Is Sir Fred Going to be an Unfellow
This comes from an article in the Scotsman.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh may now strip Goodwin of his fellowship. Amid the baying mob there are those prepared to take a more conciliatory view. Lord McConnell rightly says that what happened at the banks was a result of more than one man’s failings. The failure of RBS was systemic.
So will he be de kilted or whatever they do north of the border?
Is Fred Goodwin a Coeliac?
The reason I ask this question, is that we have one important thing in common; we both hate pink vanilla wafer biscuits. In my case, I’ve avoided them all my life even before I was diagnosed as a coeliac and of course can’t eat the normal ones now. But I’d never write an e-mail about it, as Fred did and I reported here.
But hope is at hand, as Sainsburys are now selling Pink Panther gluten free vanilla wafers.
Who’s to know, if Fred might have liked them? If he had, the train crash that was RBS might not have happened.
Fred the Shred’s Annoyance Over Pink Biscuits
A new book, Masters of Nothing: The Crash and how it will happen again unless we understand human nature
The former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) vented his anger over the pink wafer in an email titled “Rogue Biscuit” in an example of his “overbearing” management style that may help explain the collapse of the bank in 2008, the new book claims.
I find it strange that the biscuit was pink. Is there a psychologist out there, who can offer a better explanation than the obvious one?
I think if anybody had treated me like that, I’d have gone straight to my lawyer and someone like Max Clifford.
The only way you will rid businss of overbearing bullies is to stand up to them using the full force available.
Those accolytes who surrounded Fred the Shred must be partly guilty in many peoples’ eyes for the mess they allowed him to create.
And what were the non-executive directors doing? If the answer was nothing, they were failing all of the bank’s employees, customers and shareholders. And of course ultimately, UK taxpayers. Have any of those non-executive directors been disqualified? The respected newspaper calls them the Silent Nine.
Strauss-Kahn is a Disgrace
The Times today carries an article under the title of Love bomb that failed to go off, which describes in detail how he pursued a French reporter working in London. I’m not quoting from the article, as it is copyright and although it is in a respectable newspaper, it might not be 100% true. I’m no lawyer, but I would feel that Strauss Kahn did enough to fall foul of The Harassment Act.
If I or any other person, behaved like the article alleges, I would certainly have had the police at my door.
If he is that desperate for women, then he can always phone up and get one delivered on a plate wrapped to whatever taste he prefers.
Type “Strauss Kahn escort” into Google and you find this.
On a positive side perhaps Strauss Kahn and Fred Goodwin should form themselves a bank called the Wunch Bank. They deserve each other.
Those That Live By The Shredder Die By The Shredder
It is often said that everything comes to him who waits. The partial lifting of the so-called banker’s, Fred Goodwin‘s super-injunction, shows that no matter how tight you jam the lid on a can of beans, eventually the pressure builds and it blows up in your face.
There are some choice headlines.
- Daily Mail – Sir Fred, adultery and the public interest.
- Independent – Goodwin’s affair at bank exposed after peer breaks gagging order
- Daily Mirror – No good in these gags
- The Sun – Fred the Bed
There’s a lot more.
The tone is set by this from the Daily Mail.
While RBS was undergoing the biggest collapse in British corporate history, he was busy carrying out an extra-marital affair with a senior colleague involved in the strategic direction of the bank.
Truly, there can be no doubting the public interest in disclosing Sir Fred’s conduct. The collapse of RBS, under his control, led to a £45billion bailout by taxpayers.
Thousands upon thousands lost their jobs and businesses in the financial devastation which followed.
If Fred had had an affair with a Page 3 bimbo, that wouldn’t have mattered so much to the bank and in the end UK taxpayers. The tabloids might have made us laugh as they did years ago with Ron Halpern, a long forgotten businessman in the 1960s or 1970s, but because he had an affair with a senior executive, it meant that his crazy policies were able to get through board and other meetings. I had problems years ago with a company, where I served on a technical committee that had a husband and wife on it. We all had to convince two people who slept together of the correct course of action. It was not easy and the company suffered.
Two people having a relationship in an organisation is rarely a good idea!
Fred Goodwin was knighted in the 2004 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to banking. So at least we can’t blame that one totally on Prudence, as he wasn’t Prime Minister until four years later. It will be interesting to see in twenty or so years time, when the details of Sir Fred’s knighthood are released, what dicussions took place on his suitability for such an award.
If ever there was a case for a knighthood to be taken away, then Sir Fred is at the top of the list.
Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers Is Still a Money Pit
Reports this morning show that we are still propping up this memorial to the stupidity of the so-called banker, Fred Goodwin.
There will come a time, when we sell or even give it to the highest bidder, as that will be the best financial course for the country as a whole.
Andrew Marr Comes Clean
Having watched Have I Got News For You and seen what Ian Hislop has said since Andrew Marr has come clean over the superinjunction, I think that he made his statement just in time. I think if Marr hadn’t broke his silence, it would have been all over the place within a week.
This always happens in the end, as someone makes a mistake or perhaps sadly one of the parties dies and then it gets published.
These privacy superinjunctions may have their place in some areas, like the protection of children But in many places they are just being used by indivduals and companies to hide wrong doing. Or should I say delay publication, as inevitably that’s what happens.
It would appear now that the tabloids are looking for the next person to come clean.
There is also a serious side to all this. Read this article in the Daily Mail. One person, who has found a serious health problem with paint, has even been prohibited from talking to his MP. It’s getting to be all very Kafka!
The Mail is also getting its claws into Fred the Shred in this article. At one time the injunction said that we couldn’t refer to him as a banker.
I’ve just typed his real name coupled with the w-word into Google. You get a lot of very funny articles.
Superinjunctions have now created this new game of Googling the Internet to find out the truth. You usually can! The google Toolbar is particularly useful, as it knows the common searches. Let’s say I’m a sportsman, who say has been associated with a Z-list celebrity, but I’ve taken out a super injunction to stop my wife finding out and divorcing me, thus relieving me of a lot of my money and half my salary, which would mean I’m unattractive to bimbos. If I continually type my name and that of the celebrity into Google, I can check that no stories are appearing. But all I’m doing is making it easier for people to find the association.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
The Independent Hints Fred the Shred Can’t Spell
This was in Christina Patterson ‘s piece in yesterday’s Independent.
Our rich may not be really, really rich, but they are such sweethearts. Just think of Bob Diamond, who went out of his way to explain to the rest of us the rules about banking and remorse. Or Fred the Shred. Who has, by the way, just got a superinjunction to stop him being called a banker. But perhaps he can’t spell.
What can she have been hinting at?
Incidentally, to my eyes any resemblance between Fred Goodwin and my image of the perfect banker is purely coincidental.
The Anonymous Widower 