It was widely reported yesterday that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), had his car and £3million Edinburgh home vandalised in the early hours of the morning. (This was in spite of having what RBS referred to as "robust security" in place, at a cost of £290 a month).The damage (which amounted to between three and four smashed ground-floor windows of his Victorian villa, as well as the rear and nearside rear passenger windows of his £102,000 black Mercedes S600) was apparently carried out by a group calling itself 'Bank Bosses are Criminals'. The group, described as a "vigilante group" by the Telegraph and a "mystery group" by The Sun, e-mailed the Evening News in Edinburgh (under the alias of Moira McLeod) claiming responsibility, saying:
"Fred Goodwin's house in Edinburgh was attacked this morning. We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless. Bank bosses should be jailed. This is just the beginning."
If this is just the beginning, then what's to come? Are they going to toilet paper his house? Dig up his flower beds? Piss through his letterbox? Key the word "twat" into his car bonnet?
Of course, I wouldn't condone any of these acts, and I certainly don't condone the vandalism that has already taken place. It's funny, though, reading some of the responses from local Edinburgh folk in news reports about this incident. There were quotes from several people who, as you might expect, condemned this vandalistic act, but then rounded off their comment with a full appreciation of why someone would have the urge to deface a greedy banker's Mercedes and his £3m pad.
The Times interviewed one such local called Deirdre, who said: “People should not go round breaking windows, but I can understand why if they have lost their jobs. It is not right, but I can understand why they would do it." One of Goodwin's neighbours also balanced her sympathy with a clear understanding of why the glaziers were measuring up his house for new sash windows, saying: "I feel sorry for his family but I think people's emotions are running very high in today's environment."
I love it! It's a bit like having mild-mannered, law-abiding citizens saying: "I wholeheartedly disagree with shooting someone in the face. But...given the right circumstances, and possibly taking into consideration the gravity of the crimes they've perpetrated against you, mixed with the searing hate you might feel for that person...then, yes, I could certainly understand why a somone would want to blow that person's smug grin clean off their face."
[When asked if the Prime Minister had sympathy for Sir Fred, a spokesman for Brown could only muster a tepid condemnation of the criminal act itself: “On the specific question of damage to his property, there can be no excuse for people breaking the law.”]
The people are angry, and rightly so. I appreciate that Sir Fred Goodwin isn't solely responsible for the financial mess that we currently find ourselves in, but he is the public face of that mess. With a whistleblower recently revealing details of the extravagance of Sir Fred's reign at the Royal Bank of Scotland (wallpaper costing £1,000 a roll because someone had made a tiny stain on one surface) you could argue that he's got off lightly with a few broken windows.
Leaping to Sir Fred's defence, however, was The Times' Deputy Business Editor, Ian King. In a comment piece he wrote for the Times Online yesterday, King lambasted the likes of John Prescott, Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman for "whipping up public hatred" against the Goodwin:
"So...now Sir Fred Goodwin’s house and car have been vandalised in the middle of the night, I hope you are proud of yourselves. Well done, everyone. Well done on whipping up public hatred against a man who is, let’s not forget, now a private citizen. Well done on ensuring that his children have been picked on at school and that his wife, according to people who know the family, been left 'distraught'. On ensuring that the man’s life has been made so miserable he may have to go and live overseas."
I'm saddened by the fact that Goodwin's children may have suffered over the last few months (I'm not a monster), but the rest of King's emotive drivel leaves me cold. ("The man’s life has been made so miserable he may have to go and live overseas." My heart bleeds, it really does.)
Firstly, I think King has grossly underestimated the public mood where Sir Fred is concerned. While I have no desire whatsoever to leap to the defence of Brown, Harman or Prescott, it's a stretch to suggest that the current level of public feeling towards Goodwin has somehow been orchestrated and amplified by a few populist soundbites from unpopular politicians. When people start losing their jobs, businesses, homes, savings and pensions, the least we can expect is a national consensus of pure, undiluted anger. It's not anger that needs to be cultivated or encouraged in any way, it simply exists.
Of course, it seems somewhat disingenuous for Ian King to decry the actions of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman in supposedly stirring up public feeling against Sir Fred, when his colleagues at the Sunday Times recently wrote an article that could very easily have served as the catalyst for public anger spilling over into vandalistic actions. In an article entitled 'Revealed - King Fred’s taste for the high life', Times journalists Isabel Oakeshott and Daniel Foggo gave readers a bitter taste of Goodwin's vulgar opulence during his time as chief executive of RBS.
The article quoted an RBS insider who claimed that Goodwin "squandered vast sums empire-building and indulging his personal tastes as the bank ran up huge losses". And if that only gets your blood gently simmering, there were further allegations that the former RBS chief:
- Had the lobby outside his office redecorated with wallpaper costing £1,000 a roll because a cleaner made a tiny stain on one surface.
- Spent £5.3m lavishly refurbishing a grade A listed building - known as 'Sir Fred’s Pleasure Dome' by staff – that was barely used.
- Paid out £100,000 a month on part-time chauffeurs.
- Flew fruit in daily from Paris and upbraided staff about “rogue biscuits” when pink wafers were included with other boardroom snacks.
- Twice changed £100-a-square yard carpeting in two vast boardrooms because Goodwin “didn’t like the shade of amber”.
Whether these allegations are true or whether they sprang forth from the imagination of a disgruntled former employee, I don't know. But if anything was going to motivate me to lob a brick through Sir Fred's window (aside from the sheer injustice of his obscene £703,000 a year pension for being at best naive, and at worst reckless and grossly incompetent), it was more likely to be this Sunday Times article, not some babbling politicians feigning outrage on the taxpayer's behalf. And what about King's journalist colleagues from other newspapers "whipping up public hatred" against Goodwin? Headlines like The Mirror's "Off with his Fred", or The Sun's "Fred The Shred We Want Back Our Bread" campaign (with Goodwin referred to as "the world's worst banker").
Secondly (in response to Ian King), are we supposed to call off the dogs simply because Sir Fred is now a private citizen? I'm not saying that it should be open season for vandals on his homes (he owns two properties in the same street), or that angry mobs should take sledgehammers to his £500,000 collection of cars (two Ferraris, a Mercedes, a Jaguar S-Type, a Range Rover Vogue, a Rover 45 and a Triumph Stag, which RBS still insure under its employee scheme), but allowing this man to simply disappear abroad with his millions leaves an extremely bitter taste.
Dick Cheney's now a private citizen also. So should we all just sit back and reminisce with a smile about the lies he promulgated to sell an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, or the detainee torture he authorised, or the 'executive assassination squads' he allegedly had reporting directly to him? Should we just leave him to kick back in some comfy slippers, maybe enjoying the odd game of golf or an expensive meal with friends at a nice restaurant?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not equating Dick Cheney with Sir Fred Goodwin. Amazingly, in spite of presiding over the largest annual loss in UK corporate history, Sir Fred has committed no crime (though, many would argue otherwise) and he is contractually entitled to his lucrative pension. But in today's world it just seems like the bigger crime (or gross financial mismanagement), the easier it is to just walk away unscathed. In comparison, you have the following...
In December 2007, 54-year-old Roy Brown held up the Capital One bank in Shreveport, Louisiana, because he was out of a job and hungry. Walking up to a teller with his hand stuck under his jacket, Brown told her it was a "stickup". The teller subsequently handed him three stacks of bills, but he took just a single $100 bill, told her he was homeless and left. Brown surrendered to police the very next day, telling them his mother didn't raise him that way. He was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for first-degree robbery.
And remember Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, because his country had been decimated by the US invasion and occupation? Well, after being beaten in prison - sustaining a broken arm and ribs - he was recently sentenced to three years in prison. Cheney, on the other hand, got a slot on CNN's State of the Union to start laying the groundwork for the Bush administration's revisionist version of history.
It's this kind of injustice and disequilibrium which exists in the world that makes people pick up bricks and lob them through bankers' windows. It isn't mob rule. It's just people waking up to the fact that they're being screwed. It's about bloody time.
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