2012 Honours granted to criminals - 30% to bankers

At a time when banks are failing all around us (again), we find that many of the recipients of Royal 'honours' are criminals:

Paul Ruddock was knighted for his services to the arts as a Medieval art expert but eye were turned away from his questionable earning of more than £100 million from the collapse of Northern Rock Bank through “short selling”.

He was joined with Gerald Ronson, the multimillionaire who was given one year in prison over a share trading scandal back in 1990.

Ronson was charged with creating a false market, false accounting and thievery and had to pay £5 million in fine but nevertheless the Queen decorated him with the title of the Commander of the Order of the Most Excellent British Empire (CBE).

The same title was granted to Denise Coates who has done nothing to the British society except raking in enough money to rank the eighth woman in the Sunday Times Rich List.

Denise, who is the daughter of Peter Coates, owner of the Stoke City football club, has made a fortune by running an online gambling company.

The Queen also honored Christopher Preddie, a cousin of the two brothers who were convicted of murdering schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000.

Preddie, who has a record of involvement in the gangs and drugs trafficking, is now an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).

The scandalous decoration does not end at that as almost one third of all honors went to bankers and businessmen this year while such decorations were rare in the past.

One was Rod Aldridge who was knighted after he was forced to resign in 2006 over a secret £1 million contribution to the Labour party.

He got the peerage while he had spent the fortune at the time in a “cash for peerage” attempt.

30% of the 'honoured' were bankers of failed banks, in receipt of taxpayers' money.

We're told that:

• bankers bonuses are being clobbered - they aren't. 
• bankers will pay more taxes but, as we've recently seen, Goldman Sachs was told not to worry about anything as trivial as paying millions in taxes. 
• we need to clean up politics - and yet, our politicians reward these sheisters with gongs?

These are the people who caused a worldwide financial meltdown, or whose disastrous policies facilitated it. Do we need more proof that this country is run by the corporations for the corporations?

Our politics certainly does need cleaning up, as Sir Christopher Kelly says. However, his recommendations, despite what is put out by the corporate media, will lean heavily towards taxpayer-funded political parties - if not explicitly, then implicitly, via 'enabling' mechanisms. The government will push this agenda at every opportunity until it gets its way.

Why?

Perhaps because it knows that the main three political parties will become increasingly unpopular as they continue to push the EU agenda. The powers are not about to change course for the sake of "populism" - democracy to you and I.

Or perhaps because government wants to discredit democracy so as to ease the path to the post-democratic, technoractic age.



Watch this space.

Related:

• Who's in charge the next time banks fail? - Kamal Ahmed, Telegraph