Unless you have spent the past two weeks living in a cave, it will have been nigh on impossible not to have seen at least some of the coverage of the Stephen Hester and Fred Goodwin furores.
Whilst both stories have the obvious common thread of the Royal Bank of Scotland running through them, in one respect they could not have been more different.
As is widely reported today, Fred Goodwin is to be stripped of his knighthood (awarded for 'services to banking') for the catastrophic decisions which contributed to, if not directly caused, the near collapse of RBS. Last night's announcement comes just days after Stephen Hester bowed to relentless pressure from politicians and the media to forego a bonus worth £963,000.
Where the debate on Fred Goodwin surrounded on the idea that he shouldn't be rewarded for his failures at RBS, for that is how his knighthood has been painted, the debate on Stephen Hester concentrated on how and to what extent he should be rewarded for his successes at RBS.
It does not matter that Fred Goodwin was not solely responsible for the fall of RBS, nor that he has not been charged with any crime or misconduct. Nor does it matter that Stephen Hester is widely regarded by his peers to be doing a good job at RBS (although granted, how you measure and judge his performance is highly subjective).
All that matters in the eyes of the media, and seemingly now politicians, is that both men share the ignominy of being bankers. More than that, they are/were bankers at a bank largely owned by the taxpayer, a fact which seems sufficient to give politicians carte blanche to call the shots depending on which direction they think the wind of popular opinion is blowing.
Whilst the dead tree press appears to have been largely as one in their criticism of both men, opinion polls show that public opinion is much more divided. But what is clear is that most people have an opinion on the subject; and an unflappable, intractable opinion at that. Either bankers are bad and should be made to live in penury and wear sackcloth and ashes until the end of time, or bankers whilst having made mistakes are being scapegoated by politicians to distract from the wholesale failings of the FSA and the last government in the events leading up to the 2008 bailouts.
Whilst there will undoubtedly be some that genuinely couldn't give a damn either way about bankers, I'd wager such individuals are relatively few and far between. Therefore given that large swathes of society, if not a majority of people, couldn't give a fig about football, with all other popular bloodsports now banned, and as it's something we as a nation would appear to have a real flair for, perhaps it's time for us to finally recognise banker-bashing as our official national sport?
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