His say: Keith Rossiter: This mob is fed up with rip-offs

YEARS ago, before the age of email, I phoned a car company press officer to ask for information about their latest model. She promised to send it and took my name and address.

"It's … er … Keith Rossiter," I said in my bumbling way. The next day an envelope landed on my desk, addressed to: "Sir Keith Rossiter".

That's OK, you may call me plain "Keith" if you wish: I resisted the fraudulent temptation to adopt that accidental mark of respect.

This column has argued for more than two years that Fred Goodwin, the former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, be stripped of the knighthood he was given "for services to banking", so there was a certain amount of cheering on Tuesday when the forfeiture committee decided to do just that.

Goodwin's greed brought down RBS in 2008 but Fred "the Shred" as he was no doubt proud to be nicknamed, had already cut a swathe through the banking sector.

His reckless expansionism began with the hostile takeover of NatWest in 2000, where he cut 18,000 jobs in the newly-merged company. That's 18,000 people on the dole. Nice.

For this and other such murderous business decisions, he was knighted by Tony Blair in 2004 "for services to banking". You might just as well knight Eric Bloodaxe for services to brain surgery. Alistair Darling, the Labour Chancellor in 2008, engineered a £45billion rescue package for RBS. When Darling calls the stripping of Fred "tawdry", perhaps he's mindful of his own less than glorious role.

RBS is now 80 per cent owned by you and me, the taxpayer, but don't celebrate: our shares have fallen from a high of more than £20 each at the beginning of 2007 to 28p this week.

Interest at 4 per cent would have paid out more than £5billion over the past three years. Some of the one million young people now out of work might have welcomed the 145,000-a-year minimum wage jobs that could have created.

So when one City executive this week described the decision as "bowing to the mob", I'd very much like to know his name. The mob, matey, is us and we're really quite fed up with being ripped off.

A knighthood is a mark of respect, and the nation has lost respect for you. Welcome, Freddie, to the club that includes disgraced former honorary "knights" like Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. There are a few others, including some sitting in the House of Lords, who belong in that club.

MISTER Goodwin has distracted me from this week's meeting of the full Plymouth City Council. With elections only three months away, this is the time of year when council meetings get rowdy in a way that would make National Lampoon's Animal House look tame.

All this week's noisy debate needed to resemble the toga party scene in the 1978 movie was music. And togas, of course.

Councillors Nicky Wildy (Lab, Devonport) and Nicky Williams (Lab, Honicknowle) called on the Conservative-run council to express concern over the Conservative-led Government's plan to limit child benefit to people earning less than £42,500 a year and to reform the rest of the welfare system.

The Tories supported the motion, leaving council leader Vivien Pengelly with the task of writing a stern letter to the Chancellor.

LIKE any freshman in a movie about college life, Cllr Peter Berrow had to undergo an initiation ceremony. The Southway Tory defected to the UK Independence Party two weeks ago, and this was his first full council in no man's land. I almost felt sorry for him as he bent over to take a thrashing from grinning Labour councillors.

During a break in the meeting he was surrounded by the Labour gang, apparently grooming him. Obviously flattered by the attention, he voted against his old Tory chums.

The feud between Labour and legal officer Tim Howes continued, leaving the Lord Mayor in spluttering frustration that reminded me of Dean Wormer in Animal House.

"Sit down and calm down," Cllr Peter Brookshaw thundered, hammering his desk for the umpteenth time. "You talk through the Lord Mayor or you don't talk at all."

A Labour amendment to the new policy on licensing sex establishments tested the Brookshaw resolve but strengthened the Animal House theme.

Mr Howes told Labour that the amendment by Cllr Chris Penberthy (Lab, St Peter and the Waterfront) broke debate rules. Labour swore that Mr Howes had seen and approved the amendment before the meeting. Mr Howes said, "Yes, one minute before the meeting."

Ms Wildy criticised Mr Howes for being "sarcastic to councillors".

Cllr Tudor Evans, the Labour leader, said in effect failing to pass the amendment meant that councillors ran the risk of being sued if they told their constituents about an application to license a sex establishment.

Cllr Ted Fry (Con, Compton) said that "attempting to ruffle the feathers of council officers" was disgusting.

Cllr Susan McDonald said Union Street has moved on since its days as the Amsterdam of England; you can now buy fruit and veg there. She didn't say what for.