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Check your privilege
Michelle Carroll of BDO discusses the prevalence of male privilege in financial services
Fred Goodwin, ex-head of RBS, the bank bailed out by the UK taxpayer, lost his knighthood, and Matt Ridley, who oversaw the first run on a UK bank in 150 years while chairman of Northern Rock, is now the 5th Viscount Ridley as an hereditary peer. So bankers did relatively OK while many others didn’t. Surely, a little banker bashing is to be tolerated? Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t recall there
being an appropriate apology. Assuming there was no appropriate apology, the question in my head is: why did Diamond think that was a reasonable thing to say?
Five years later, in 2016, I hosted a panel discussion to mark International Women’s Day. The panel consisted of three people who identified as transgender. At our initial prep meeting, one participant, Ayla Holdom, said: “Look, let’s talk about the elephant in the room.”