My rant on Sir Fred and other less esteemed

With all the media frenzy over Fred's removal from the list of the knights of the realm,the clamour for the removal of other esteemed nobles that have committed unscrupulous deeds.

Top of the list,Sir Jeffrey Archer whose spell in prison on charges of perjury have yet to result in a note for the Queen.

However the one that sticks in the throat of some is the case of Farepak chief Sir Clive Thompson who left 150,000 out-of-pocket people now facing a decidedly un-merry Christmas when their savings scheme collapsed back in 2006.

The fact that most of these people were at the low income end of society and that the scheme was for many their only hope of a decent Xmas makes his misdemeanours far wore than that of Sir Fred.

His connections to the Company led to Insolvency Service taking action to sanction him and apply to the High Court to disqualify him from being a Director of a company

And on that note,let's just get one thing straight which statements from the government seem to have overlooked.Sir Fred and RBS did not create the financial collapse.They were mere symptoms of a credit and debt bubble which had been allowed to run out of control since the mid 1980's and continues now under a fifth Prime Minister .

The end for Myers?

The final nail in the coffin of Lord Myers may well have been delivered this afternoon in front of the Treasury committee.

Already under pressure over what he knew and did not know about Sir Fred Goodwin's termination package and allegations of interests in off shore banking companies,the minister now faces call for his head after a letter published by Sir Tom McKillon suggested that he was well aware of what was agreed with the former RBS chairman.

The letter said that

evidence given by Lord Myners to the committee needed "clarification" and insisted the minister was told last October that the pension pot would be increased as a result of Sir Fred's early retirement.

whereas Myers told the committee last month that he had no idea of the size of the pension pot.

Sir Fred's house -another example of populist culture?

The news that Sir Fred Goodwin's house has come under attack draws my attention to this week's Newsweek whose theme is do populist outbursts like the one sparked by the AIG bonuses represent a threat to capitalism?

Next week's G20 in London is by all estimates going to see another attack on capitalism by protesters.Is this going to become a new trend.

In Newsweek,Michael Kazin professor of history at Georgetown University writes,with the AIG bonuses in mind that 70 years ago

Dorothea Lange traveled around rural America during the late 1930s, creating indelible images of the Great Depression. One day, she stopped outside a gas station and snapped a picture of a large sign. It read: THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY. DON'T LET THE BIG MEN TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU. Seventy years later, citizens irate at the huge bonuses AIG paid out to top executives know just how that feels.

The end for Myers and for goats

This morning's front page story about Lord Myers in the Sunday Times is surely the minister's last curtain call..

The paper reveals that the minister who is charged with investigating corporation tax avoidence was himself involved in a tax haven company.

This coupled with his role in the Fred Goodwin pension deal as the leader in the paper says

Not only did he fail to see that Sir Fred Goodwin’s £703,000 a year “pension for failure” would become a huge political embarrassment, but he appears also to have subsequently suffered a memory lapse.

EDM wants to strip Sir Fred meanwhile his former bank is politically vetting customers

Paul Waugh has just reported on his excellent blog that an early morning motion has been put down to strip Sir Fred Goodwin of his knighthood.

It has been put down by Martin Salter and reads as follows

That this House expresses its indignation at the continued refusal of Sir Fred Goodwin to reduce his pension; believes that in order to preserve the integrity of the honours system his knighthood should be forfeited; and accordingly calls for an early meeting of the Forfeiture Committee to consider his case.

Meanwhile on the subject of RBS,a very strange story coming from Fraser Nelson in the Spectator which suggests that the nationalised bank is politically vetting potential customers.

Geoff Robbins, a Cheshire-based computer consultant, recently approached RBS to ask for a credit-card processing facility for his business. After the usual bankers’ inquisition, he was asked a question that knocked him for six: did he have any political affiliation? Did he know any MPs, councillors or mayors? It was a new question, the lady explained to him, which had been introduced soon after the government took control of RBS. She said, in his paraphrase, that ‘political influences may be used for corrupt purposes’.

A little far fetched but Fraser checked it out by posing as a customer who was told that it was down to the high amount of fraud and that fraud seems to go habd in hand with certain political thinking

Marx is on the up

Apparently, or at least according to the Independent sales of Marx's Capital are on the up.

Mark Steele reports that

Sales of Marx's Capital are at an all-time high, and this can't just be due to the current rage against characters such as Fred Goodwin and his merry bonus. It must also be because Marx fathomed that under capitalism, boom and slump would remain a perpetual cycle, as opposed to those such as Gordon Brown, who said once an hour for five years, "We have abolished boom and bust", a theory which is now in need of a minor tweak.

Goodwin is not the failure-It is laissez faire capitalism's fault

I love this piece in this morning's Independent by Derorah Orr,

laissez-faire capitalism says that all companies are fabulous, as long as they are generating wealth for somebody and should all be left to get on with it. That is the problem we have to address, not Sir Fred Goodwin's inappropriate pension.

Reminding us that Sir Fred made his name in the 1990's by his reputation for merging comapanies and shedding jobs a managament style that she says was applauded then and maybe still is

Goodwin has not been a failure. He has been successful, and he is not afraid to display the fact that he knows it. He may have led the company he ran to disaster. But he has been a great success at looking after No 1, and that's why he has more money than any family could ever possibly need.

Are we in a position where we can change the culture? I very much doubt it?

And another string to Goodwin's bow

With all the furore over Sir Fred Good win this morning and did I like John Prescott on Today,I have just found out that he was courtesy of centre right

Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, whose website describes its purpose as "advising the government on the National Minimum Wage".