Boring Oakeshott


Oakeshott on Stephen Hester and Bonus payments

Lib Dem big mouth Matthew Oakeshott has been lambasting Stephen Hester for being ‘rewarded for failure’ and demanded that he forfeit his bonus awarded by the RBS Board. Under enormous pressure from all sides, Hester eventually did so.

In his tirade, Oakeshott largely focused on the failure of RBS to lend to small businesses. The implied state here  is that RBS could actually find enough small businesses with a suitable credit profile to lend to, but such considerations would hardly have been of concern to this ex-labour pinko.

Lest one should think that he has some empathy or experience  with the struggling small business sector, Grumpy should remind readers that this is really Baron Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, and that following his privileged upbringing by schooling at Charterhouse and reading PPE  at Oxford, he largely spent his whole career either as a bag carrier for politicians or in the investment banking world. Yes, read that latter part again – he’s a banker (check out www.olim.co.uk )

It may strike the owner of a small business as slightly odd that this scourge of the wicked casino operators and  defender of fairness for the small metal bashing shop and kebab takeaway  actually makes his living in the bowels of the very money grubbing hell he would have us believe the banking sector is.

Quite what his qualification to opine on the difficulties faced by small business seeking credit having never actually worked (as far as can be ascertained by his bio) for any organisation that actually created value for UK plc is a mystery, but hearing him lambasting Hester on Radio 4 on the 29th of January earns him this hypocrisy slot. The moral is, beware the rich and privileged carrying the flag for the lower orders.