Riot in the Streets!

[andrewducker]

Ok, that's it.  I've not voted Labour in the recent past, but I had felt that they'd done a fair bit of good, which almost countered various awful decisions they'd made.

However, this quote is enough to make me want to line them all up up against a wall and pull the trigger:

"The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. It might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that's where the Government steps in."

For fuck's sake, one does not change the law in order to strip any one person of something.  You certainly don't do so retrospectively.  This is not the rule of anything but the mob and a government that doesn't give a damn for the rule of law.

I don't like that Fred Goodwin has wandered off with £16million - but he broke no law to do so, and it was all, so far I understand, approved by the correct people at the correct time.  To talk of passing a special Act of Parliament just because they don't like the result?  Madness!

I'll leave you with the obligatory quote from A Man for All Seasons:

"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

Original article here.

Comments

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I don't think we're yet at a point where we can see Goodwin's pension in black and white and be sure that either side fully understood or acted within the law. On the one side we have a government minister who talks in terms of gestures and on the other a banker who clearly hadn't worked out just how this was going to look.

Certain legistlation innevitably works retrospectively, look at the Good Friday agreement for example, and I think if we're going to survive this criss as a society without it reaching a point of conflict the wealthy are going to have to be taxed heavily.

I wonder if they might just use the current furore to tax pensions above £100k/year for example. That wouldn't be retrospective but it would hurt not only Fred but anyone else who'd amassed such excessive wealth. I'm not sure I'd fully support it but getting at that kind of wealth is an inevitable temptation for a government sorely hurting for tax revenue.

[matgb]

a banker who clearly hadn't worked out just how this was going to look.

Why should he?

He's retiring and deliberately being bought off by the Govt. It's not his place to think about how things look, he's no longer going to be answerable to anyone, and most certainly isn't a Govt ministed employed to act on our behalf.

He gave up most of his entitlement, was not fired for misconduct, and was asked to go quietly. He did all these things.

Now, for some reason, a whole bunch of Govt ministers have started attacking him, and attacking him again, and making a media storm out of the story, when the reality is they fucked up.

So the real question is, what are they hiding? This has to be a smokescreen to stop something else getting media traction, I haven't figured out what yet though.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

What HMG is hiding is its own incompetence and more fundamentally their impotence to fix things. By making it personal they get off both hooks. In the court of public opinion, at least.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

As a knighted public figure and former head of a public company he has to worry about how it looks. He still has quite a lot to lose, even if it doesn't have a direct monetary value.

If he really didn't care, then firstly why did he bother going to sit in front of the Treasury Select Committee and secondly why didn't he correct John Mann when he cited a figure of £8m? I think he liked hiding this more than anyone else. Reading his comments from the transcript I think he remains concerned about how he is perceived, not least as banking depends on confidence and opinion and despite his departure from the bank he remains personally invested in it's future.

This story was always going to be a media storm, and in fact, I think it was probably controlled better by the government leading it. It's still messy and achieving column inches in excess of merit, but it's the perfect story so it fascinates us all.

We could, perhaps, be examining the insurance scheme more closely but it's such a complicated deal and by necessity concluded so quickly that in fact it's ideal for a long burn analysis.

[drplokta]

Pensions above £100K are already taxed at 40%. Increase it much more, and the rich pensioners will simply decide to retire elsewhere and pay no UK taxes at all.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree - the whole point of contracts is that they make things enforceble. I'm annoyed that he's getting that much money, it's obscene, but it's his now, he has a right to it which came with the signatures on the line of that enforceable contract. I was equally irate listening to that quote "it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion..." wtf? That's not a court, that's mob rule. If we can overturn any court decision by finding enough people to oppose it then ... gah, I don't even want to dig out examples - just take a quick glance at all the stupid petitions you can sign up to on Facebook if you want one.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

While I have no love of overpaid wbankers, I seem to recall that issuing Bills of Attainder was one of the things we chopped King Charles Stuart the First's head off for.

[andrewducker]

Exactly!

I don't have to be in favour of him having the money to stand behind the principle of law which he used to get it.

[guybles.livejournal.com]

The thing that's amusing (and, by turns) horrifying is that very few people seem to have worked out the precedent that is being set: if the Government doesn't "approve" of the work you have done, they will take away your contractual right to be repaid the pension that you earned. If the Government starts clawing back a private, employer-provided pension - which is what Sir Fred is on, albeit a special RBS Executive scheme - then nobody's pension is safe. That wouldn't be good news for the sorts of employers that you and I have.

On the other hand, there is every likelihood that - in the search for the cheap votes - the Government could be opening up a can of worms. Sir Fred was one of the trusted confidants for Gordon Brown. I daresay he knows where some bodies are buried. If nothing else, he has a very large incentive (about £16 million) to drag the Government through the courts for infringement of all manner of human rights breaches...and I'm looking at Articles 7 and 8 right now. This could become very, very unpleasant for the upper echelons.

Still, nobody's really talking about Royal Mail right now, so it's a win for Mandelson.

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

Frankly I've very little respect for Goodwin or the government, I think they've both made disasterous decisions in recent years. Goodwin hasn't earned this money, my guess is he only got it because of the 'old boys network' - they all want a piece of the pie and to therefore vote against one of the gang will probably get you ejected from the network and thus jeopardize your own cushy pension. The money was discretionary and the board went against the will of the majority owner (the UK taxpayer). It's also worth bearing in mind that all of these contracts with severance packages would have been null and void if the bank had been allowed to fail and the assets sold on to another legal entity.

As for mob rule, well that's kind of what democracy is. 16M is a lot of taxpayer's money going astray, I personally think that if there is a 'Fred Goodwin Pension Repeal Act' parliamentary bill submitted and it gets voted through by elected representatives then so be it. It may not be good use of limited parliamentary time but it is in the spirit of a democracy and the will of the people. What if it had been £160M or £1.6B? Would we be discussing the enforcement of contract law then?

Goodwin was greedy and he's burned through a lot of karma points as a result. Generally that's how the world/universe works.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I have very little respect for the guy either, and would much rather he wasn't taking the money; but a) I agree with the principle that contracts are to be respected and that laws should not work retrospectively, and b) purely pragmatically - creating a precedent that the government will annul legal contracts if they think it'll be popular isn't going to do much to attract investment to Britain. 16M isn't enough to override either concern.

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

I suspect foreign investors are far more pragmatic than that. If it does happen I think it will be perceived as a one-off, and let's not forget it still has to get voted through parliament. The government can't just take the money back without the backing of parliament.

The law is based around the concept of fairness, and on that basis repealing the money would be within the spirit of the law as it stands, even if it is against the technical wording and thus requires a parliamentary bill to 'correct' the 'anomaly'. It is a poor use of parliamentary time, but not necessarily bad democracy.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Surely it creates an anomaly rather than corrects one? That is, it makes a situation where law X applies unless your name is Fred Goodwin in which case law Y applies. The law relies on the principle that a law that applies to me applies to you also.

I admit I don't know how much investors will see it as a one-off and how much they'll see it as the potential start of a new trend. I still don't think that this problem is fixed by creating retrospective laws. The correct response to the problem should be to create procedures to prevent it happening again.

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

Regarding procedures I would say there is not a legal hole here but a breakdown in the lines of communication between the government and the RBS board of directors. Personally I take the view that directors knowingly went against the will of the majority shareholder, thus that shareholder should simply fire the offending directors. After all they are paid precisely to carry out the wishes of the shareholders within the limits of the law - nothing else. You might even be able to reclaim monies by suing ejected directors for losses due to misconduct.

As for foreign investors, all they really want is a stable nation/democracy/economy on the basis that instability = risk. The law changes constantly but so long as the various executive bodies of government are in place and stable then all the fiddly details of individual laws are relatively irrelevant - apart from tax rates I suppose. I take your point though. Stability also comes from stable laws and a level playing field.

[andrewducker]

As the two events happened simultaneously (his resignation and the UK government being the majority shareholder) it might be tricky to argue that they weren't taking the wishes of said shareholder into account. Especially as Sir Fred is currently saying that there was signoff from the treasury at the time...

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

Sure. But we're the majority the shareholder now and the board gave Goodwin a discretionary £16M as the bank was failing. Seems like grounds for dismissal to me!

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

If there are legal ways to reclaim some or all the money by suing the directors - fine, good luck, and I hope the government wins. It's acting outside the law that I'm objecting to!

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'm just re-iterating the point that the law isn't some fixed thing; law is what the people say it is through our representatives in Parliament.

[andrewducker]

But passing new legislation in parliament to force Goodwin to give up his pension would breach the European Convention on Human Rights and could land the government in the European courts, Nugee added.

"One of the rights protected by the Convention is peaceful enjoyment of your possessions and government expropriation of private property without compensation is an absolutely classic example of a breach of human rights," he said. Jo Keddie, head of employment at Dawson Solicitors in London, said the government could "end up with egg on its face."

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/02032009/325/government-powerless-rbs-pension-row.html

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I've only just noticed the preface: "The Prime Minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted" - this does sound scarily like autocracy. I mean, I know it can be interpreted other ways, but it doesn't fill me with joy.

[zz]

will it be called Goodwin's Law? :>

[chuma.livejournal.com]

If they pass this law, does that mean that every Labour minister and backbencher would have to give up their pensions too?

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

What law? There is no law, nor any proposal for a law. There's Harriet Harman venting a good deal of anger in public.

Would you rather the government was composed, as seemed to be the case for so many years, of suited drones who never spoke an unscripted word?

She did use extremely embarrassing and over-the-top rhetoric, of course.

[andrewducker]

She's talking about acts of parliament being passed. Therefore it seems reasonable to talk about the consequences of what it might be.

[matgb]

Friend of mine has set up a facebook group to start a campaign to get Prescott to pay his Govt pension back, let's use his own words against him.

I was planning on rereading the '97 manifesto for a post anyway, so I can kill two birds with one stone. Let's see, Prescott's specific policies that he favoured before election. Integrated transport policy? Nope. Devolution in England? Well, London got a fix. I can't remember the rest, best go look it up when I've time.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I'd love for there to be some legal reason that that cash could be taken back off him, personally, but the only dodgy area I could see was where it looked like he might have actively concealed the fact that it wasn't mandatory that he got it, and even then he'd basically have to have signed a "nothing else to declare" for it to have the slightest chance of standing up.

The govt should be throwing up their hands and going "There's nothing we can do here, case closed" and using the public's fury to push vastly tighter controls on the future salaries and pensions of the upper-executives of what are now essentially national institutions instead of scrabbling in the dirt for, essentially, peanuts compared to what they've already churned into the RBS alone.

The one positive thing I hoped we might see from the whole furore was for bank CEOs to be told "Guess what, you're now a civil servant, welcome to overworked, underpaid hell. We'd like to review your job description... what DO you do exactly? Hm, let me find the pay band for that..." Oh how my little communist heart would swell. I'm still hopeful.

At the end of the day, legally, there's nothing to be done, economically, it's a drop in the ocean, and morally, well, he's already the most hated man in Britain, isn't that enough? You couldn't pay me £32million to be him right now.

[andrewducker]

Hah! That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

Except that you possibly could pay me £32million to be him - I'd have to think about it :->

[fannymagnate.livejournal.com]

Obviously the Tories would have handled thing much better . . .

[andrewducker]

I think what you're saying is:
"We live in a defacto two party state. Public criticism of the less bad party (Labour) makes it less likely for them to be elected, and thus contributes to the likelihood of the opposition party being elected. We should therefore not point out the things we dislike about our side, because this is likely to result in a worse government than the one we already have."

Of course, you could, alternatively, be saying:
"It is pointless to point out the flaws in the less bad party when the only likely alternative party would have dealt with things in a manner that was at least as bad, if not worse."

I can't actually tell which, if either, is your point, because you're not actually engaging with the discussion here. You seem to use my journal as a three-monthly stress relief device, where you can turn up, leave a snarky comment, and vanish again.

If you'd like to actually discuss things on my journal then I'm very happy to. Otherwise this feels like exactly the kind of abusive relationship I'd be better off without.