There was dismay – but no great surprise – that Sir Fred Goodwin’s Edinburgh home should be singled out for attack by those enraged by bankers’ excesses.

The former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland occupies a detached house in The Grange, a leafy inner suburb on the south side of Edinburgh – a city small enough for the addresses of its most prominent residents to be well known. He was away at the time of the vandalism,