Dedicated Follower of Fashion

When I knew him he was in his late fifties - corpulent with a florid complexion and a nose which was becoming swollen from too much alcohol.  He wore the most expensive Saville Row suits I had ever seen with a small touch of colour on the dark cloth in the form of his matching socks and  top pocket handkerchief, this was his only flambouyant gesture.  He was extremely well connected and respected in the City of London and dined at all the best gentleman's clubs, attended the annual Royal garden party, Henley, Ascot and the various banquets which bored him greatly.  I don't know why he took a liking to me perhaps because we were so different, I was 30 years old, left wing and a feminist but perhaps aside from the entertainment value he thought I was as ruthless as he was.  I was ruthless but only about myself, I hated what I called my laziness and ignorance and how slow I was to learn, I wasn't ruthless in the way I treated other people and slowly I realised that was the difference between us.  He took it upon himself to "teach" me about the City, I think it amused him to tell outrageous stories and laugh when I would refuse to believe that power and money were the only things that mattered in life.  "Star gazy pie" was his phrase for people like me, why couldn't I understand that "they are sheep and we shall shear them" was the only true philosophy to live by?  There would always be wealthy families like his although he was too lazy to really chase the big bucks that you could make in banking, hedge funds and investments;  his father and uncle had set up the offshore companies and accounts to protect their wealth but he made sure he always had a number of seats on the boards of various companies and a few directorships and consultancies to keep his coffers full but don't ask him what those companies did or how their businesses worked.  
Looking back I realise he was lazy, insular and totally indifferent to everything except those things which affected his comfort.  These aspects of his nature were well hidden behind an erudite, charming exterior with huge amounts of bonhomie and wit but it was all skin deep but even though he knew it was all an act he felt proud of his effect on others, rather like an actor producing an Oscar winning performance.  Despite having so many friends and so much wealth and influence he was afraid it wasn't enough, whatever his definition of enough was and what he did have was leaking away, drained away by the things he hated most - modern life and all its gadgets (he refused to use a mobile phone), unions, having to pay too much tax to support the state, a state he despised because it had banned foxhunting and all the while he was struggling to find new businesses to mentor and "consult" because the young entrepreneurs coming onto the scene with their dot com enterprises didn't need his entree into society to succeed and that made him furious.
It had been years since I had thought about this City grandee and now my memory was jogged as I watched the news and saw an interview with Marcus Agius, the Group Chairman of Barclays, he was apologising for Barclays but the fury beneath the apology was red hot, that he should have to account for his actions was intensely humiliating, you could hear it in his voice - how dare the "Great Unwashed" who are not known to him challenge his behaviour.
So, the scandal goes forward and all the old guard of elitist, entrenched, powerful, wealthy entitled people who share my old grandee and Mr Agius beliefs of entitlement and they are fighting a rearguard action for their very lives:  they did nothing wrong, they brought prosperity to Britain and have given their staff jobs how can this be wrong?  When this argument is challenged they fall back on how expensive it will be to have a judge led inquiry and what a long time it will take to present its findings, let Parliament, the same Parliament they fund and manipulate, do its job and have a committee look at this instead.
Just as I did you have to step away from their influence and take a very hard clear look at what they have done with their feral banking practices; how many years has this been going on?  I think it is for longer than 14 months and it has affected a great deal more in our society than just the rigging of an unimportant, obscure, if you believe the bankers, inter banking rate.  LIBOR affects mortgages, credit cards, pensions and business loans.  How many people and businesses have gone bankrupt and lost everything they own? How many pensioners have lost assets and seen their nest eggs shrink?  No one will ever know.
But what I do know is there are several things we as ordinary citizens can do.  Move our bank accounts to ethical banks and Building Societies that don't award bonuses, use credit unions which I have written about in an earlier blog entitled "ABC" and petition our MPs demanding an impartial judge led inquiry.  
I gradually moved away from the grandee's circle because I grew up and didn't like what I saw and heard as I sat at dinner in the various country houses and Belgravia flats, none of these powerful people ever questioned themselves about their behaviour, they are unthinking, dedicated followers of fashion.  A fashion that is regressive, anti democratic and ultra right wing red in tooth and claw capitalist.  I learnt about real politicks and saw how the world worked but I wanted a different world; one that is fairer, more honest and honourable and I still do.