BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!

Subject: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 09:47 AM

A group called Bank Bosses Are Criminals have attacked the home of disgraced RBS boss, Fred Goodwin, breaking windows in his house and flash Mercedes car. Pretty mild retribution, I'd say, for someone who has ruined the lives of so many people and taken millions of pounds for doing so. Let's hope they continue to make his life a misery for having done just that to others – he deserves everything he gets.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: SINSULL
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 10:12 AM

And just how does this help the people whose lives he ruined?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 10:31 AM

Who is this?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 10:50 AM

"Goodwin has been at the centre of a row about the generosity of his £700,000-a-year pension. He stepped down from his job at RBS after the bank was propped up with £20bn of public money, which was later increased by an additional £13bn."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/25/sir-fred-goodwin-royalbankofscotlandgroup

At least, he stepped down. Ours don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Leadfingers
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 10:51 AM

So Fred took advantage of a bloody silly stuation - Is that a good reason for Criminal activity ?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 12:33 PM

Oooh the wicked naughty people. I am like soooo full of sympathy for poor Sir Fred. Meanwhile the house re-possessions continue throughout the land as a direct result of his greed(and the greed of his fellow thieves).

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: goatfell
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 12:38 PM

and they should do the same at number 11 dowing street or better still just vote the torylabour party out of office

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Megan L
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 12:55 PM

Violence and mindless vandalism is never the answer to anything

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Teribus
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 01:00 PM

Sir Freddie the Shredder screwed up right royally he admitted it and walked.

BUT - (Now you all knew one was coming)

His pension was part of the deal made by the current labour Government and it was agreed to.

OK hands up all those who, under those circumstances, would knock back a £700,000 back.

"breaking windows in his house and flash Mercedes car" - pretty small minded pointless vandalism - but it matches the minds and IQ's of those who perpetrated it. Achieved absolute SFA as everything would probably have been extremely well insured, so Sir Fred profits to the extent of new windows and a new body job for his car, all at the expense of all the rest of the punters who pay insurance premiums. I just love the way the radical left always immediately resort to violent action after having really thought things through.

"Let's hope they continue to make his life a misery for having done just that to others – he deserves everything he gets."

And so Leveller do those guilty of causing criminal damage, but rest assured that they would not have cost Sir Fred one wink of lost sleep, or one iota of personal discomfiture. Due to the cack-handedness of Gordon of Cartoon and the rest of that corrupt, inept shower that masquerades as a Government in the UK, Sir freddie is laughing all the way to the Bank, but not literally in his case.

With his £700,000 a year pension he could afford to buy loads of bank shares and make an absolute killing when their share price rockets as it most definitely will. Then Leveller you can do some more "socialist" foaming at the mouth.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 01:56 PM

Evidently I am not of "the radical left" because I do NOT see the sense of vandalism.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 02:12 PM

Yeah - class hatred - that'll solve our problems! maybe we can improve things even more with racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 02:21 PM

Mob rule is always wrong

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 02:42 PM

Change the government if you think it will do any good.

But it makes no more sense to vandalize the man's house than the burning of the big houses (and other places) did during the Irish Civil War.

IF there is no law, then law can be imposed by the people IF it is imposed impartially, justly, and mercifully. The vigilantes of the American West imposed other punishments besides hanging (banishment, flogging, fines, etc.).

But this is not at all necessary in England (or the US) today.

Why not simply hold a silent vigil across the street from his house with a sign indicating how many people (changed daily) lost their homes through his actions?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 04:19 PM

That these acts of vandalism are criminal is certainly obvious in law.

That sir freds thoughtless vandalism of peoples lives via selfish risk taking should be rewarded with such a vast amount of money, provided by trhe tax payer, is not criminal in law but in my mind is nonetheless criminal.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

And any intelligent saboteur should consider that he will not lose out, as he will get a payout from his insurers, which, if this is a strategy to get back at the bankers, will only result in further strain being put on financial institutions which will then ask for more public money.

Being a multi faceted multi dimensional person, It doesn't take much effort to understand the anger that people feel.

I am able to blank it out and keep crimes such as freds in the abstract.

I havent't lost my job/home/life - possibly family etc etc etc yet.

So while I disagree with that way of doing things and see it is ultimately damaging to the people who did it, something they may reflect on as they languish in jail, (while sir fred simply rings his accountant to chase up the insurance company from his permanent holiday wherever it is that he is laying low ... or indeed living it up ...), I cannot judge them but feel nothing but sympathy and understanding.

It reminds me of fathers for justice. There were some characters involved who it turned out were seperated from their kids for good reason, but there were others who were driven to act foolishly out of sheer desperate frustration.

Sometimes its just too much.

Lets hope it doesn't become more comonplace, as it will result either in the total disintegration of society, or (more likely) in a reality comparable to that in the film "Brazil" with a distinct seperation of class between the very wealthy and protected and the rest on the outside.

And the likes of us will be on the outside.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 05:35 PM

If the law permits Fred's theft, and then preserves the property that he stole against damage, what is the law but the tool of oppression?

If the law results from politicking what is politics but the tool of oppression?

How then do the dispossessed regain what was theirs but by renouncing politics and law in favour of what they can control? They will of course lose the pitched battle, for politics and law control the armies.

That leaves guerilla warfare.

Burn baby burn.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Megan L
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 05:37 PM

thats sick

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 05:43 PM

"Right comes from the muzzle of a rifle"? "God is on the side of the big battalions"? "When you've got 'em by the balls their hearts and minds will follow"?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: akenaton
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 06:28 PM

The bankers are "small beer"........The real criminals are the people who want to enslave our children with billions of pounds/dollars debt which will take decades to pay off, in a last ditch effort to re-establish the status quo.

Richard Bridge is correct, as the system disintegates we shall be forced to fight for our freedom and our lives.

Capitalism will never willingly take its hands from our throats or it's heel from our necks.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 06:49 PM

So does that mean the system is disintegrating?

Are these events symptomatic of times to come?

Is Rome burning?

What's next?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Teribus
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:03 PM

"If the law permits Fred's theft, and then preserves the property that he stole against damage, what is the law but the tool of oppression?" - Richard Bridge.

Now if memory serves me correctly the person who stated that is a lawyer.

I would ask him the following:

What did Fred steal?? - The answer of course is nothing.

What property did Fred steal?? - The answer of course is none.

What criminal charges have been brought?? - Again the answer is none, and there are none in prospect of being brought.

Is there any evidence to support any such charge of theft?? - And again the answer is none.

So the man is guilty of what??

Funny thing Marxist socialist values and the law - as soon as it doesn't suit you the "champagne socialists" come out offering opinions and advice such as this:

"How then do the dispossessed regain what was theirs but by renouncing politics and law in favour of what they can control? They will of course lose the pitched battle, for politics and law control the armies.

That leaves guerilla warfare.

Burn baby burn."

Richard - you want to get yourself another job, you are clearly unsuited to the one you've got. Mind you I suppose you could join our other leftist "socialist" legal eagle and go smear some shit on hat pins to stick into perfect strangers - another totally unjustified recourse to violence, but no doubt they'd find some bloody idiotic excuse for their behaviour.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:11 PM

You see Terry, you don't understand how the system robs those who are not empowered to manipulate it, do you?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:55 PM

"Property is theft" is a slogan (not a "Marxist" slogan, incidentally) that oversimplifies things - but there are situations where it is spot on. And Fred Goodwin represents one of those situations.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 07:57 PM

I see it as theft.

He sees it as a payout from his bank.

But in doing so he puts the blinkers on and ignores that the tax payer did not ask to bail out his bank, the tax payer was informed that they would be bailing out his bank.

What the tax payer certainly did not expect was that their money would be used to reward the guy who brought the bank to the brink in the first place.

It was a most elaborate con trick, so adept that he even fooled himself.

A man with no qualifications in finance becomes head of a bank - and nearly destroys it and then makes off with millions in rewards.

At least in the film "catch me if you can" starring leonardo di caprio in the true life story of americas youngest con artist, he was caught.

If Sir Fred had the remotest shred of decency he would thank the public on bended knee for a consierably smaller sum.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 08:33 PM

If you're gonna take the class attitude, associating money and property directly to criminality, I say you should STILL avoid petty vandalism and, so to speak, cut to the chase, as the old Left Bank bumper sticker would have us:






"EAT THE RICH!"

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Emma B
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 08:43 PM

A report of this attack is given in the 'not socialist' Times

It's interesting to note that both in this report and on the radio news the affluent neighbours in this exclusive area (hardly the front line of the 'class war') stated that they understood the 'anger' that provoked this attack upon the Mercede's window (one of Goodwins 7 cars including a couple of Ferraris) and three windows of the £3million house rather more than they understood the greed that made him refuse catagorically to give any of his £16.9 million pension package back.

It is also reported that Goodwin said he was 'shaken' by the damage - but unfortunately not 'stirred' (conscience wise)

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 08:58 PM

I have arms* and ammunition and the knowledge and will to use them -- as I see fit. This in no way means that I would support EITHER the plebes or the proles.



*Some of them are not "on the books", so to speak, and I can get more of those if needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Mar 09 - 09:48 PM

But if you attacked my home, for which my wife and I have worked and saved for 35+ years, I would defend myself in whatever way I saw fit (e.g., consider being the target of a bucket of water at 25F or colder).

I think that those who attacked Mr. Goodwin's house (3.5 million is too much for a "home" in my opinion) are lucky that the laws in the UK are more "civilized" than they are in the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:06 AM

Careful, Richard Bridge. 05:35 PM. With ethics like yours, you'll give lawyers a bad name.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Teribus
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 02:40 AM

"A man with no qualifications in finance becomes head of a bank - and nearly destroys it and then makes off with millions in rewards."


What this so-called unqualified buffoon did:

Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin CA, DUniv (h.c), FCIBS,LLD (h.c) (born 17 August 1958) is a Scottish banker and former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). He obtained his nickname "Fred the Shred" from City financiers in the 1990s, having gained a reputation for generating cost savings and efficiencies.

From 2000 until 2008 he presided over RBS's rapid rise to global prominence as the world's largest company (by assets - £1.9trn), and fifth-largest bank by stock market value and its even more rapid fall as RBS was forced into effective nationalisation in 2008.

Psssst Guest Lox - nobody was complaining about his performance up until Fanny and Freddie caused the collapse of confidence in credit to crash world's financial system were they?

The "Beef":

The February 2009 disclosure of his approximately £700,000 per year pension award from RBS he was the subject of widespread public, political and media criticism.

Pssst Guest Lox this package was negotiated by everybody in Government who had anything to do with Sir Fred's leaving who now profess shock and horror. Any idea why they didn't speak up at the time of those "negotiations"??

The "Track Record" no qualifications in finance:

- Studying law at Glasgow University.

- 1983, joined accountants Touche Ross, and qualified as a chartered accountant.

- 1985 and 1987 he led a management consultant team at Rosyth Dockyard.

- 1988 and became a partner in Touche Ross.

- Appointed a director of Short Brothers, and tasked with preparing the largest industrial employer in Northern Ireland for its 1989 privatisation.

- For Touche Ross he headed the worldwide liquidation of Bank of Credit and Commerce International after its collapse in July 1991. At 32, Goodwin was in charge of 1,000 people with teams from London to Abu Dhabi and the Cayman Islands that eventually returned over half the money from one of the most complicated, high-profile financial frauds ever.

- 1987 His move into banking came through his work at Touche Ross with the National Australia Bank, contributing due diligence to its 1987 takeover of Clydesdale Bank from the then Midland Bank and again with its 1995 takeover of Yorkshire Bank.

- During work on the latter he caught the eye of National Australia Bank executive Don Argus, and was invited to become deputy chief executive of Clydesdale in 1995, and as per his "five-second rule", accepted on the spot rising to chief executive of National Australia's British banking operations in 1996.

- Around this time he gained the nickname "Fred the Shred" from City financiers, reflecting a reputation for ruthlessly generating cost savings and efficiencies whilst at Clydesdale. He was later described as "a corporate Attila", having gained a reputation in the City for being a fearsome outsider - being Scottish, and not educated at a public school or at Oxbridge - who made raids in the south and abroad when it suited him.

- He joined Royal Bank of Scotland in 1998 as deputy CEO to then-Chairman Sir George Mathewson, who had ambitions to make RBS a major player rather than a regional bank.

- 2000 RBS £23.6bn takeover of NatWest, a bank three times its size.

From the time that Goodwin took over as chief executive until 2007, RBS's assets quadrupled, its cost-to-income ratio improved markedly, and its profits soared.

Guess nobody knows you when your down and out eh Guest Lox - Certainly for someone so unqualified nobody was compalining about him while he was making money for everybody hand over fist - and so far he has stolen from no-one, irrespective of how you see it.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:15 AM

"Careful, Richard Bridge. 05:35 PM. With ethics like yours, you'll give lawyers a bad name."

So you believe what Goodwin did to be ethical, do you? It may have been lawful but, as Dickens realised, sometimes "the law is a ass".

Let's see who is the criminal. A man who, from his abuse of power, ruined the lives of thousands and then arrogantly refused to refute the huge payout he had negotiated, or a few radical registering the digust of all right-minded people at the fact that he got away with it?

Looks like it's going to be a very hot summer - bring on the revolution!

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Megan L
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:20 AM

Has any of the ones advocating this sort of behaviour actually thought what it would have been like if there had been a child in the house. Of course they didnt because mob mentality doesnt give a damb about children. To a mob it doesnt matter who gets hurt or damaged along the way as long as they get what they want.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:43 AM

Hardly a mob, Megan. And I'm sure they were only too well aware that there was no-one in the house. Here we go, typical disortion of the facts to prove a point.

To a banker with no morals it doesn't matter who gets hurt as long as he gets what he wants. Touche.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Megan L
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:53 AM

How did they know did they go nock the front door? Have you ever been in a house with people outside baying and throwing things? Rule by fear is never right

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 04:55 AM

re Goodwin's qualifications - although 'he studied law at Glasgow University', I don't see a degree amongst the list, other than two doctorates which are 'honorary' ones, presumably for his services to banking. I assume the 'CA' means Chartered Accountant?

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 05:17 AM

"How did they know did they go nock the front door? Have you ever been in a house with people outside baying and throwing things? Rule by fear is never right "

Rubbish! This was not mindless vandalism, this was a well-planned and executed geurilla operation. It was common knowledge that the Goodwins were sunning themselves abroad while we all have to stay at home and take the consequences of his disgusting, immoral behaviour.You're completely missing the point - this was an attack on PROPERTY not PEOPLE. Rule by fear? What a load of bollocks.

Terry, I think CA means Complete Arsehole.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Terry McDonald
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 05:25 AM

Ah! Of course, I should have realised - Chartered accountants are usually ACAs or FCAs.

(Now someone will spoil it by telling me that's not the case in Scotland.)

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 06:58 AM

The suggestion that there may have been a child in the empty house at the time is disingenuous; neighbours said he had not been seen for weeks after taking his children out of a local private school and it is believed he is overseas

The picture of a baying mob throwing things owes more to the imagination of Gary Larson than the reality of a small group described by experts as well-educated individuals conducting an organized assault

"Professor Capitanchik, of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, grouped the gang together with environmental terrorists and guerrilla animal protection activists.

"These groups, while not using violence against people, are not too concerned about causing damage," he said. "All of this, in their view, is to bring home the message, whatever it happens to be."

He said they were likely to be young, highly motivated, well-educated individuals and suggested they could be bank workers or investors."

From the same report in the Times

"There have previously been protests outside the property since it emerged that Sir Fred had negotiated a £16.9 million pension package and had no intention of giving it back.
Banners posted outside decried him as a "scumbag millionaire".

On Monday, Sir Max Hastings, a military historian and former newspaper editor*, called on the public to throw stones through the windows of failed bankers"

* of that well known Marxist newspaper The Daily Telegraph

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: number 6
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:27 AM

damned scarry ... from which ever way you look at this.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:33 AM

Thanks, Emma, very enlightening. Sorry to be Mr Angry on this one but it's the actions of Goodwin and his cronies that have chucked me on the scrap heap at the age of 60 after working hard for 42 years. I have been obliged to take the already meagre pension I'd managed to scrape together over the years at a time when its value has gone down by about 25%. So, while Goodwin wallows in his £700k a year, I have to try to pay the mortgage and feed my family on £7K a year.

Angry? You bet I am! Pass me a brick.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:33 AM

"Seize their Porsches and throw them in jail! Shameless bankers are worse than Train Robbers"

What Sir Max Hastings wrote in that well known pillar of the radical left the Daily Mail

"A distinguished financial commentator wrote this week that investment banks have been run not for the benefit of society, customers, or even shareholders, but exclusively for the advantage of the bankers themselves.

This is what is so iniquitous. This is what those responsible still refuse to acknowledge.

This is why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks through the windows"

"The best reason for using extravagant language to abuse these people is that politeness will get us nowhere with them. They have stashed away enough of our money to be secure from any threat to their lifestyles. "

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 07:41 AM

Terry, the "achievements" you list look a lot like more of the same. I've worked with high level people from Touche Ross, and it is not a recommendation. Have you?

It was the gearing of grabby Fred's reckless expansion at RBS (the "financial engineering" that the accountants and MBAs of the time were promoting) that was its undoing. The fox was in charge of the chicken coop.

Once upon a time a lot of lawyers made it thier concern to see that they worked in a "justice" system. Now we have headed back to a system merely of law. It was a system merely of law that deported men who stole to feed their families in previous times of economic failure and/or permitted a death sentence on conviction for theft of property worth more than a shilling.

Go back and read the history of the corn laws.

Some of us still believe in justice.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 08:31 AM

I don't for one second agree with or support the vandalism against Freddies property.

I object on ethical grounds and I also see it as a pointless ineffective punishment if that is how it was intended as Freddie will not suffer a jot.

As for whether there were kids there or whether he was known to be away or not, I think we will find that the guys who did this stuff are not that discriminating or they would have thought their plan through a bit better as far as it pertained to their presumed goal of punishing him.

I read that CV as evidence of over ambition and reckless risk taking.

I never cared before because he wasn't being paid with our money, money which we thought was going to be used to save the bank not the banker.

And I agree that those who agreed his pay off should take responsibility and not try to pass the buck his way exclusively.

But none of that detracts from the fact that he is a shitbag of the highest order.

We in the public domain have an image of banks as prudent conservative sensible institutions that we can trust with our money.

We assume that those running the banks put our interests first and would never do anything to compromise our security and livelihoods.

Freddie failed to honour that trust.

A point to remember - if RBS had gone under, he would have received no pension as there would have been no company to pay it.

So he needs to thank us for having a pension at all.

The fact that he has agreed to take so much is criminal.

It is like being saved a slice by us when all indications were that he might get nothing and then showing appreciation by taking the whole cake from us.


Down at this end of the economy, I have a pretty low opinion of those who take advantage of the taxpayer. Benefit fraud, scrounging and dependancy by those who are fit and able pisses me off.

Fred didn't need £16,000,000.

How many able bodied dole scroungers would it take, at £60 a week for a lifetime (say 50 years) to cost the tax payer £16,000,000.

I work out that it rounds down to 102.

It isn't illegal, but we don't like it.

Freddie the freeloader was already minted.

He is morally corrupt.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 09:41 AM

"I also see it as a pointless ineffective punishment if that is how it was intended"

I doubt the petty, but well publized, vandalism was intended as 'punishment' Lox but rather 'propagande par le fait' the anarchist concept of propaganda by the deed by which acts of symbolic violence against structural targets are intended to evoke a broader meaning.

Not being an anarchist, I agree that attempts to undertake individualised reprisals against the nearest available fat cat, rather than patiently building a political response are ultimately counterproductive however, a comment I read stated
"But if people don't feel strongly enough to throw bricks through windows, then attempts to direct that feeling into better channels will peter out."

"... direct action comes from frustration that there seems to be no way of achieving justice through peaceful channels.
And this is probably the only way to wake the Government up to the fact that we really will have to control these fat-cats or there really will be a boom in the glaziery business"

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 09:58 AM

I think in this case its just angry people getting back at the guys they see as having ruined their lives.

People who feel powerless and disenfranchised trying to empower themselves.

It will be sad and horrible when they are humiliated into a spell in the nick, made to pay a fine and maybe even sued by Freddie Freeloader himself in the small claims court.

Ultimately though their situation will not change, except for the worse.

There will of course be much public symppathy and support, but if GB is powerless in the face of Freddies contract then so are we.

Besides, he can - and probably already has done - move all his money overseas with a phone call and live haoily ever after in the sun while we trash the place around ourselves and wake up to find we live in hell.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:00 AM

Rationally, his few million makes no difference in the scheme of things, but the fierce, bitter anger that normally decent people can not help but feel at the sheer injustice and greed is a dangerous thing.

There are hundreds of thousands who have lost their homes, jobs and savings. Who knows what they will be capable of.
Dangerous times I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Rasener
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:05 AM

Well I just hope people that seem to condone vandalism or voilence, get their come uppence.

As has been said, he basically hasn't broken the law, but the vandals have.

That doesn't mean I condone what he has done. Its disgraceful.

However if we allow people to take their anger out on property or people, then we are not upholding the law.

I for one do not support anybody who chooses to vandalise or is voilent to anybody, no matter what the reason.

Self defence is another matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:07 AM

The government (then) was perfectly capable of pursuing the NUM's cash abroad.

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:21 AM

So bullying is wrong in school, and it is rightly frowned upon, with measures being taken to stamp it out.
However bullying, particularly left wing bullying in pursuit of 'The Cause' (WTF is the cause BTW?), is OK?
What a load of bollocks

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 10:43 AM

Well I'd hardly call Max Hastings a 'left wing' bully but - just to show there is nothing new under the sun in what people perceive as a fight for 'justice' I include the following newspaper report

(BTW I'm not sure what 'The Cause' is referred to above but
other 'causes' have been publicized by window breaking)

London November 26, 1910, Saturday New York Times

"Twenty suffragettes who were arrested during the night for smashing windows in the Government offices were sentanced in the Bow Street police court today each to two months imprisonment"

Subject: RE: BS: Fred Goodwin's home attacked - hahaha!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 11:05 AM

It's those who vandalised the house that are bullies, and terrorists. Intimidation is a nasty pastime, and it's a common weapon of certain self righteous organisations.