The craze that isn't sweeping the nation

Axe to fall on seven RBS directors in clear-out of Goodwin-era board
Hampton purges management who oversaw 24 acquisitions and left bank with £8bn hit from credit crunch

Sir Philip Hampton, the new chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, is wielding the axe in the loss-making bank's boardroom in a determined effort to exert his authority over the troubled operation.

Seven non-executives are expected to leave the board as Hampton roots out some of the longest-standing members of a board that presided over as many as 24 acquisitions during the eight years in which ousted chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin was at the helm. The taxpayer will soon own 70% of the bank.
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Three new government-approved non-executive directors will join the board as stipulated by the government as a condition for the injection of £20bn of taxpayer funds. Those appointments were being finalised last night and could be announced as soon as today.

Dear God, bank executives being held responsible for their performance and the government installing overseers onto the board as a condition of a bailout? What is the world coming to? Madness. We have it right, where we're still squabbling over whether failures get to keep their full salaries or if we simply reduce them to upper upper class status, instead of upper upper upper class status. We aren't even broaching the subject of firing them. The concept of basing executive employment on performance? What's that? It must reside with Bigfoot and summer with Nessie.

Once again in this crisis the British have it right, America has it wrong. No wait, Robespierre and the Jacobins circa 1792-1794 had it right, but we'll take the British example if we must.