2.1.13 Hector Sants Farce

The first dose of outrage for 2013 arrived via the New Year's Honours list with the inclusion of a knighthood for Hector Sants.  This is quite a remarkable award considering that it's nothing at all to do with charity work, or anything unconnected with his job.  All the more worrying, then, for the integrity of such awards each year.  Mr Sants has been given the title for services to financial regulation!  What a joke - unfunny as fuck!

Until June last year, he was in charge of the FSA and it was during his tenure that the financial crisis took hold.  He was at the helm when the Royal Bank of Scotland collapsed, along with HBOS and Northern Rock.  It was during this time that the rigging of LIBOR was uncovered, and he also managed to ignore the misselling of PPI which is now annoying the fuck out of everyone in the country, as claims reach astronomical levels and companies pester all of us to make claims, whether we have a case or not.  The decision by the government to do way with the FSA was not welcomed by Mr Sants but he was persuaded to stay on for a while to oversee a transition.  It does make one think that there 'could' have been a link between that persuasion to stay on and this honour.

To be 'asleep at the wheel', as some have put it, is hardly something to be applauded, and certainly not something to be ignored.  How on earth it's then appropriate to honour someone for supposedly helping to sort out that mess I cannot begin to work out.  It's fucking bad enough that he was paid a vast sum in this job.  Sadly, this tragic use of the Honours system does everything to diminish the value of awards.

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