British Banking - We've got a scapegoat!

And the award for scapegoat for all the banking world's ills goes to:

(Not Sir) Fred Goodwin!

Yes indeed the public has spoken and the 'We are their leaders, we must follow them'government has responded by removing the knighthood from the former CEO of RBS (wow - TLAs abound) because this man, single-handedly created the whole of the worldwide recession. We can sleep easy knowing that the culprit has been named and shamed and that everyone can rest assured that it's big bonuses in the boardrooms and AAA ratings all round!

So what of the honours and privileges of the members of the Labour party who were at the helm during the gestation period of this worldwide recession? What of those in the other banks, trading in the markets and the finance world as a whole; are their hands clean? Of course the answer is a resounding 'No' but as one telephone caller on a radio phone-in aptly put it, "We can't get them all, but at least we've got some revenge over the bonuses at RBS!" Whoa, stop the bus - sirless Fred is no longer a part and, realising that things in the market can go up as well as down, look at the whole of his working life and there are indeed things that can be considered to have been 'services to banking'.

But sadly those Daily Fascist readers have taken up the cry and followed the tumbrel, pitchforks gleaming, like the good little folk that they are. I wonder if we might be able to pin the 'illegal, benefit-claiming, immigrants' on Fred too, would be a real bargain bucket then. Mind you, I have to ask how many of those baying for Fred's blood are doing so in the comfort of their interest, dividends and other benefits from others who haven't been named and shamed? Still the good thing about being righteously indignant is the ability to not have 'hypocrite' in the vocabulary.

And so our government make a popularist gesture that sends the message that beneath it all something is very wrong in the way that it thinks and operates. If there were illegalities then there would be a case for the unknighting but I haven't seen the man in the dock and so assume that what we have is good old error - which is human. Seems that some just aren't divine.

As for me - doesn't really bother me whether the man has three letters in front and a few behind his name - but it bothers me when we legitimise mob rule and seek to pacify the masses by a ritual bloodletting of one man - I just hope Cameron or Clegg laid their hands on the man and passed on the sins of the nations before the scapegoat 'scaped!

Pax

ps. I found this quote from Unite's David Fleming which says it all:

"It is a token gesture to strip Fred Goodwin of his knighthood, but one which will be well received by the thousands of workers who lost their jobs during his rule.

Nonetheless this will do nothing to bring job security to the staff across the banking sector who continue to work under a culture of excess and greed at the top. Action from the government is needed in banking reform, not simply empty rhetoric on knighthoods or shareholder activism."

I'd like to live in a world were we see justice, mercy and humility not sheer bloody revenge :(