NO MORE 'SIR' FRED.

The furore over the withdrawal of Fred Goodwin's knighthood really is ludicrous.

This man was given an honour, for services to the banking industry, in 2004. Subsequently, his leadership of the Royal Bank of Scotland group caused the bank to collapse, with catastrophic consequences for many of its employees and investors, and requiring the Government to inject a vast amount of money in order to prevent its total insolvency. 

Clearly, the knighthood awarded in 2004 was utterly undeserved and probably owed more to political manoeuverings than to any actual  achievements of Mr Goodwin. Given Goodwin's later disastrous performance, it  seems to me inexplicable that he was allowed to retain his huge pension and has not found himself behind bars; the loss of his knighthood seems a small price to pay for his arrogance, incompetence and greed.

Is Goodwin a scapegoat ? Possibly, but who cares ? He destroyed a huge financial institution and ruined many, many lives. His fate should be a warning to all those other plutocrats who run our largest business organisations, often with very little concern for anything other than their own position, power and wealth.