"Fred the Shred"

This is simply ridiculous. 'Fred the Shred', aka Sir Frederick Goodwin, was head of RBS for eight years until losing his job in October last year. Now, his pension pay package stated that he would be paid £700,000 per year for the rest of his life - a huge amount of money I'm sure you'll agree, although a significant pay cut from his previous earnings. However, the media and the public have taken it upon themselves to call for Fred's pension to be taken away from him - either in part or in whole - and the money to be given to those who've lost money as a result of the credit crunch, which Fred 'caused'. Amazingly, Harriet Harman has suggested that the government could be in favour of passing legislation to take away his pension. Her argument - now get this - is that, "The pension may be passable in a court of law, but it is not in the court of public opinion". What? I could rewrite that sentence for her and it would mean exactly the same thing, but sound a whole lot different, look - "The pension may be passable in a court of legal justice, but mob rule would rather take it away from him".
There are three distinct problems with taking away Fred's package through legal means:
1. It is delibrately breaching legal contract. When Fred took the job in 2000, he signed that contract. The directors signed that contract, presumably with the support of the shareholders. There was no-one else involved in the signing, because they were the only people who were affected. Why, all of a sudden, should the government jump in and take charge over a contract which was signed nine years ago and has nothing to do with them? This sets a dangerous precedent - that it's ok for governments overrule binding contracts. (Incidentally, why just Fred? Why not the other Chief Executives of other banks? Hell, why not the middle managers and other staff members who were also involved, in some way, of causing the economic collapse? Perhaps the cashiers at the till? Who knows where to draw the line?)
2. It has zero effect. The total amount that Fred is likely to be paid is something like £16 million. That's roughly 25p per person in the UK. Even if we stole ALL of his pension, it would benefit everyone by just 25p. Woop dee do. The fact is that in hard times people like to look for a victim, regardless of the fact that it will make no difference at all. They feel that they are suffering because of Fred's actions, so Fred should suffer too! The fact that it is an entirely useless measure apparently doesn't concern them.
3. It takes our eyes off the real issue. As stated above, the result of stealing Fred's pension is nil. Thus, the time spent debating this topic on the news is wasted - it could be much better spent discussing the economic crisis and putting pressure on the government to take the right measures against it. More importantly, it's wasting government time. Clearly the cabinet has taken time discussing it for Harman to speak out about it (Labour's ministers literally don't do anything without the support of the cabinet's spin doctors), and if legislation is passed, we're wasting time drafting, debating and voting on the legislation - time that could be spent fixing the dire situation that we've been left in.

In essence, it's illegal, ineffective and indeed immoral to steal Fred's pension from him. I suspect that Harman's comment on the pension is designed to be a distraction from Gordon's failure to deal with the crisis more than anything else.