
Brown and Blair won’t get knighthoods. That would be an insult to them. They will go straight to peerages when the time is ripe. Wait and see.

– CDA, Alsager, Cheshire, 01/2/2012 14:10

I don’t doubt that Mr. Goodwin deserved to be taken to task for his poor judgement ( by hubris ineptness or whatever) but, on reflection it does seem that being punished in this way after being awarded this ‘honour’ while he was successful, smacks of establishment ire, backed by public emotion. He more suitably should have been sacked and his pension forfeited, but that did not happen for purportedly for ‘contractual reasons’ and the people who agreed this are of similar breed to those doing the stripping. I deplore the equivocal split standards of the establishment in this country which can conveniently demean this person but not those associated with him, or indeed knights who committed perjury, made lords and those who steal and lie about expenses in both places seem somehow different. It is time we dispensed with the establishment honours system, but now we know of this secretive committee, might we expect further retribution where appropriate? Somehow I doubt it.

– r. bowie, neath, s.wales, 01/2/2012 14:06

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