Fairness and Mr. Fred Goodwin
So, Fred Goodwin is a Knight Bachelor no more as the award, originally made by the then Labour Government in 2004, has “cancelled and annulled” on the advice of the Honours Forfeiture Committee.
Predictably the mob is happy with this bone that they have been tossed by the Establishment. Also happy is our current Leader of the Opposition, even though in 2004 the silly fool was a Special Advisor in the Treasury…
Mr Goodwin is not though the first person to be subjected to this. Indeed Wikipedia lists several hundred people who have had titles and honours attainded in the last 1,000 years.
Those not of the mob have called this a political decision and unfair.
If one is to only take the period since the end of the first unpleasantness then, yes, they’d have a point. Aside from a few exceptions who should never have been given a gong in the first place (Mussolini, Ceauşescu, Mugabe) the reason for each annulment (when given) is a conviction.
However that was not always the case.
Attainder was, until recent times, something that only affected members of the nobility with each level of the British aristocracy, from the highest (Dukes) to the lowest (Barons) as well as the commoners (Baronets) having, at some point, had several members of their ranks suffer this fate. The said unfortunate was often then executed, although some did not live to suffer the ignominy – having had the good sense to die on the battlefield!
They were almost always attainded for political reasons. Or, more accurately, one political reason: finding themselves on the wrong side of the monarch (or, in the case of those lost as the result of squabbles over the succession, the now victorious monarch).
This practice, with two exceptions, however died out some centuries ago, with no peer of the realm suffering such a fate between the end of the Jacobite Rebellion and WW1 when two Dukes (both descendants of the House of Hanover) picked the wrong side.
So, no, the cancellation of Fred Goodwin’s knighthood might not have been fair, it might have been* political (and, as pointed out at Anna’s, there are other, perhaps more deserving, candidates) but it is not unprecedented and the British State can do a lot given that bit of leeway.
I’d rather the bellend hadn’t got one in the first place – actually being a small ‘r’ republican I’d rather the whole thing be quietly shelved along with Mrs W and the rest – but taking it off him just because he’s been made a convenient scapegoat is infuriating. It makes me feel sympathy toward someone I was quite happy feeling contempt for. Can they do it? Indisputably. Should they have done it? Perhaps, but surely best to start with the most deserving rather than someone who’s just a current subject of the Two Minute Hate.
I think the decision was right.
The takeover of ABN Amro was not unfortunate, or one of those things, it was egregiously bad management: if you are a bank, and you buy another bank, the state of the balance sheet in the bank you just bought shouldn’t take you by surprise. And I am incensed by people commenting “the regulators did nothing to stop it”—and I would refer reader back to earlier discussions about regulation, process, rules and the use of judgement.
What the RBS board did, bullied by Fred Goodwin and, ahem, Sir Tom McKillop, was simply reckless: spending many billions of shareholders’ money on an acquisition without performing due diligence. For this decision, IMHO, Goodwin, McKillop and the rest of the board should be in prison.
What crime, except for incompetence, did Goodwin and the RBS management commit?
I suppose criminal negligence only applies to when you injure someone, not when you just pee their investments away. But acquiring another bank without performing due diligence on their balance sheet is so reckless that IMHO it deserves a jail sentence.