Fred's shredding rattles a Snow family skeleton

The shredding of Sir Fred Goodwin’s glassware has an awful inevitability about it.

His own behaviour may have led to his demonisation. It’s hard to see how his position can improve until either the authorities act (if there’s a provable case against him) or he tries to make some kind of amends.

But that doesn’t justify physical violence against him or his property. The awful truth is that I feel a sense of personal déjà vu. My many times great grandfather ran a bank in the City of London called Snow’s Bank. It was on Snow Hill, just inside the City boundaries.

He was one of those bankers who made an absolute killing out of the South Sea Bubble. This was a ruse by which ordinary people were asked to invest in “opportunities” in the East Indies. The thing was little more than a Ponzi scheme.

But old Tom Snow got out before the bubble burst. So gross was his behaviour that Dean Jonathan Swift is said to have denounced him from his pulpit.

Now, verbal denunciation by a man of Swift’s status is one thing. I suppose castigation by John Prescott is another. And smashed windows yet another.

My own suspicion is that when public anger and public resentment is not assuaged, a dangerous void opens up, into which rhetoric and worse are tipped.

As to what happened to old Tom’s money, the very last bit of it, I’m afraid, despatched me to an indifferent education in an English public school.