Thursday 12 March 2009

Not-Sir Fred Goodwin

Good luck to Martin Salter, who has tabled a motion calling for the forfeiture committee to meet to consider stripping Not-Sir Fred Goodwin of his knighthood.

Salter says this to Paul Waugh of the Standard.


"Sir Fred Goodwin is a symbol of corporate greed and the honours system is there to reward service not selfishness. There's clearly a powerful case for his refusal to hand back his knightood to be considered by the Forfeiture Committee in order to preserve the integrity of the honours system.


About which I have only one complaint. Why is Salter still using the title himself?

I fully support his bid to get the knighthood formally revoked.

But perhaps there is a role for civic society here too. And so my modest proposal is that the progressive blogosphere, Labour MPs and others who wish to signal their disapproval should immediately adopt the new style "Not-Sir Fred Goodwin" while the matter is being pursued and addressed.

The workings of the forfeiture committee must be one of the less well known corners of our constitution.

Waugh notes it is "an obscure body comprised of the Cabinet Secretary, Tresaury Solicitor, Perm Sec at the Home Office and Perm Sec of the Scottish Executive".

Even we Fabian gradualists might doubt whether that will prove a hotbed of radical pressure. But could and should they ignore a Parliamentary resolution or motion which had majority support, particularly from various sides of the House?

Or might Not-Sir Fred prove amenable to a sensible compromise after all?

3 comments:

Calix said...

Very good, but the problem is Not-Sir Fred Goodwin is a bit of a mouthful. Perhaps we could abreviate it to NSFG....

But, the best thing might be not to talk about him at all, so he languishes into obscurity...this is a fate worse than death for a public figure.

One other point - I have a slight sort of perverse sympathy for people like NSFG because it's human nature to want to hang on to what you can get. How many of us would refuse a bonus even if we didn't really deserve it?

Becky said...

I do not normally get involved in comments on websites, but I feel that I have to say, why are we still talking about Sir Fred Goodwin and not talking about the mess that the banks are actually in? Does it really matter that he is a Sir? what impact does that have on me? and whether we like him or not, he has worked in the private banking sector for a long time, came to an agreed deal with our government, and took the deal with a nice pension pot - who wouldn't?
It is a convenient smoke screen for the government to hide behind and to stop people talking about the economic mess we find ourselves in now.

Cromak said...

They gave a boy from Paisley the keys to the bank - why the surprise that he filled his pockets on the way out?