I probably shouldn't tell you this, but here goes. In August I wrote an admittedly quite rude comment that suggested Sir Fred “The Shred” Goodwin should take the drop for the misguided purchase of ABN Amro. The next day an e-mail arrived from his PR people. As I had utterly failed to recognise the God-like genius of Goodwin's strategy - I paraphrase - the Great Leader had found a window in his diary early in December, mid-morning. Would I like to pop in then and allow him to explain?

I e-mailed back that, on the assumption that both of us were still in our respective jobs come early December, yes. There was a brief electronic pause while someone tried to work out if a) I was joking and b) if they dared report my response to the Great Leader. There, until yesterday, it remained. Fred “The Shred” was so proud of his nickname that when I once suggested it was an RBS invention, some other PR people - how many did he have? - insisted it was genuine.

The equivalent of Vlad the Impaler's office calling to say, no, no, he really does impale people. Is it possible that in the coming more boring era of banking we might see bankers who don't rejoice in their skill at sacking people?

Get-rich ploys are pure spam, any way you slice it

Is it me, or are those get-rich spam e-mails suddenly proliferating, as we all start to worry about our jobs and houses? Admittedly, you'd have to be pretty dim to be tempted into “an urgent secret business relationship” that came “from the desk of Sir Frank Paulson”, who, apparently, is someone terribly senior at the US Treasury. Or to believe there was a refund waiting for you, in sterling, at the “Internal Revenue Service”. But I confess to a sneaking admiration for the spammer who, within minutes of the banking package being announced, used this to try to get me to click into the usual duff e-mail link and hand over my banking details.

— The whispering campaign against the next Lord Mayor seems to have hit a new pitch. The Evening Standard reports a row between Ian Luder and a neighbour in Bedfordshire over a dead cat. Luder is not allowed to comment because he is only weeks away from taking office and Guildhall is unwilling to speculate whether the new story has anything to do with earlier poison pen letters. But I rather suspect so.

— There was a demonstration organised by the Communist Party outside the Bank of England yesterday. They were protesting at Gordon Brown's decision to nationalise the banks. I'm sorry. I'll read that again. There was a demonstration organised by the Communist Party ... Has the world gone completely mad?

A Lincoln memorial
In the blue corner: Abraham Lincoln

After my note the other day about Andrew Jackson, the US president, lambasting bankers in 1832, I am reminded that five years later another US president, in his formative years, said the following: “If any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler ...

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.”

The sad thing is that neither Jackson nor Abraham Lincoln would probably be electable in today's America.

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