It’s Been a Shitty Week for Barclays Bank, The Met & Me

I don’t know what was more shocking. That a man described as being in his 40’s, “well to do”, with a “calm but angry” demeanour walked around a Hampshire branch of Barclays, pooing as he went, or that the incident wasn’t picked up by the mainstream media. A customer in the branch at the time tweeted pictures of a female branch employee desperately wiping up the poo with a hanky. No protective clothing, no mask, despite the “disgusting stench” that permeated the building. Not even a pair of gloves.

You don’t have to be a therapist versed in the teachings of Freud, but it just so happens that I am, to know that if someone shits all over your house, there’s a good chance you pissed them off big time. Perhaps you invited them ‘round on false pretences. Promising free range Waitrose chicken but serving up a battery hen from Lidl instead.

People are losing their homes and businesses because of the reckless incompetence of the kind of “talent” that got a 10% increase on their bonus this year, a tidy £1 million, despite a 32% drop in profits. As one disgruntled shareholder recently said “We’re paying for Man United but we’re getting Colchester United (I’m sure no disrespect towards Colchester fans was intended…).

The same talent that came up with the brilliant idea of Libor rigging which saw Barclays fined £290m and just when you wonder at just how much talent any one bank can handle, another cunning plan from one of Barclays talent pool backfires. The bank is facing a potential £50m fine by the Financial Conduct Authority for breaching listing rules when dealing with Qatari investors in 2008.

Looking at the picture of the woman cleaning up someone else’s excrement, I wondered if she would be one of the 1,800 branch staff that will lose their jobs in order to pay for the £1m bonuses of the 148 super talented executives at HQ. I couldn’t help thinking that, if cleaning up after their own mess was a condition of their bonus, executives might take their talent somewhere else. The further away the better.

There’s only so much shit anyone can take and since the government has broken its promise to change the culture of contempt at banks, it’s little wonder some customers snap and resort to dirty protests. Anger is a powerful emotion. It demands expression. If all legitimate channels of grievance are closed down, expect it to emerge elsewhere.

It’s not just bankers who seem pathologically predisposed to repeating the same mistakes. A few days ago a tribunal found the Metropolitan Police had “directly discriminated” against employee Carol Howard on the grounds of race and sex. It emerged that the internal investigator was asked to delete any reference to sex or race discrimination from her file. Kiran Daurka, the lawyer representing Ms Howard, said that this wasn’t an isolated incident and that the alleged deleting of evidence in such cases was policy within the Met. Two words, Stephen Lawrence.

Incompetent unaccountable leadership causes harm, both to individuals and society. We tolerate it at our peril.

Notwithstanding the above, I’m grateful to Barclays for providing the hook and excuse for the gratuitous use of the word shit. Having had a pretty shitty week myself I’ve found using it (i.e. “shit”) in this blog remarkably therapeutic. Time to either do some transcendental medication or pour another flagon of poitin. Can’t decide…