Radical left-wing campaigner and comedian Russell Brand has been labeled a “puerile, self-aggrandizing, prancing multimillionaire” by a disgruntled Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) worker.
The man in question was irritated by the comedian’s unannounced visit last Friday to the bank's headquarters in central London.
Security guards were forced to close RBS’s London offices following Brand’s invasion of their main lobby with a camera crew, a megaphone and a large placard showing Fred Goodwin, the bank’s disgraced former CEO.
Goodwin and three other RBS directors, who presided over the bank's demise, were faced with a lawsuit in April 2013, as investors launched a £4 billion High Court case against the bank.
The worker, who identifies himself online as Joseph Kynaston Reeves, took particular offence to Brand's staged confrontation of the bank's staff with regard to their salaries.
Comparing the anti-capitalist campaigner to a “school bully” for asking handsomely remunerated bankers how much they earn on camera, Reeves sharply criticized Brand.
Rather than “doing something potentially educational” like arranging an official interview with top-level RBS executives “you staged a completely futile publicity stunt,” he wrote, addressing Brand in a sharply-worded blogpost.
“Putting one's face that close to someone else's and staring into their eyes is how primates square off for a fight,” he said.
Reeves further belittled Brand’s efforts to highlight injustices associated with Britain's scandal-ridden banking sector, claiming the comedian’s ousting from the building was not “a global conspiracy” but was actually down to “basic security” measures.
“You know what would have happened if a rabid capitalist had just turned up unannounced? They wouldn't have been allowed in either,” he said.
Reeves' criticism of Brand’s RBS visit generated enthusiastic praise on the web. Online readers were particularly sympathetic to the blogger's lamentations over the fact the protest left him standing outside in chilly temperatures while his paella lunch got cold.
Writing on his blog, Reeves, who said he works for RBS but is not an in-house employee, denounced Brand for allowing his “lunch to get cold” and offering him a “pretty f****** aggressive” response when he attempted to complain.
However, on his LinkedIn profile, Reeves actually describes himself as a “business analyst at first derivatives for Royal Bank of Scotland.”
Reeves also criticized the left-wing presenter for hypocrisy over his tax affairs.
“If you had any self-awareness beyond agonizing over how often to straighten your f****** chest-hair, you'd be ashamed,” he told Brand in his blogpost's concluding remarks.
In the aftermath of a 2008 banking crisis that threatened to derail the British economy, RBS was nationalized and effectively bailed out by UK taxpayers. It is currently 81 percent owned by the state but still run by bank executives.
Years later, the lawsuit against RBS is still ongoing. The groups who have brought the legal proceedings against the bank accuse it of deceiving shareholders following Goodwin’s call for them to deceptively inflate the bank’s finances by £12 billion.
This deliberate misleading of shareholders occurred mere months before RBS became insolvent and required an astronomical £45 billion bailout at UK taxpayers’ expense.