A rich idiot’s still an idiot!

NEVER mind Fred the Shred. It should be Fred the Fool. Fred the Fat Head, Fred The Worst Chief Executive on the Planet.

In what universe does a man who helped bring down one of the world's biggest banks, who allowed that bank to incur a £24bn loss-the worst in corporate history, whose incompetence has ensured that 20,000 of its loyal employees will now be thrown onto the dole, get rewarded in such spectacular fashion for his abject failure to do his job?

And where lies the moral compass of this greedy little man who, as the lives of his employees are being wrecked, as their homes are being repossessed and as their hopes and dreams lie in tatters, can only think of himself and the £13,300 pension he will be drawing every week for the rest of his miserable life.

Only Sir Fred Goodwin's life won't be miserable, will it? It will be lavish and luxurious.

Thanks to his £693,000-a-year pension he will still be living in the Edinburgh mansion- bought no doubt with his bonuses. He'll still be driving around in his Bentley-bought by his bonuses.

Proof

And while his five-star lifestyle won't change one iota, taxpayers will STILL be paying for his mistakes for the next 30 years and decent people who've worked hard all their lives will be eking out a living on a weekly pension that wouldn't pay for one of Goodwin's bespoke shirts.

And even now, as his greed is being headlined across the world, this idiot's only defence is that the cabinet sanctioned his pension months ago.

Yes, well maybe they did. And maybe those ministers are all gutless and stupid not to confiscate it immediately and fight the legalities of that decision later in court.

But if ever we needed proof that Goodwin is just a very small man who got lucky to be given a very big job it's writ large in the way he's handling this crisis. You just have to look at his frantic, grasping, Me, Me, Me attitude to see what kind of human being he is.

Make no mistake, he'll hang onto that pension come hell or high water, even if it does look greedy and immoral.

And he'll do it because he's scared. Scared he'll never work again. Scared he's been exposed as an incompetent. Scared because he's now a commercial leper who no-one will ever employ. And scared because he hasn't the guts or the talent to get back into the workplace and rebuild his life like his sacked employees will soon have to do.

Power

Fred Goodwin might still be able to afford his five-star holidays, he might be spending long sunny days on the golf course, he may even have convinced himself he's entitled to this grotesque pension. But in his heart he knows he's a failure and, more importantly, he knows WE know it.

And now everywhere he goes people will point and say, "That's the idiot who brought down RBS."

Yes, he'll have money but what he's always craved is respect, social standing, power and position. And now they're all gone.

This is a man who identified himself not by the person he is but by the job he did. Which means now-he's nothing.

And every time he sets foot on the street, people will look at him with scorn, disdain and loathing. They'll point and snigger and laugh. They may even spit in his eye and he won't be able to do a damn thing about it.

Never again will he be able to cow people with his power, his temper, his position. Never again will he be able to finance his obscene lifestyle with other people's money.

It's unlikely Fred Goodwin will lose his pension but it won't take long for him to realise he's lost something a damn sight more important-his self respect, his good name and, if there's a God, his title as well.

And no matter how many times he tells people-and himself-that busting the bank wasn't his fault.

It was. And he knows it!

(*You can read more from Carole Malone in today's printed edition of the News of the World)

This article has 8 comments