SMASHING in the windows of Sir Fred Goodwin's house is not perhaps the best way to express your anger about the financial crisis the country is in, but it's understandable that people feel pushed to such extreme action.
In fact, it is probably more surprising that outbursts of public anger have not become more common in recent months as people lose their jobs, homes, savings and pensions while at the same time being daily bombarded with the apparent ineffectualness
of politicians to stop devalued, and some would allege completely immoral, bankers from still earning millions through their safeguarded pensions and bonuses.
Mind you, these are the same politicians who feel they are entitled to claim public money for bath plugs, plasma TV screens and the porn they watch on them.
The same politicians who think it's fine to spend £100,000 wining and dining businessmen at Gleneagles for no apparent real economic benefit. Businessmen who could well afford to fork out for a round of golf themselves.
Is it any wonder that people are sick fed up with the actions of our political and financial elites?
Yet, although thousands took to the streets to protest in London yesterday at the start of the G20 meeting, the anger they obviously felt at a variety of issues, mostly financial and environmental, was still a far cry from the protests seen in France last month.
Surely now is the time for us to admit that public anger has a virtue and, in fact, there is a need for more.
Of course those in political and economic power like to deliver the same message about public rage triggered by bank collapses, bonus scandals and so on – that it is unhelpful, must be contained or even just ignored. And for long enough the vast majority of the public have agreed. But this is wrong. Even the little public anger that is flexing its muscle is long overdue and could well be the only force which can actually impose meaningful checks on the apparent fiscal corruption which riddles our establishment institutions, be it fiddling expenses or tax avoidance.
Indeed, the worst thing which could happen now is for this collective anger to subside and for the public to return to its state of "ignorance is bliss as long as I can buy a new car and go on two foreign holidays a year".
For what has been missing for too long – and which has ultimately led to this financial rot – has been fear of the public on the part of society's establishments.
Standing up and shouting about how we feel is not British, not the done thing, or so we are told. Yet, history shows that it is only by protesting, by making the public voice heard, that real change happens. Attempts to dismiss public anger as the by-product of ignorance (if you're not a banker you don't know what you're talking about) is patronising nonsense. People are not confused about blatant greed. They know right from wrong.
Public rage is actually the appropriate response to what has been happening recently. And only it can serve as a check on the ongoing pilfering by those who control our lives.
Without doubt establishment institutions which think they can function without any fear of the public will inevitably trample on our interests. That is why we need far more public outrage, and fear of that more deeply implanted in the minds of our political and financial elites if anything is to change for the better.
One rule for Fred . .IN a similar vein it's no wonder that mum Janet Langlands was furious that it took police eight hours to respond to her complaint that her car window had been smashed in for the second time in three months, given that police responded to the smashed windows of Sir Fred's house within minutes.
Admittedly Sir Fred's house does have extra security measures – courtesy of RBS – but as it was vacant at the time, the fact that a horde of police cars, forensic officers and uniformed staff spent the day there, does seem a little over the top.
When it comes to police reactions, it shouldn't matter whether you're an ex-banker from the Grange or a customer adviser from Craigentinny – the service should be the same.
Not an own goalGOOD on George Burley. Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor are supposedly two of Scotland's top footballers and yet don't seem to realise that staying up all night on a booze session is just not acceptable behaviour when there's an important match on the way. Burley did the right thing dropping them from the starting 11, no matter the game's outcome.
I do wonder though whether or not the Rangers players would have been dealt with in the same manner if Walter Smith was still in charge of the national squad.
