The story of the week has been the ridiculous pension awarded to the aptly named Sir Fred Goodwin.
It is not true to say that RBS went bankrupt under his control, but that is due to their good fortune of having the state step in to rescue them.
Anyway, Harriet Harman says he won’t get it all. We shall see.
There are some other things going on which might come to have as much influence on British politics.
Yet another important Bill has been introduced into the House of Lords and gets its second reading (the general debate that gets things going) next week.
It’s the Postal Services Bill which flogs off 30 per cent of the Royal Mail to the private sector, probably TNT, which benefits from a monopoly in its home base of Holland.
It’s starting with us because the Minister in charge is Lord Mandelson, who in his time as plain Peter once said that New Labour was intensely relaxed about the filthy rich.
I’m not sure whether he applies this mantra to the failed casino bankers, who among a few other disasters, have laid waste to the mortgage market for ordinary house buyers.
The introduction of a Bill is a purely formal affair when the Minister in charge moves that it be given a first reading and that’s passed on the nod.
But there was a minor commotion when the noble Lord introduced this new Postal Services Bill.
He was heckled with a shout from behind him (the Labour benches) of shame on you!
The culprit, Lord (Tony) Clarke of Hampstead, is well-known in Burnley as chairman of the Task Force set up after the disturbances in 2001. He declares his interest as a former postman (and official in the Union of Postal Workers as was).
I don’t agree with this plan either and, like Tony, I don’t agree with my own party’s position.
But the damage the row might do to the Labour Party is huge.
The other event that may change British politics was the Convention on Modern Liberty on Saturday.
Will this mark the moment when people at last start to fight back against the steady movement towards a police state that they’ve up to now meekly gone along with? Again, we shall see.
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