It's nice to be nice. English teachers and creative writing tutors may shudder at the word, seeing it, perhaps, as a little insipid, but niceness is undervalued. We all know people who are nice, and they don't cause us any problems. They are life-enhancers.
And if it is, indeed, nice to be nice, then perhaps it's especially important to be nice to those who are not nice. Maybe the more truculent, meddlesome, egotistic individuals among us might, on occasion, be inspired to embrace more enlightened character traits by observing pleasantness in others.
That is, treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.
So: did Fred Goodwin treat the British people as he would like to be treated himself? It seems unlikely, unless he's some sort of financial masochist, and his extremely generous pension firmly quashes that idea.
Niceness came to mind because a leader writer on the Times, Oliver Kamm, said on Radio 4's The World Tonight that annulling Goodwin's knighthood was, in his opinion, mean-spirited. He was invited onto the programme after tweeting the following: "Even, and perhaps particularly, the world's worst banker demands disinterested treatment. Revoking his knighthood is purely vindictive."
The main word there is "purely." Perhaps stripping Goodwin of his knighthood was, indeed, a little vindictive. But there's plenty more at play too.
Lord Oakshott, the Lib Dem Treasury Spokesman and former City financier, described Goodwin's dishonouring as symbolic. It's an acknowledgement that great financial wrong was committed. The knighthood no longer fitted the individual, if, indeed, it ever did. So it was not "purely" vindictive.
Kamm also says: "The world's worst banker demands disinterested treatment." By that, I presume he means fair treatment. Such a contention is undeniable, but stripping Goodwin of his knighthood is fair. Describing the actions of the Forfeiture Committee as mean-spirited is wet; hand-wringing; namby-pamby. Which is to take genuine, wholesome niceness, and turn it into a saccharine, glutinous mess.
Sir Jackie Stewart points out that Goodwin "hasn't committed a crime." Well no, he hasn't, but only because there's nothing to charge him with.
The Conservative MP Matthew Hancock is, in that regard, suggesting new legislation to deter anyone from following in Goodwin's ruinous footsteps. A close ally of Chancellor George Osborne, Hancock is proposing a new offence of corporate negligence, to target those considered "negligent or grossly negligent in their conduct." The Treasury is said to be taking a keen interest.
So was Fred Goodwin negligent or grossly negligent? That would have been for a jury to decide, had such an offence been on the statute book after the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland.
But consider the facts. Only a few will do. In 2008, RBS made a loss of 24.1 billion pounds. The taxpayer needed to find 45 billion to bail it out. And the British economy is still flat-lining now, four years after the crash, to which RBS made a significant contribution.
The Institute of Directors (IoD) says it's concerned about "anti-business hysteria" following the de-knighting. It again talks of a lack of criminality. In his novel A Week in December, Sebastian Faulks juxtaposes a young man who flirts with Islamic extremism, and a hedge fund boss who plays a dangerous financial game. Thus the question is: who is the actual terrorist? Fred Goodwin took a metaphorical economic bomb and exploded it within the British economy. The IoD is perhaps flirting with business extremism itself if it thinks it can defend the surely indefensible.
A few commentators have said that Fred the Shred's new, non-Sir status should be merely the start. That he was hardly the only one to blame for the parlous financial state we continue to find ourselves in.
But in the removal of his knighthood, some sort of justice has finally been done.
And justice is nice. Very nice indeed.