Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7916215.stm

Here we go again. Despite having presided over the whole thing, Brown's now going to sort it all out and make sure those naughty banks (you know the ones who used to be his best buddies) don't get away with it again.

Given Brown's track record in sorting out dodgy dealing amongst his own ranks, I reckon this latest pledge is just another example of the increasingly desperate gesture politics which characterises a Govt. in terminal decline and facing an election. In any event, given what's going on, I reckon Brown's bigger problem is ensuring we have a banking sector at all and replacing all those lovely £££billions his former chums like Fred the Shred used to provide in tax revenues for Brown to squander.

It's not just our banks which need sorting out either. With the EU having expanded eastwards faster than the UK's housing bubble inflated, things aren't looking too great over there:

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3159

I wonder who'll pick up the tab for this..... :confused:

Answers, invoices and begging letters to 10/11 Downing Street c/o the European Union.....

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

well i wait with baited breath to see if gordy bland can get our money back from sir robbin banks.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

From what I've heard of the legal opinion there's fat little chance of us getting any cash back from Fred the Shred or anyone else in a similar position unless they agree to it.

This whole debacle just goes to show how naive, inept and/or just plain stupid our glorious leaders are. What's more worrying is that these same people are now in control of large portions of the banking sector having been forced to put vast sums of our money at risk.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

This is just more hot air from Gb trying to hide the fact he presided over this whole disaster and wants to be seen instead as the saviour of us all. Lasting as long as it takes for the next election to be over then it will be back to business as usual brown nosing these bankers as he has done all through his political career since getting into office.

I really am sick and tired of hearing lots of noise and seeing absolutely sod all action from this bunch and we all know why they can't push that hard or those they hit will start letting slip about things that this government has done or known about.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

New Labour and GB are washed up beyond repair.Time for a GE!! :mad:

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

:clap: Well said.

This Government however will hang on and hang on to the very end hoping and preying something will turn up to save them from extinction.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Interesting piece pointing out why Fred's Pension is the consequence, not the problem.

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad....s-failure.html

No, they can't take it off him - confiscation of property at executive whim is not what we're about in a British democracy and thus a clear breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Much better for RBS to sue him for dereliction of duty, or similar, but that runs the risk of, as Chris Dillow points out, revealing just why unrestrained executive greed wasn't just tolerated by the political leadership, but encouraged.

I missed the bit where they conclusively proved that absolute power doesn't corrupt absolutely after all.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Perhaps the electorate should try that approach on Brown and his cohorts..

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

I see Harriet Harperson has stepped into the whole "Sir Fred's pension" thing...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7917361.stm

"And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in."

While I think it's rather offensive & ridiculous that Sir Fred has got such a massive pension, given that RBS is a failed bank propped up with taxpayers' money, I'm not so sure that "the court of public opinion" has any actual standing in this matter...

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Will Gordo give up his pension too? ;)

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Doubtful!

The thing is that if the muck hadn't hit the fan, Fred the Shred and his buddies would still be Brown's best mates and top of his Christmas card list. After all it was Fred's legeondary business skills and closeness to good old Gordon which gave Brown a very large stick to beat Salmond with and help secure New Labour's majority.

The truth is that neither Brown or any of his band of inept idiots wanted to ask the questions which might reveal what some of us had long known - namely that Brown's economic miracle was a house of cards just waiting for the merest hint of a breeze.....

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

I have to say, having recently sat through a speech from Harriet Harman, she is really as colourless and uninteresting in person.

This is either meaningless rhetoric or a leading member of the government claiming the law doesn't matter when the government decides it doesn't matter. I'm not sure which is worse. They must love Fred, such an easy way to say 'Look at him, not at us'.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

What's new about that? :mad:

She even has the audacity to urge Fred the Shred to do the 'honourable' thing - what on earth does she know about that FGS?!!!

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Not much, obviously, but I've not seen it expressed so, well, honestly before. Blair would say things like 'the rules of the game have changed' when he meant to say 'I don't like these rules so I'm going to play by some new ones I just wrote'.

Harman is essentially, perfectly reasonably and dispassionately saying that legal protections on anything don't matter if the government thinks public opinion supports a particular course of action, regardless of the consequences*. Ask the public if Fred The Shred should lose his pension and they'll say yes. Ask the public if they'd be happy with the government arbitrarily taking money off them without reason or law and they'll say 'hell, no' (the public generally don't like speed cameras and those do have a reason and law behind them), but they're essentially the same thing. If Fred loses his pension I want it done legally.

* I've been pondering the word 'consequences' a lot in my recent political musings, actually. The defining political ideologies of our age seem to lack any understanding of consequence, it seems to me, probably because they lack any understanding of history (or think history is something to be shaped to show how their ideology is the natural progression of things rather than something entirely alien). There's something very Year Zero about both New Labour and neoconservatism. Something very, well, Creationist. No surprise to find both stuffed full of Old Testament freaks, then.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

To be honest I'd be delighted for Fred to lose out providing the same 'rules' can be applied to the likes of Bliar, Brown, Darling, Straw, Mandelson, Harman, Smith, Blears, Hoon, Robinson, Vaz, Prescott and all the other New Labour pigs at the trough. They've hardly been a great success have they!

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Ah so now this government listens to public opinion and makes policy decisions on that basis wow how times have changed i guess you just have to be politically desperate enough to clutch at any straw. Please for the love of god will this government get the damn hint and just give us an election so if nothing else we can be spared months of hot air trying to shift the blame to everyone else rather then admit thier own failings.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

There comes a time in every Governments term when they have to do the right thing and in this case its fall on that sword. Personally i feel that sword should be long blunt and rusty :D

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Well it seems that Fred the Shred may could have seen his pension slashed if the RBS board had simply sacked him:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7921778.stm

It looks like legal action may well ensue as a result of this 'failure'.....

Anyway, Fred may not be the only major benefciary of rather forgiving boards of directors........

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Harman didn't even know what Fred got his gong for:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7923661.stm

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

if brown is going to clean up the banks then I'll get him a brush and he can stick it up his....

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

He most certainly isn't. This is how boards have been treating incompetent CEOs for years - it's one if the things that's most wrong with big business in this country. Our FTSE-100 boardrooms are actually just a great big mutual appreciation society, with people holding an executive position on one board one and non-exec positions on a half-dozen others. They all know each other, and they all look out for each other.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

and now it's been proved - they are clever at making money for themselves and lining their own pockets.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

Exactly. You don't stitch up a CEO who you 'supervise' as a non-exec director, because you never know whether he might turn up as a non-exec at the company you're in charge of.

And the big pension funds and investment banks that are (or were) the shareholders and therefore owners of these companies don't force the non-execs to take the job seriously because the pension funds and investment banks are themselves massive companies with their own CEOs and non-execs clamouring around the trough.

Re: Brown pledges to clean up the banks...
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7947844.stm

I reckon all those Governmental promises about snatching Fred's pension back are about as credible as Lord Myners.