When is a banker not a banker? When he's called Fred Goodwin!

Fred Goodwin got to be known as Fred the Shred for his activities whilst he was the semi-piratical captain of the ship at Royal Bank of Scotland. He took a once great institution so close to the rocks that it nearly broke into tiny pieces. For his ambitious greed, or maybe greedy ambition, he got given the boot. Now the cheeky knight in tarnished armour has the affrontery to suggest that calling him a banker is all wrong. He has gone so far as to get a judge (one in a stupor, no doubt) to grant him an injunction banning the media from calling him a banker. Well, if he isn't a banker, what is he?

He must have got out of the wrong side of his bed one morning. Thought to himself "I'm not a banker!" and then gone running round the house telling his family and then running into the street telling the good folk of Edinburgh "I'm not a banker". Well, we all knew that anyway.

FRED GOODWIN IS NOT A BANKER!!!

I'm glad to join in telling anyone who may care to know it that Fred is not a banker. I'm not sure what he is now, but no doubt he will tell us in good time.

Barney Rubble ran RBS!

You couldn't make it up. The Royal Bank of Scotland saga rolls on. Sir Fred Goodwin, when he was chief executive, seemed to think he was given a bag stuffed with poker chips. He took the nickname of Fred the Shred, but he was more like the blundering Fred Flintstone. Whilst he was up to his schemes, the board was dutifully hanging around like Barney Rubble. "Yeah, good idea, Fred. Think it will work, Fred. Wait till I tell Betty, Fred." So the crazy plans were bulldozed through like a caper from the Flintstones. Where was Wilma when we needed her? "FRE...ED! Oh, Fred!"

RBS? Rubble's Banking Scams could be a new title. Be about as accurate. It's the Barney Rubbles of this world that don't see it coming. Fred managed to get out of the mess relatively unscathed. He had the indignation of sitting in front of MPs to say SORRY!, but that hardly got his adrenalin moving. The thought that his £650,000 per annum pension pot could be tampered with, well that will raise the temperature. How on earth could Brown and Darling let that one go though? Another light touch?

Gordon Brown's fingers are all over the mess, Alistair Darling is hopelessly trying to make it all sound good, but it is us, the taxpayers, who will be paying Fred the Shred and his merry much of losers.