The controversy over Mr Goodwin

Well, don't we all feel compelled to have an opinion on this issue...  I have found it so interesting this morning, listening to the range of views and responses to the news that 'Fred the Shred' Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood. I think what I find most interesting is the frequent need to polarise - ie. if you feel a sense of satisfaction ( it could never be justice) in hearing that this person (it could never be gentleman) is no longer a Knight of the Realm, then you are lumped into the category of vengeance seeker, or someone who can't appreciate that the catastrophe was bigger than one man. I beg to differ here. I do feel this was the right thing to do. As an ex employee of HBOS, I watched and saw the behaviours at first hand that lost hundreds of thousands of job even in our own industry and I believe I know how much of it was down to recklessness, arrogance, wilful blindness and even lies, or at least hiding of truths. Of course he was not the only person involved, but he was one of the most significant players. It was he who presided over the biggest corporate loss in UK history, it was he who oversaw the ludicrous purchase of ABN Amro, it was he who refused to give up any of his £16m pension pot until absolutely forced, it was he whose bank had to be bailed out to the tune of £45 BILLION of taxpayers' money (and remains 82% owned by us) and it was he was knighted for 'services to banking' in 2004. We can't do anything about what he did for atwo decades (and I remember his being called Fred the Shred in the early 90s), we can't, apparently do anything about his pension, so he will live out the remainder  of his days in a luxury the majority of people can only dream about. He doesn't seem to have ever cared about the impact his actions have had on people down the years and he didn't feel compelled to give up any of his ill-gotten pension gains; he doesn't care about much except his reputation, it seems (which we do know because he took out a super-injunction to hide his extra marital affair) and so let's see some small element of compensation for the havoc he has wrought on people's lives in the UK - both in the past two decades and far beyond the next two. Let's take his reputation and show him what we think of his actions before, during and since the crisis. To have this man maintained as a Knight of the Realm is a grotesque insult to the UK population who continue to fund his pension. Of course he is not the only one, but he is a vital symbol. He was happy enough to be a symbol of the boom times and I think it is important that he goes down in history as a symbol of what a lot of smoke and mirrors (to be kind) that actually was. No-one is pretending that we now close the book on this sorry chapter - we need to revise rules, regulations, rewards  and, most crucially of all, behaviours. We MUST do that. But this is an important sign that you don't get to destroy things (and lives) in Britain and get away scot free. Some people always will, of course, but even knowing they might not, is a positive start. I agree with Ex-CBI director general and Former Labour trade minister Lord Digby Jones, who this monring said: “I think there is the faint whiff of the lynch mob on the village green about this, but that isn’t to say that the end result isn’t what is right.”