Alison Rose must resign

The CEO of NatWest, Alison Rose, admits she was the source for the BBC story about Nigel Farage’s Coutts bank account which both NatWest and the BBC admit was misleading and for which they have apologised. She says it was a “serious error of judgment”.

Too right it was!

You do not have to like Nigel Farage or his politics to understand that for any bank to treat one of it's customers the way the NatWest group and Coutts have treated him is a most serious breach of trust.

It's not just about Farage. If the banks were to get away with treating him the way they have now admitted they treated him, they can do the same to anyone, indeed they are more likely to do this to more vulnerable people who have less ability to hit back than he has.

For the actual Chief Executive of the NatWest group to be involved in planting an inaccurate story about a customer - which incidentally would also amount to a breach of client confidentiality and quite possibly a breach of GDPR law - is completely out of order.

If she is not seen to pay a price for that, the less principled element which exists among bankers as in any other profession will be emboldened to think they can treat customers how they like and get away with it.

She should resign. 

POSTSCRIPT 26th July

I wrote the above last night. This morning it was announced that Alison Rose has indeed resigned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more