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Hamish Macdonell: Public want a hate figure. But you can't blame it all on Sir Fred

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Published Date: 03 March 2009
LYNCH mobs are never particularly pleasant. They tend to be made up of the gullible and fearful led by smarter people who really should know better.
The current hounding of Sir Fred Goodwin over his pension is a case in point. The vitriol and anger that has been poured on to the head of the now disgraced banker is the modern equivalent of a mob turning up on Sir Fred's well manicured front lawn a...



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  • Last Updated: 02 March 2009 8:51 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Hamish Macdonell
 
1

,

02/03/2009 21:13:51
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2

,

02/03/2009 21:17:52
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RufusT-Firefly,

02/03/2009 23:12:54
#1 Be careful, WEBWISE always gets first comment, otherwise she goes in a big huff.
4

Forward not Back,

03/03/2009 04:43:41
There is a hate figure already. His name is Gordon Brown.
5

Ubi,

Edinburgh 03/03/2009 08:24:08
The government is now rowing back from from its latest no reward for failure crusade, having realised the implications for ministers.

Brown in particular seems keen to distance himself from it. Little wonder. His end to boom and bust was a total mirage of excessive debt created by his own failure to regulate the banks.



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03/03/2009 08:45:28
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John Cameron,

St Andrews 03/03/2009 09:02:10
Gordon Brown has been at his most loathsome in the farrago concerning the pension of Fred Goodwin. It is grandstanding of the cheapest kind. Here is the clown who destroyed Britain's private pension system with his infamous Robert Maxwell Memorial Budget in 1997 – a tax raid which purloined over £100 billion. Now the Dear Leader of ZANU Labour wants to preach to us on the subject pensions and justice. Pass me the sick bag, Mabel. However, if Treasury lawyers are going to be examining the legality Fred's golden parachute, perhaps they could apply the same level of rigour to the retirement entitlements of this uniquely useless Cabinet including Phony Tony. That cringe worthy Lothario, John Prescott, is demanding that there should be no reward for failure. Absolutely! So can UK taxpayers have a partial refund of his pension pot, worth the equivalent of more than £1.5 million? And as for Bottler Brown – surely the worst PM since Lord North does not merit a pension of £130,000?
8

Marian,

03/03/2009 09:51:33
Gordon Brown is using Fred Goodwin's pension as a smokescreen to try and conceal his own personal responsibility for introducing a system of little or no bank regulation that has led the UK into the dire economic mess we are in now.

This catastrophe happened on his watch, no matter how much he now opportunistically beats up on bankers. He turned on the fountain of cheap money and encouraged the country to swim in it. House prices rose, debt went through the roof and the illusion won elections.
Throughout, Brown boasted of the beauty of his regulatory structure, when those he put in in charge of it were failing to ask the most basic questions of financial institutions. The same bankers Brown now claims to be angry with, he once wooed, travelling to the City to give speeches praising their "financial innovation".

Instead of leading some sort of vendetta against Fred Goodwin in order to conceal his own failings, Gordon Brown should resign immediately so a UK general election can be held to elect a new government to sort out the mess he created and get the UK out of the depression he created.
9

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03/03/2009 09:55:52
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10

Jimmy Le Pie,

03/03/2009 10:39:15
Comrade Broon and his sleaze ridden party are firmly to blame.

No amount of posturing will change the public's perception of this.

Lets just call an election, NOW!
11

Unimpressed one,

03/03/2009 11:48:59
You could have picked a brain-damaged, drink sodden individual off the street at random, given them the reins of RBS, and they still couldn't have lost £24 billion. Wish to fu*k I could wreck my employer and be rewarded beyond my wildest dreams for doing so.

 

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