"Arise Mr. Fred Shred"

[DTCwordfan]

Public opinion or Political Pressure?

The Forfeiture Committee has ruled and the Queen has accepted.

Yep Mr Fred down the local tonight..... Why was this not done sooner?

[HowardKennitby]

All seems a bit childish to me.

[emmie]

because pressure has been put on in the last week, hopefully he will go away and disappear for good.

[vodkancoke]

He lives up the road from me...sadly he won't disappear from me anytime soon :( It should have happened sooner in my opinion.

[DTCwordfan]

on £20 thou a week pension, I suspect he doesn't give a monkeys.....My mother has just opined that he could join Gary Speed et al....this I ahve said "No way" too, for that very reason of the pension and I think he just does not care about the damage that he did.

[DTCwordfan]

Nice area of Edinburgh to live in, vodka...

[jno]

I can understand it for convicted criminals or spies like Blunt, but just for doing his job badly? You could say he should never have been knighted in the first place, but what's the point of rescinding it? And what sort of precedent does it set? Could you lose a CBE if you were picked up for speeding?

[emmie]

i don't wish him ill, but he should go away, perhaps it's petty he has been stripped of the title, but there are plenty of others who should also lose that too, those who have been accorded a gong for doing very little, or perhaps a lot for themselves.

[Zeuhl]

Makes sense.

He was knighted for 'services to banking'

Seems inappropriate to retain when he then presided over one of banking's most infamous disasters

[DTCwordfan]

There is a suspicion of vindication here - particularly as Archer-Balls held onto his Lordship.....that wasn't fair in view of other strippings in the past.

He joins an unhonourable list comprising of (thanks Wiki)

Anthony Blunt, knighted as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures for his services to Art, lost his knighthood in the 1980s when he was revealed to be the "Fourth Man" in the early 1950s Burgess and Maclean spying scandal which also touched on the 1960s Philby spying affair, as a result of which he confessed to the security services. Although Blunt was never charged or convicted, the honour was withdrawn on the advice of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Roger Casement, a distinguished diplomat in the Belgian Congo, who was convicted of spying in the First World War because of his involvement in the 1916 Irish Easter Rising, forfeited his knighthood and was executed.

Nicolae Ceauşescu forfeited his honorary knighthood that he earlier received for his friendship with Western democracies.

Albert Henry was the former Premier of the Cook Islands. He was later convicted of electoral fraud in the 1980s.

Terry Lewis, knighted for his services to Queensland police, was stripped of his knighthood in 1993 after being sentenced to prison on charges of corruption and forgery as a result of the findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

Jack Lyons, who had received his knighthood for his huge charitable donations and services to industry, lost it when he was convicted of fraud in the 1980s.

Robert Mugabe (are you surprised)

and Lester Piggott....

[emmie]

so why has she retained a title, and all the other cheats, liars, and charlatans
http://www.dailymail....owed-House-Lords.html

[jno]

honours are for past services. I don't think they're to be interpreted as some kind of guarantee that every decision you take subsequently will prove perfect.

[DTCwordfan]

Quite em....agree on that one.

[jno]

em, I don't think peerages can be removed the way other honours can, though I have no idea why. So crooks can stay in the House of Lords. Nice thought, eh?

[weecalf]

I think with all theses bank issues people are just losing interest

[FredPuli43]

Agree it's petty. He was quite a successful banker who managed to overreach in what economists call 'a big cock up'. Don't think his management style was to everyone's taste; he wasn't called Fred the Shred for nothing; but he was knighted for 'services to banking' in what he had achieved. If he did a disservice to banking later, that doesn't detract from what he had done to merit the honour.

Still, it has given rise to a joke (?) on Radio 5: "He was having sleepless nights; now he'll have knightless sleeps"

[FredPuli43]

BTW Lester Piggott should have been knighted but never was. He did get the OBE. That was taken away when he got convicted of tax evasion.

[DTCwordfan]

With jokes like that, we could always award you an AB knighthood, "Arise AB Sir Fred"

:-)

[ludwig]

// Public opinion or Political Pressure? //

Don't care really. I'm just glad it happened.

[rov1100]

It would be a much fairer society if they got rid of all honours. Lords and Dames should be confined to the theatre.

[Craftypig]

Who is he and what did he do wrong?