The removal of Fred Goodwin's knighthood has been greeted in equal parts with outrage and glee.

The outrage comes mainly from the captains of industry wondering whether their own honours, or chance of winning one, might be at risk, and the sophists who point out that Goodwin has never been convicted of a criminal offence or offically censured - the grounds on which similarly dis-honoured former knights, Lester Piggott, Anthony Blunt et al, lost their titles.

The glee comes from those who feel that there's nothing so satisfying as telling a master of the universe that he has feet of clay after all, and that if you can set in train the near-collapse of the British economy with your overambitious folly, then being allowed to retain a title that glorifies "services to banking" is ironic, to say the least.

While I hear what the sophists say, and I can also hear the mutterings of the mob saying: "Now what about Tom McKillop, James Crosby and Callum Mcarthy? How come they've still got honours too?" I think there is more to the Shredded Fred story than simply putting his name down top of a list of businessmen on whom the population would like to wreak vengeance.

I believe that, as the bankers clearly still don't "get it" about the distaste among the general public for the bonuses that they pay themselves and the rewards for failure that they trouser, the Government is simply firing another warning shot across their bows.

While it might be alarmist to talk about barbarians at the gates, and tumbrils being MOT-ed ready to take our nouveaux aristocrats to the guillotine, no government can afford to disregard growing resentment against a particular sector of society, especially when it is that sector's own behaviour that is making them the target. If the bankers still, after all this time, think they deserve their big bonuses no matter what they do, that they deserve to remain rich while other members of society suffer from austerity measures introduced in no small part to remedy the economic climate that they created, then they need to have their minds changed forcibly - and quickly.

Stephen Hester was too slow to forgo his bonus. My guess is that he wanted to hang on to it for two reasons, neither of which was to do with wanting the money itself. The first was that he's an arrogant man who didn't want to be seen to be pushed around. The other is that he didn't want to be seen to be letting the side down. He won't be at RBS for ever, and will presumably one day want another role, but if the name of the game in the top banking jobs is to drive your remuneration ever higher, then conceding for a second that you should be paid for what you actually achieve rather than what you can screw out of the small print of your contract, you would be selling out - Hester's concession could be viewed as weakness. He could be regarded as unfit for the bank bosses' premier league - and a future starring role.

Having fired off a pop gun in getting Hester to forgo his wedge (and we don't know if there was any quid pro quo, such as a promise of a gong, the threat of never receiving one, or the lure of future bonuses to sweeten the loss of this one), the Government decided to take a cannon to another hate figure from the world of banking to demonstrate the firepower it still has.

It hardly matters if the authorities now start to examine other awards and rewards for greed and failure from the past. The warning shot has been fired. Bankers and bosses, make sure you heard it.