There’s lots of talk about trying to take Fred Goodwin’s pension off him and the British government are making vague noises about a legal challenge but is there a case to answer?
I’m sure the British govenment has a team of lawyers going through every clause of Goodwin’s contract, looking for any get-out clause but they might be missing something more fundamental – Wednesbury Unreasonableness.
Wednesbury Unreasonableness is a legal precedent set in 1948 in the case of Associated Provincial Picture Houses -v- Wednesbury Corporation in which the judge ruled that the courts could only overturn a legal administrative decision if the decision was “so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it”.
That Fred Goodwin should receive a pension which the media is now telling us is over £700k per year after taking the UK’s second largest bank to the brink of bankruptcy is certainly outrageous and in defiance of logic. Rewarding someone so handsomly for bankrupting a bank and costing the taxpayer billions of pounds to bail it out is morally objectionable and no sensible person would have given him a £700k pension given the choice.
But a pension isn’t a performance related bonus and Goodwin’s contract says he’s entitled to it so, understanding that fact, would a sensible person still have failed to come to the conclusion that he should be paid his pension?
Any armchair lawyers out there with an opinion?
Technorati Tags: RBS, Fred Goodwin, Pension, Wednesbury Unreasonableness
this is a smoke and mirrors distraction for us all.
Whether he deserves or gets his pension is one thing but the fact he has gotten it at all is because the government and their incompotent take over of the bank gave it to him
He has his pension BECAUSE he was allowed to get it
Remember guys, an act of parliment was passed, to ease all the legal hurdles and bullshit for taking over banks, taking over banks speciffically.
Yet the mongtards in the treasury, still signed a document giving him his pension.
this is’nt about the pension, its about the incompotence of the take over and boy are they trying to hide it
I agree, he shouldn’t be paid it, ethically.
Not sure how they can NOT pay him though…
Section 11 of the Human Rights Act 1998. states: A person’s reliance on a Convention right does not restrict-any other right or freedom conferred on him by or under any law having effect in any part of the United Kingdom;
The Bill of Rights 1689 (still law)
[sic] The dispensing with laws or the execution of laws and the forfeiture of a legally granted pension is cruel and unusual punishment.
The case of Ashford v. Thornton stood the principle that all law remains until it is repealed.
As Holt, CJ, said in Ashby v. White : “If the plaintiff has a right, he must of necessity have a means to vindicate and maintain it and a remedy if he is injured in the exercise or enjoyment of it; and indeed it is a vain thing to imagine a right without a remedy, for want of right and want of remedy are reciprocal.”
Andthe Bill of Rights is a constitutional law which means it can’t be repealed by implication and they wouldn’t repeal the Bill of Rights … would they?