The debate on the veil explodes again.

The Canadian Government says no-one can become a Canadian citizen if they insist on wearing a veil while taking the oath of allegiance.

The Toronto Star says this is discriminatory.

The paper suggests the veil lifting could be done in private, perhaps in front of a female judge. The Star claims veiled women already show their faces in private to agents of the State.

“We know of no cases In Canada where women have refused to show their faces to obtain passports, driver’s licences and other documents. Why should administering a citizenship oath be so problematic?”

Co-incidentally, the Supreme Court of Canada is wrestling with a case where a Muslim woman alleging sexual assault by male relatives will only take the stand if veiled. If she is ordered to remove the veil – which she wears for religious reasons - she will refuse and the case will collapse.

The Canadian way is to seek some kind of accommodation but, in this case, there is no half way house.

If the Court rules in the woman’s favour and allows her to stay veiled where does it all end?

Someone refusing to appear before a female judge or gay judge, citing deeply held religious convictions as a reason?

What madness this would be.

Why isn’t Fred Goodwin in jail?

How on earth is it possible to bring a bank to its knees, destroying thousands of jobs in the process and yet walk away from the carnage with a £342,500 a year pension and with the knighthood “for services to banking” still intact?

We now know from the Financial Services Authority there was no regulation worthy of the name to prevent Goodwin and people like him playing Russian roulette with the future of a once venerable Scottish institution.

The disgraced former Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, masterminded the hostile takeover of ABN AMRO on the basis of information supplied by the Dutch bank which was contained in “two lever arch folders and a CD”.

Seems a tad cavalier to me. The FSA report on the catastrophic failure of the RBS says that readers might be “startled” to find out how little information was provided to the RBS Board.

However, the FSA goes on to say this is par for the course where there is a hostile takeover.

Given that we are talking about the biggest takeover in banking history I would have expected a room full of lever arch files.

I search the FSA report, typing in the words “due diligence” and, though there are a million references to the term in the 450 page report, there wasn’t any due diligence taking place in the RBS. The acquisition of the Dutch bank was a huge gamble.

Yet we are told no-one can be held to account for this calamitous decision as “there are no codes or standards against which to judge whether due diligence is adequate”.

Whatever happened to the concept of fiduciary duty? That people in charge of public companies shouldn’t behave recklessly?

The chair of the FSA, Adair Turner, believes the rules (such as they are) need to be re-written.

“The fact that no individual has been found legally responsible for the failure (of the RBS) begs the question: if action cannot be taken under existing rules, should not the rules be changed for the future?”

He floats the possibility of fines and bans for bank directors and executives who behave recklessly with no thought to the consequences of their actions.

The FSA will be publishing a discussion paper on the options in the New Year but I doubt Fred Goodwin will drag himself away from the golf course to offer his views.

Attachments:

FSA report on Royal Bank of Scotland.pdf

[FSA report on the failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland]

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