It's all going horribly wrong...

Something of a stink in the UK over the head of RBS (a bank the government had to take over in 2008 in the early stages of the credit crisis) being given a 16 million pound pension. The BBC report is here.
My personal feeling is that this is an example of the government messing up, several times over. Lord Myner's excuse for letting this past is because he "used a standard script" - one would think that somebody responsible for the Treasury might pay attention to the odd 16 million here or there, but perhaps at the time it really was too trivial a sum to be worrying about.
But to compound this, the Prime Minister is now cross that Sir Fred isn't just going to hand the money back - and why should he? He's worked for 30 years at the bank, and the amount has been agreed by the government. Trying to snatch it back looks like a hamfisted attempt to play to the gallery. And worse, Harriet Harman is quoted as saying "...[the pension contract] might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in".
OK, it's alright for Gordon to be envious that somebody has retired with substantially more money than he is likely to end up with (as his chum Tony will have been gobbled up all the high-paying speaking engagements by the time he stops being PM), but to argue that the government should enforce public opinion seems the height of dimwittery. If that were true, we'd bring back capital punishment because it seems to be a popular idea, we'd let criminals out to attend weddings because they were getting married to minor celebrities, we'd waste time in parliament remarking on injustices meted out to fictional characters ... oh. Our current crop of politicians have been doing the latter of these - now I don't want to get paranoid about public hangings - after all, if we've nothing to hide, we've nothing to fear, right? Right?