Skunk as a Lord?
Skunk: A person regarded as obnoxious or despicable.
But it was done with considerable input from a political lynch mob, and as a symbol of the banksters (= banker + gangsters), and I’m left with more questions than answers.
Was it a correct decision, and was it made on a correct basis, and should it apply to Peers as well as Knights, and where should we draw the lines, if any?
Let me try a few examples.
Should Sir Richard Branson have his Knighthood quashed because he launched his career with a significant Purchase Tax fraud, for which he was never charged.
Does it make much difference that he’s raised significant charitable funds, in addition to his own profile, since, and built a major business?
Should Lord Hanningfield be expelled for having been locked up for 9 months for False Accounting?
What about Lord Paul, who overclaimed £38,000 but paid it back?
What about non-financial offenders, such as Lord Bell, who masturbated (without any requests, it should be noted) to several women through his bathroom window in Hampstead in 1977, and was convicted of indecency?
Or Baroness Uddin, who lied about her circumstances, but was found guilty by the House of Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee, rather than by a Court of Law? Her intention was to return to the Lords, so that her fiddled expenses would be paid off from more expenses claimed from the taxpayer.
Should former Ministers, who have been found to have fiddled significant sums, be prevented from receiving the traditional Life Peerage which comes up with the rations for Cabinet Expenses?
Jacqui Smith, for example, admitted on Question Time that she had disgraced herself with her excessive claims for £116,000, and stated that she would be unlikely to go to the Lords.
And what about more trivial offences? Should shoplifting have cost Antony Worrall-Thompson a Knighthood if he had one?
Alistair Darling that we need a process, and one outside rough and tumble politics, to the risk of this becoming a method of political assassination of opponents:
“I’m not here to defend Sir Fred… I just think we’re getting into awful trouble here if we go after people on a whim and we don’t have a clear set of principles against which we can judge people, it’s not right.”
But where do we draw the lines and how do we define the principles?
If things stay as they are in the Lords, my poster child for expulsion from the Peerage is none of the above, but Michael Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn.
To my eye Martin’s most serious offences are not his own highly questionable expenses, nor his attacks on individual MPs, nor that he behaved as a bastard child of Captain Mainwaring and Compo.
His most serious offence was to facilitate corruption of the processes within Parliament, from his vigorous defence of the ability of MPs to hide their expenses, to his allowing officials to shred receipts for MP Expenses from 2001 to 2004 while High Court action about access to Expenses Receipts was in full swing.
Looking through the list above, I don’t care about Knighthoods, and I’m tempted to suggest a scorched earth solution to the Lords.
Or should we solve it by starting from scratch with an elected Lords, so that the whole apparatus of determining acceptability can be swept away.
Which would allow crooks can be elected to the Lords on the same basis that they can currently be elected to the Commons.
Hmmm.
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1
February 3, 2012 at 08:07 -
There are two things at work here.
First, the politicians must provide the masses with someone other than themselves – the true gangsters – to be upset about.
Second, Sir Fred’s demotion came at just the right time to cover the revelation that Cameron’s ‘veto’ in fact wasn’t.Looking at those two points we see the political class in the country couldn’t sink much lower.
The Lords should be cleared of all ‘life peers’ and return to what it was, hereditary peers that have no strong political leanings and the bishops – and I wonder about them.
In fact I wonder if we couldn’t do without all of them – both houses – and move to something like the Swiss model but giving the monarch more say.
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2
February 3, 2012 at 08:43 -
The key difference is that knighthoods, along with CBEs, OBEs etc are mere baubles, they carry no additional benefit other than that which some people choose to infer.
Peerages, on the other hand, place the holder in a key position in our legislative process and, therefore, should require the utmost integrity and trust. All those peers listed should be expelled, along with a few others of all parties.
Whether the Upper Chamber is reformed to become wholly elected or not is probably of less importance than it being seen only to feature people in whom we can place absolute trust.
Talking of which, it’s probably time now for a brief interlude of bashing the bishops……
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4
February 3, 2012 at 09:25 -
I have some sympathy for Fred. Yes he was incompetent (or perhaps just unlucky in his timing?) but if you start stripping people of honours for incompetence you would have to throw 50% or more of the Lords out for a start. That doesn’t even touch on the mandarinate – when the warship/motorway/railway/trade deal arrives ten years late costing three times as much as it should and then turns out to be a crock of shit does Sir Humphry ever become mere Mr Humphrey once again. Like hell he does.
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5
February 3, 2012 at 09:33 -
There is something deeply unpleasant about politicians in full lynch mob mode. Fred Goodwin is the perfect example of all that is wrong in quite a few board rooms of FTSE100 companies. They are filled with people whose best business days are behind them and who are fighting like ferrets in a sack for every little scrap of glory and office space they can get before heading off to a glorious sunset of exec. board postions and charity golf days. They don’t listen to advice and anyone who raises an issue is ‘being negative’. So I hold no brief for Freddie-boy. But this was a nonsense. It’s politicians throwing a bone to the baying masses and we were all supposed to be satisfied. I am absolutely delighted that the discussion has now turned on them and there is now a list of other candidates.
I used to be a bit of firebrand about the house of lords but I have mellowed with old age. I like that there are a bunch of independently minded people who can give the odd government bill a kick up the backside. I think there is a need for a check on the commons in cases where there is a large majority government and weak opposition. Can we keep the good bits of the house of lords (not really beholden to anyone, smart, got the time to be trouble-makers, a sprinkling of principles here and there) and lose the bad bits (cold left-over politicians thrown a stipend to keep them in old age, toadying creeps who believe a title makes them a cut above the rest, those too old to make a proper living)? -
6
February 3, 2012 at 09:43 -
I’m no apologist for Mr Goodwin.
Years ago I was taught the rudiments of disciplinary procedures- fairness. Are the facts right and has the procedure been fairly applied? Clearly, however deserved Fred’s treatment, he’s been made an example of, which is unfair. Pure political expediency. Sort them all out or none.
The whole issue of giving honours to people for doing their job or persuing their sport is unnecessary. If they’re any good they get good rewards. Let’s reserve honours, but not position, for those providing exceptional services or acts of heroism outside their normal lives. I’m also not sure I see any logic in stripping away a deserved award because of some later misdemeanor.
The House of Lords, for all of it’s qualities, is an anachronism devoid of democracy. I think we need a second chamber, but we don’t need Commons retreads, party donors, and thieves. It’s a responsible job, not a reward for favours past.
As Mudplugger said, ‘require the utmost integrity and trust’.
So let’s not hold our breaths. -
7
February 3, 2012 at 09:49 -
In the middle ages when a knight was stripped of his title it often ended with death. Now that was a real deterrent.
In seriousness there should be a criminal charge for those who bring the nation into disrepute and jail time. The person who nominated the knight/peer should also be stopped making future nominations for nominating a person thus ensuring people think hard about who they put forward.
Everyone should be equal. Commit a fraud of the public purse through benefits system for a few hundred pounds and you are harassed by police and shunned by society. If you were caught stealing from finances at your work or club you would face jail.
Yet millionaires in Lords & Parliament simply return part of the money and continue feeding off the public and sitting in the legislative chambers of government.
A country that is rotten at the top will end up in financial catastrophe due to incompetence, blackmail, corruption and self interest of the law makers & decision makers.
We could end up with £1 trillion of national debt if left unchecked…oh wait. Too late.
I am old fashioned and believe stealing from one person is bad and should be punished but stealing from 60 million citizens who have trusted you and rewarded you well should be seen as treason. Solution should involve ropes & lamp posts in the Westminster area. That is a deterrent and a reminder.
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8
February 3, 2012 at 10:00 -
What about banishment, passport withdrawn any entitlement to state finances, pension, benefits etc.
Stick them on the first plane to Brussels and let them live out their days amongst other corrupt reprobates.
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9
February 3, 2012 at 12:08 -
MP’s in full lynch mob self righteous mode, acheiving nothing. Expect more on this!
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10
February 3, 2012 at 12:16 -
As has been pointed out, the Lords have a legislative function with some individuals also having an Executive function. So probity is essential, and miscreants should be removed. The only real problem is to define ‘miscreant’ in this context.
An elected upper chamber certainly wouldn’t solve the problem – look at the Commons for evidence of that! Also, a fully elected Lords has problems for other reasons. All you would get then are people who are successful in the competitive sport of getting elected, rather than people who have real jobs and real lives and could actually contribute something useful to the legislative process from their experience. The real problem with the current system is that it gives the PM enormous patronage in choosing potential peers. A much more open and transparent process would help – the current House of Lords Appointment Commission probably isn’t it.
As for knighthoods, perhaps it’s the monarch’s function to decide whether to give or take away. Historically that was always the case and perhaps it should be so again.
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11
February 3, 2012 at 13:40 -
Would we even be talking about this if RBS hadn’t been bailed out? If it could have been left to fail?
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12
February 3, 2012 at 14:19 -
Can’t help feeling that Goodwin has got off rather lightly. Given a choice between a knighthood and a £300,000 a year pension, which would you take?
As for the House of Lords, the worst thing the political classes ever did to it was to sling out the hereditaries. The political classes didn’t like them because they were, in general, above party politics. They carried out their role of scrutinising and revising legislation passed by the lower house with commendable disinterest (in the old sense of the word). By far the best way forward would be to ask all appointees since 1997 to stand down, and invite the hereditaries to resume their duties. Then hold a prolonged (say, about a decade, so that political interest can be neutralised) debate about exactly what the constitution requires of a second chamber. My suspicion is that such a debate will reach the conclusion that what is required is a chamber of people having genuine knowledge of something (rather than belief in something), and political independence or neutrality. Such as is provided by hereditaries supported by appointment of non-political national achievers. Former politicians may be accorded the title, and the right to contribute to debate, but not voting rights in the chamber.
The fewer politicians (especially professional ones) we have involved in politics the better for all of us.
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14
February 3, 2012 at 18:26 -
Fred Goodwin came across as smug and unapologetic, having been at the helm of the RBS Titanic when it struck the financial iceberg. I feel no sympathy for such a man, whose reputation for ruthlessness did not endear him to any of his employees. If he had offered some semblance of an apology or explanation for the mess that RBS found itself in then I don’t think he would have been so eviden as a potential target on the political radar as a ready made candidate for a political kicking but…
It would be nice if some more of this downgrading was directed at other candidates, especially those who have done a bit of ‘bird’ – like that other arrogant so and so Geoffrey Archer. As Anna points out, another prime candidate would be former Speaker Martin – for having presided over the whole mess and then did his level best to frustrate justice.
Other than doing this, and given the mess the country is in, I cannot see what other way those who have dropped the country in the poo can be gently reminded that they are responsible for the misery that pervades the UK today. In the US, Alan Greenspan has an honorary knighthood and he should be ‘stripped’ as well.
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