Monday 27 February 2012

the Fonters to baptise Ayn Rand

this sh*t is so funny.
It's one part self-important Romney, the vulture capitalist,
who thinks he's a Founder or whatever hyper-superman Aynus Rand
named those who starred in the Razzie-winning Atlas Shrugged,
and
one part Mormon baptising of the dead, which can really piss off
the families of the departed, Romney being a Mormon.

IshitUnot: Exiled online
The eXiled’s Free Campaign Advice For Mitt Romney: “Baptize Ayn Rand

http://exiledonline.com/the-exileds-free-campaign-advice-for-mitt-romney-baptize-ayn-rand/
By Team eXiled



Mormon Jacuzzi? Nope, it’s Ayn Rand’s soul’s salvation
As readers of The eXiled know, we operate a leading Washington DC political PR firm, “Our Founding Fathers Global Strategies LLC”, specializing in crisis-management and strategic communications for our negative-net-worth clientele. “Our Founding Fathers GS LLC” has devised a comeback plan for Mitt Romney to reignite his flagging campaign, which we offer gratis, pro bono.

We call our 1-point comeback campaign “Brigham Shrugs” and it boils down to this:

“Baptize Ayn Rand, already!”

This crazy baglady is “Going Joseph Smith”
[that's Aynus Rand, the receiver of US social security, i.e. a hypocrite- Cos67]
.....
I wonder when Rick Santorum is going to tell the Mormons that they are not Christians. I wonder, do the Mormons consider themselves to be Christians or Jews. They talk about Latter Day Saints, but also the lost tribes of Israel.
Anyway, Santorum told Protestants that they're not real Christians, which is a fine,
Scholastic thing to say, 300 years after that difference stopped meaning anything, other than prejudice and bloodshed.
I'm beginning to understand now why the last Catholic president was assassinated. Santorum has head up his arse, but Kennedy was trying to change many things that the US oligarchs didn't want changed, with regards to laws and government involvement in society, etc. What unites them is a lack of fear in speaking their minds, and doing what they feel is right.
[I don't know who he's saying is destroying the Church, but he did say that the Protestant Church in the US is in a shambles and "gone from world of Christianity," whatever that means]


IshitUnot: Think Progress
Santorum Excommunicates 45 Million Christians: Mainline Protestants Are ‘Gone From The World Of Christianity’
By Alex Seitz-Wald on Feb 18, 2012 at 8:00 am
In a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic, warned about the dangers of “the NBA” and “rock concerts,” but also said that while Protestants founded America, mainline Protestantism is in such “shambles” that “it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”:

We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. [...]

Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.
Mainline Protestantism is one of the oldest and most common religious families in America. Generally considered to be non-evangelical, non-Catholic Christians, including Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, northern Baptists, most Lutherans, Presbyterians, and other denominations, they represent about 45 million Americans. Making up about 16 percent of the electorate, they’re pretty evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

But in his speech, first flagged by Right Wing Watch, Santorum basically says these millions of Christian-Americans are not real Christians. At a time when Santorum and his party are grasping at straws to claim the Obama administration is waging war on Christianity, it seems that it was the candidate himself who declared war on one of the biggest groups of American Christians four years ago.

Meanwhile, the rest of Santorum’s speech dwells on his now-typical hyper-puritanical warnings about “Satan,” and the dangers of “sensuality,” “rock concerts,” and “the NBA” that sound like they were plagiarized from Dana Carvey’s Church Lady skits on SNL.

Teddy bear from the UK soldier charity

[Homeless Teddy]
Thanks for putting yourself in harm's way, Teddy, but we can't afford to house your
family while you're off fighting. Not if they're in London.



[Landmine Teddy]
It's like Humpty Dumpty. You can't put Landmine Teddy back together again.


He's a right mess.



IshitUnot: London Evening Standard
Army families 'will struggle' as London living allowance is cut
Craig Woodhouse, Political Correspondent
25 Jan 2012

Servicemen and women are being stripped of a £120-a-month allowance paid to help with the high cost of living in the capital, it emerged today.

About 2,000 troops will lose out when the London weighting is removed in April as part of cost-cutting at the Ministry of Defence.

Personnel at the rank of sergeant and above, whose pay starts at about £30,000, will see the payment disappear - saving £2.9 million a year.
The allowance has been protected for lower-paid members of the armed forces, with corporals and below not affected. Catherine Spencer, of the Army Families Federation, said losing the allowance was "regrettable".

"It definitely helps make up the cost of living in London, so it is something that families will struggle with but have to accept." The revelation that the London allowance is being cut came as MPs attacked a "grotesque" cuts process which has seen no civilian staff forced out of a job while 40 per cent of military redundancies have been
compulsory.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond described the claims as "simply wrong". He said members of the forces were being given "every opportunity" to retrain but that compulsory redundancies were needed because not enough volunteers had come forward.

Tens of thousands of troops and civilian staff are being cut as part of efforts to plug a £38 billion hole in the defence budget.

Allowances are being slashed by £250 million a year. MoD officials insisted it was "fair and appropriate" to cut the £120-a-month living allowance to higher-earning troops, which is given to people living within eight miles of central London.About 5,000 personnel claim the allowance, costing £6.3 million a year.

Tehran was warned today not to trigger a conflict as tensions increased in the Gulf. Former defence secretary Liam Fox said that Iran could spark a clash if its navy was not properly controlled.

He told BBC radio: "We've had incidents where they have been going straight for our ships. A miscalculation could lead to unexpected conflict."

the 300: This! is! Sparliament! UUuuugghhhh

Luckily for Greece, wars are fought with pens and paper.
[Looky Luke. banker's chins.]

["we were all at the trough." some more than others- Theodoros Pangalos]
[Buddha says cut back on your meals! Evangelos Venizelos]

Greek politicians are the 300 defenders of the Greek people.
AJAAHAHHaahahaHAHaHAhahahahahaHAHAH

all they do is delay the cavalcade of liberty, and pilfer money.


Heroes:
Manolis Glezos- this guy took the Nazi flag down off the Acropolis

The President- apparently he fought the Germans as well.

But, that was then. This is now.

These two gentlement couldn't convince the other politicians





to put up a defence against the shattering of the country.



The live report below will show how brave Glezos still is.



He's somebody from inside parliament without being an insider.



He was still gassed by the cops, this time, outside parliament.



IshitUnot:

Zerohedge
Athens Burning As Police Runs Out Of Tear Gas
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/12/2012 14:19 -0500
Tonight's protest in Athens has all the makings of the vintage
ones from May of 2010, and the night is still young. Here are some updates:

19:32 Manolis Glezos, the WWII resistance hero who was earlier hit by tear gas, can now be seen sitting in the parliamentary chamber, to the left of the speaker.
19:24 Communist Party (KKE) leader Aleka Papariga now speaking. Again, asks why ruling parties say a civil war will result if the measures are not passed.
19:19 Theodorakis has just spoken to the press inside parliament. He said "the people will win" just as they did against the Nazis and the junta.
19:10 Also caught up in this afternoon's tear gas was composer Mikis Theodorakis, 86. A spokeswoman from his office has told Real FM radio that police fired tear gas just as Theodorakis was about to speak to the crowd on Syntagma. She described the unprovoked attack as an "attempt to kill him" and says the police deliberately targetted him.
19:03 Four metro stations are now shut, with trains passing through without stopping: Syntagma, Evangelismos, Panepistimio and Acropolis.
18:51 Back to parliament. Independent MP Evangelos Papachristos says that parliament is being asked to vote on a document that contains gaps marked XX where figures should be. He asks colleagues are they sure they know what they're voting for. Only a handful of MPs in the chamber (via Diane Shugart (@dianalizia) on Twitter).
18.48 Eyewitnesses on Twitter are reporting that PAME, the Communist Party-affiliated trade union, is marching from Omonia to Syntagma, which they are determined to fill.
18:43 It's being reported that tear gas has been fired on Mitropoleos St, as far down as the Orthodox Cathedral.
18:40 Reuters says that today's demonstrations were the biggest in recent months: "The crowd of tens of thousands was the biggest in months of demonstrations against the spending cuts."
18:38 There is extensive rioting on Syntagma now, with police and rioters chasing each other around the square. A reporter observing the scene from a nearby hotel balcony says its the worst rioting he's seen in a long time.
18:23 Back to some politics: it's being reported that actress Anna Vagena, who replaced a Pasok MP who resigned yesterday, will vote against the agreement. Vangena was one of three new MPs sworn in to parliament today.
18:20 Groups of riot police are now at the lower end of Syntagma Square, near Ermou Street. Smoke can be seen coming from a kiosk, which was apparently hit by a smoke grenade.
Large crowds are still on the square and in the surrounding streets.
18:05 Second World War-resistance hero Manolis Glezos has made a statement from Syntagma.
"Is it possible to impose these measures by using tear gas ... These measures don't have the vote of the Greek people."
Glezos was wearing a surgical mask and seemed to be suffering from tear-gas inhalation.
18:01 Petrol bombs have been thrown on the street in front of the Hotel GB.

Repo the movie distributors


Alex Cox, about 27 years ago, made one awesome film,
about the shape the world was in with nukes as a
threat and as a carcinogen.
Come to think of it, nothing has changed.

However, I think we live in more desperate times now.
If you're doing drugs now, you're a gonner.
Gotta be a Repo man, and get all the residual value out of life.

Anyway, the studios are stopping Cox from releasing a Repo 2.
They made their own film, Repo MEN and said, 'there.done.'

Anyway, 3 things. The movie is being shown in two days
at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and the film
is now being released in blu ray, for Europe.

What a soundtrack too.
Plugz- Reel Ten


Suicidal Tendencies- Institutionalized- F*kkin masterpiece


Circle Jerks- when the shit hits the fan - 2 great expressions


If you've seen Repo, answer me this:
What's the big deal about Tarrantino?
ooh , new violence, with tunes,
okay, I'll grant you, Misirlou is amazing,
and the dialogueeee
"ROYALE with Cheese, in France". half-ass!
and the prima donna attitude? what's up with that?

this is his interview in the Quietus
http://thequietus.com/articles/08085-repo-man-alex-cox-interview

IshitUnot: Quietus

Repo Man Rides Again: Alex Cox Interviewed
Craig Terlino , February 24th, 2012 08:56

To celebrate this week's Blu-ray release (in the UK at least) of Repo Man, director Alex Cox reflects on the 1984 cult classic, subsequent battles with Hollywood and Hunter S. Thompson, and why it's fine to pirate his work. Interview by our Boston scribe Craig Terlino

Writing and making films is an accumulative process. While some directors gain instant notoriety for a particular film or genre, others take time percolating their identities as filmmakers and are usually celebrated not for a particular work, but the collection of work spanning their career.

Alex Cox is one of these filmmakers. Known for his punk rock brand of movies such as Straight To Hell, Sid & Nancy and Walker, let us not forget he was also responsible for one of the top cult films of all time, featuring one of the greatest punk rock soundtracks: Repo Man.

Taking place amid an estranged world, numb with fear of nuclear annihilation, Repo Man is a beautifully apocalyptic fairy tale of rebellion, desperation and escape during a time when we thought we were going to blow it all up or, at least, snort it all up. In an era of New Wave fashion and music consumed via MTV, the movie boasted a punk-driven soundtrack (Black Flag, The Circle Jerks, Fear, Iggy Pop) which counteracted the pop aesthetic of the 1980s, delivering an unsettling and doomed vision of the youth and their future.
Repo Man is released on Blu-ray in the UK this week. However, thanks to the great bureaucracy of the American film establishment - Universal Studios to be exact - the idea of a US release hasn't even batted a lash. According to Alex Cox, "It's an institutional animus" - an institutionalized corporation of drones fearful of losing their jobs.

We got to speak with the director in detail about the re-release and cultural essence of Repo Man, the social stigma of the 1980s, Hollywood being run into the ground by Satanists, and why you should immediately pirate all his work after you read the following interview.

Where did the story of Repo Man come from?

Alex Cox: I had a neighbour who was an actor and his roommate was a car reposesser, so I was interested. The guy was telling me about his job and I thought, 'there's a film in this'. I became somewhat like an apprentice to this repo man and drove around in the car with him at night. If we got lucky and found somebody's car, then I'd get to drive it back home or drive it back to the yard - or drive the man's car while he drove the repo vehicle - and I would get paid $20.

It's like the scene where Otto, played by Emilio Estevez, first heads out with Bud the repo man. He's ecstatic. Was that based on your excitement?

AC: Well, I was a bit more cynical than that. I just thought it was interesting because it was legalized theft. These guys were going on private property, they were trespassing, and they were masquerading as policemen and taking people's stuff just because of a criminal enterprise called General Motors Acceptance Corporation gave them permission to. So, you know it was a pretty morally complex situation. I don't think the character Otto was entirely aware of the complexity of the situation.

In retrospect, underneath its eccentric properties and its fantasy/sci-fi appeal, is Repo Man a social commentary on the Cold War '80s?

AC: At the time it did seem [like that], with a combination of Mrs Thatcher in England and the sighting of Cruise and Pershing missiles in the UK and Jimmy Carter's plan for the MX missile in the US, which was enthusiastically endorsed by Reagan. It did seem we were all going to get killed. It was kind of alarming, you know?

We had MTV to distract us during the upper end of the Cold War.

AC: Right. And, there were films like The Breakfast Club and stuff that you could watch which had no content whatsoever but would be thoroughly entertaining. I wanted to make a film about nuclear war or something like Dr Strangelove or Peter Watkins' The War Game, but the prevailing wisdom at that time of most producers and of the studios was that the film had to be pitched to a mental age of 15 and had to star a teenage boy. So... that's what we did. (laughs)

Bud, played by Harry Dean Stanton, was originally written for Lee Ving, frontman of the band Fear.

AC: We were going to do it super low budget with all four members of Fear, but it never came about. We tried to raise $100,000 to make the film on the low road and couldn't raise the money. Then, Michael Nesmith, Executive Producer comes along and says he can take it to the studio and get more money. Then we had to cast people who were names. Dennis Hopper was better known than Harry at that time, so we went after him. He was very nice but wanted a little more money than we could afford, so we were able to get Harry and he was perfect.

One of his finest performances along with Paris, Texas.

AC: Those are the only two films he's ever had a lead in, I think. The main guy in Repo Man and then right after that, he and [cinematographer] Robby Müller joined Wim Wenders and they went off to do Paris, Texas. I don't know if Harry had another lead since then.

In the making of the television version of Repo Man, I heard there were Satanists getting involved in the editing process to some degree.

AC: Universal didn't like the film at all but when it was very successful in the cinema and on video, they wanted to have a broadcast TV version which had to be cleaned up - no swearing or drug use. I helped them create this new version. But they'd gone in to fool around with the film for the video version and they shot new footage, and what they shot was the license plate of the New Mexico car that Fox Harris was driving. Then they kind of dissolved in and you saw the face of the devil on it. It kind of offended film language. To have the devil's face appear? What was that about? Are they Satanists?

Did they confess to it?

AC: (laughs) No. I've never gotten anyone at Universal Studios to confess that they were Satanists. I'm still waiting for the confession.

After its release, you ended up filming in Nicaragua?

AC: Not that soon after. Repo Man made a lot of money in Britain for an independent distributer. After that I was able to get another film in Britain, which was Sid & Nancy, and after that I did Straight To Hell. So it was 1987 when we went to Nicaragua and did Walker.

Joe Strummer composed one hell of a soundtrack for Walker. What was your relationship with him like?

AC: If you're working with someone creatively, you're likely to be friends with them. That's the best thing about making films, the group - the unity of the group and everyone working together. I think Joe was looking for something like that because at that time, having broken up The Clash and getting a lot of trouble for that, he was looking for another direction. I mean, to write film music and be an actor, why not? I think as an actor, in Straight To Hell, he's very, very good. He's kind of been overlooked a little bit in that film.

Do you think Repo Man helped paved the way for films where you have eccentric characters, witty dialogue with pop culture references and an emphasis on soundtrack?

AC: I think Straight To Hell was more of an influence, actually. I think the character that Sy Richardson plays reappears in a lot of subsequent films. Sometimes he's played by Samuel L. Jackson or sometimes he's, you know, that character.

Didn't you give up in trying making a sequel to Repo Man? Have you abandoned any projects?

AC: Give up? Never. Listen, to go looking for money on a film is not the same as not completing the film. A film director that abandons his film and fails to complete it is an asshole. If you have backing for a film and you spent a bunch of other people's money and fail to finish it? That's pretty irresponsible. You have to do it. You've got to finish it, man. We took Repo Man sequels to Universal and proposed they do it, but they weren't interested. What they did instead is they brought out a movie titled Repo Men and pretended that was the sequel.

In Wayne Ewing's documentary Breakfast With Hunter, you appear in the late writer Hunter S. Thompson's kitchen as producer and writer of the film Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Hunter berated you over conflicting views of how the film should be made. He hated your idea to add animation to the film and fired you. Why?

AC: We were hired to write and direct the film. I was obviously familiar with his literary work. He'd forgotten about the Steadman cartoons. That was the really sad thing. He was thinking Doonesbury.

You were trying to make that point but I don't think he was hearing it.

AC: The sad thing is that he really should have gotten off of drugs and alcohol. They destroyed him. He just seemed to fall down with his writing after the great years of Fear And Loathing An The Campaign Trail, ...Vegas and then The Curse Of Lono. He had a problem with drugs and alcohol. The people who surrounded him didn't help him, didn't encourage him to get treatment. They called for him and enabled him to do crazy things like a circus geek. Dennis Hopper said at a certain point, 'Ah man. I got to get off the cocaine and alcohol', and he did.

Drugs and alcohol have always validated some creative purpose or legend for artists, it appears.

AC: It's such a bullshit legend. I was talking with an old film director about a conversation he had with his wife. If you could be a writer, who would it be? He says, 'Papa Hemingway'. Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun! Why would you want to be like that? We romanticize guys who need help. It's glorified and romanticized suicide

Hence the theme of Repo Man, and how it glorified the desperate and awful 1980s.

AC: Yes and there's this weird thing about Tracey Walter's character, Miller. He doesn't have anything. He lives in garbage. And yet, he alone, a mystic, can fly the UFO time machine. The character Miller got more and more important as we shot the film. [Originally] the film ended differently: we open the trunk of the car, there's an atom bomb and - boom - it goes off and destroys LA. We all got to kind of love Los Angeles and to love the characters, so to kill them all off was, you know...

Repo Man is coming out on Blu-ray but not here in the United States. Why?

AC: Universal Studios has an antipathy towards Repo Man and towards Walker. I don't think they will ever bring out a good version in the US. I can't understand why Universal won't do a sequel given how much money they made off the original Repo Man. It's an institutional animus. The kinds of people that get jobs in studios tend to be fearful of their superiors and that's how they keep their jobs. The guys at Universal, even though they were 13 when Repo Man came out, they've been told by their superiors: 'We don't like that film'. And that's the official attitude from generation to generation in the studio. They have an institutional animus which almost makes you think that corporations really could be people

Then there's the crisis of getting rights from studios.

AC: It's so corrupt. Now they want to have longer copyright periods because they say the young artists are relying on this money. The young artists never see any money because they sign away that money to big media corporations, like Universal and Viacom. We, the artists, lose all of our rights to these massive corporations, who then come down heavy on these kids for downloading films and music that we never see a penny from. It's complete bullshit. I want to encourage your audience to go and pirate a bunch of my stuff right away.
Repo Man is out now on Blu-ray through Masters of Cinema/Eureka Entertainment. The film will be also be presented at the ICA next Wednesday February 29 by Midnight Movies, with a pre-screening fancy dress party. More information about the latter event here.

Welcome to the German tax collectors


Of course, they're going to take the money back with them
to Douchebank of Bankfurt.

They may have some spare time, so I recommend they try
Socrates' favourite tipple, Hemlock Soda.

Look for the classy blue bottle at your local
corner store.

Das ist gut, ja. (that's the new marketing slogan)

sing it: just give Greece a chance


I see that Greeks are not all broke, after all.
If some of them can run ads in a whole bunch of countries,
including at the Wall Street Journal
(irony that WS is destroying Greece),
it can mean only one thing:

Somebody's not paying his new Troika taxes.


[John would have given Greece a chance.]

Greece has about as much a chance as peace of getting its head above water.
i.e. none


Give Peace A Chance - John Lennon
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
bankism, Debtism, Draghism, Fascism, taxism, payism
This-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism
All we are saying is give Greece a chance
All we are saying is give Greece a chance

(C'mon)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Sinister, Minister, Banksters and Troiksters,
Bishops, Fishops, Rabbis, and Pop Eyes, Bye bye, Bye byes
All we are saying is give Greece a chance
All we are saying is give Greece a chance

(Let me tell you now)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Revolution, Devolution, Circle Jerks, Bank Clerks, No regulation,
disintegrations, medications, United Nations, congratulations
All we are saying is give Greece a chance
All we are saying is give Greece a chance

Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Tim & Paulson, Merkozy, Rosemary,
Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper,
Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Hare Kali
Hare Hare Kali
All we are saying is give Greece a chance
All we are saying is give Greece a chance

Friday 24 February 2012

Wednesday 22 February 2012

a banker a day keeps the crisis away


hanging them, that is. or guillotine. whatever.

The mayoral return of Ken Livingstone has taken a boost
from that theory of economic regeneration.
He's got my vote. In fact, I'm going to move back so that
I can vote for him.

Also, we could use bankers for fire wood, because people
can't afford to heat their houses anymore.

IshitUnot:
Mayoral candidate's comment condemned by British Bankers' Association, despite being labelled a joke by his spokesman
Hélène Mulholland
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012
Ken Livingstone has provoked fresh controversy, after telling an audience: "Hang a banker a week until the others improve."...
In a similar vein, he told the Guardian in a recent interview that City workers favour London over other capital cities as a place to work because "young men want to go out on the pull and do a lot of cocaine, and they can't really do that easily in Frankfurt"....

Sunday 19 February 2012

Queen vs King

What a democracy we have in the UK.

An unelected queen is competing with an unelected King,
to be the most powerful and popular imperious leader.

Let's you be the judge:

Queen Elizabeth II (QE)
- Did not demand that the poor people's money go
towards buying her a new £60 million yacht, when
she couldn't take care of the last one. The idea
belongs to posh-boy, butt-kisser Michael Gove,
who doesn't have enough to do while running the
education system into the ground.
"It doesn't work like Eton, I say" he may have once said.
-She swiped the knighthood from Fred the Shred Goodwin after
he oversaw the meltdown of the once sound bank, that is now
under the care of the nanny state. She's not supposed
to swipe honours from people who haven't gone to jail,
but she smelt the zeitgeist and did it anyway. This is
in a time when no banker has even gone near a police
pokey. I'm so f*cking thrilled with this
kangaroo court justice,
I'd be likely to vote for her as hereditary queen,
even though, normally, I hate everything she stands for.
What Fred needs is a proper beheading at the hands of the Queen.

this being a proper beheading:

oooh. she's shekshy!

-Elizabeth is having her 60th Jubilee this year. She took over
before her dad's corpse was even cold, 60 years ago.

Mervyn King, Boss of the Bank of England
-presiding over a fall in the inflation which makes people
happy, except that it's a lie. It makes for great headlines
though.
-Quantitative Easing (QE) to infinity
Mervyn is trying to stoke the economy by printing money. On
the one hand it could make the economy come to life, if bankers
don't take it and gamble it away, and then it might cause
inflation. Anyway, he's trying hard.
- Mervyn could oversee a debt jubilee for the Third World, or
maybe even Greece, which is now an honorary member of the
Third World.

IshitUnot: bbc 31 Jan 2012
Former RBS boss Fred Goodwin stripped of knighthood
Former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin has had his knighthood removed.

Mr Goodwin, who was heavily criticised over his role in the bank's near-collapse in 2008, was given the honour by the Labour government in 2004.

The Queen cancelled and annulled the title following Whitehall advice.

Party leaders, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, welcomed the decision. In the past, only convicted criminals or people struck off professional bodies have had knighthoods taken away.

Mr Goodwin oversaw the multi-billion-pound deal to buy Dutch rival ABN Amro at the height of the financial crisis in 2007, which led to RBS having to be bailed out to the tune of £45bn by taxpayers.

There had been a growing clamour for Mr Goodwin to be stripped of his honour following thousands of job losses at RBS and in the banking industry since then, and the impact on the wider economy.

'Exceptional case'
After the removal of the knighthood, a Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case."

He added: "Both the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury Select Committee have investigated the reasons for this failure and its consequences.

"They are clear that the failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008/9 which, together with other macroeconomic factors, triggered the worst recession in the UK since the Second World War and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses.

"Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision-maker at RBS at the time. In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin's decisions meant that the retention of a knighthood for 'services to banking' could not be sustained."

'Proper process'

The BBC's business editor Robert Peston said Mr Goodwin was in a "class of his own" in terms of the risks that he took at RBS - reflected in the size of the bailout required to rescue the company.

In 2009, Mr Goodwin, who received an annual pension of £650,000 - later reduced to £342,500 - after leaving the bank, told a committee of MPs he "could not be more sorry" for what had happened.

Both Mr Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband welcomed the decision.

"The FSA report into what went wrong at RBS made clear where the failures lay and who was responsible," Mr Cameron said. "The proper process has been followed and I think we have ended up with the right decision."

And Mr Miliband said the public wanted to see further sweeping changes to boardroom culture and remuneration.

"It is right that Fred Goodwin lost his knighthood but I think it is only the start of the change we need in our boardrooms.

"We need to change the bonus culture and we need real responsibility right across the board."

'Public opprobrium'

Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said Tuesday's announcement was the "right decision" while Chancellor George Osborne described the decision as "appropriate".
"RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong in the British economy in the last decade," he said.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said it was the "correct decision", since the knighthood "was for services to banking which could not therefore be sustained".

The Unite union also welcomed the move, with senior official David Fleming saying it was "a token gesture... but one which will be well received by the thousands of workers who lost their jobs during his rule".

Conservative MP David Ruffley, a member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, said Mr Goodwin had acted "recklessly" and the public wanted him to be "held to account".

He told Sky News "there was a sense that this guy had got away scot-free and the only thing left really to show the public opprobrium was for the knighthood to be stripped".

'Politicising honours'
However, the move was not welcomed by all. Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors, did not approve of the honour withdrawal, saying he was concerned there was "a hysteria about the whole situation".
While he said that the system of stripping an honour for criminal offences was "appropriate", he added: "To do it because you don't like someone, you don't approve of someone, you think they have done things that are wrong but actually there is no criminality alleged or charged, I think is inappropriate and politicises the whole honours system."

The forfeiture committee - whose members include the cabinet secretary, the top civil servant at the Home Office, the top lawyer at the Treasury and the top official in the Scottish government - made the decision to recommend he lose the honour.

The Queen has the sole authority to rescind a knighthood, after taking advice from the government.