Entertainment For Lively Minds
Let them go...
Right then...one of the arguments put forward to justify the payment of a bonus to Stephen Hester is that if people of his 'skill' don't get adequately remunerated they will take their services elsewhere. Leave the industry. Leave the country even.
Am I the only one who thinks 'let them go, then'? It's the same with the spoilt brats we call 'professional' footballers, but that is for another thread at another time. I say 'LET THEM GO'. A brain drain you say? No one with right level of expertise to fill the position? Are we really saying there is no one out there with the financial savvy to steer the RBS into calmer waters?
Payment of bonus to someone who is 'earning' £1.2 million salary? How can this be in any way justified? There was some dick on Jeremy Vine this afternoon doing his level best to side with Mr Hester. I have never wanted to punch someone as much. And I am not a violent person. As with the footballers the blame lies chiefly with person or persons who agree to pay these bonkers amounts. That'll be the government then in this case.
I despair, I really do...
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Couldn't agree more
As I said over on Vulpes's thread earlier on. Repeated here as it REALLY ANNOYS ME
I would love to test the received wisdom that these guys will all bugger off if forced to struggle by on a mere mil per year. I'd like to try it. Let's see what happens if they ALL were told, simultaneously, that there is to be a dramatic rebalancing (borrowing the popular phrase) so henceforth they will receive some reasonable multiple of the average salary of their workforce. I am prepared to bet many of them will reflect on kids schools, wives friends, family etc etc and simply go with it. And if they don't, they can sod off and grub for money in China or whatever (I bet Mrs Fatcat will love living in Bejing rather than Surrey) and we can find people who will.
What always occurs to me is in the number of companies I've worked in as a freelancer, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of senior managers who really made a huge difference. Generally they are various flavours of OK to average, not a disaster but certainly not remarkable. I would need a lot more hands to count the £200k pa useless ineffective tosspots who are inevitably sacked for being useless having added no value and are easily replaced.
So I'd like to call their bluff. Tell the lot of them that sanity has returned and if they don't like it they can eff off and someone from within the organisation, probably whoever is doing most of their work anyway, will be taking over. Let's see who blinks first.
Thanks Twang
I don't need to write down my thoughts as you've expressed what I think very well.
Ditto...
...as Carl says...
One of those 'ups' is mine.
Just in case anyone's vexed by things like that.
They have to go
They're saying now "it's the going rate for somebody who does that sort of job for a company that size".
They only exist as companies because of our vast explicit and implicit bailouts. They're really really shit at what they do
They're stealing billions of our money and still demanding bonuses. Its demented fascism
On a similar theme...
I think we have talked about this on here before, but what about the BBC management?
We must pay them as the commercial sector will snap them up (or so conventional wisdom dictates).
Good, let them go, good riddance...
Have you seen the tripe the commercial channels turn out?
and don't get me started on commercial radio.......
Have you seen the tripe the BBC churns out?
The Chief Exec gets nearly £900K p.a.; they have over 100 managers paid over £200K p.a.; their expenses are legendary; their management structure is overstuffed with absurd non-jobs; they are massively overstaffed; they paid J Ross £6m p.a.; they pay Hansen £40K per appearance; they compete in the private sector arena with organisations which do not have the resources to match them.
The BBC is paid for by the taxpayer.
If private, and I stress private, organisations wish to pay a certain amount to employees, then that is up to them.
The banks should not have been deemed 'too big to fail'.
I also agree that the argument that certain individuals will move elsewhere is specious.
Well, strictly speaking, the BBC is paid for by
the license fee payer. Its output is far from perfect but, cpmpared to ITV, Channels 4 & 5, Sky and the commercial radio stations, its generally of much higher quality and broadcast without the interruption of adverts. Its news coverage is also about as impartial as you can get and the organisation is regarded worldwide as something to aspire to. As to the Chief Exec salary, ITV's CE earned £1.7m in 8 months last year (some of it from bonuses http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/08/itv-adam-crozier-salary. I assume that Adam Crozier wouldn't do the job for the base salary)
Anyway, I am a fan of Auntie so we may never agree on this.
Me too
The BBC is the one institution I really want to keep, post UK break-up. The license fee is a total bargain.
I'm not saying that all the execs are worth their huge salaries though. Something needs to be done about the top earners and that must include whatever personal favourite institution.
I don't disagree
But there's probably two things at work here:
1. Majority shareholders are things like pension funds, whose fund managers are inherently conservative and tend not to question these things
2. It's probably difficult for the government to overturn things that people have written into their employment contracts.
In RBS's case
1. The majority shareholder is the taxpayer, on whose behalf the government acts (82% of the shares).
2. Apparently, the contract (drawn up with the then Labour government) talks about a bonus but in lots of blurred language ('discretion', 'prevailing wind' etc.) at the behest of RBS's board.
If the government wanted the bonus to be stopped, I'm sure they could. There were rumours the board might walk out en masse, but as the OP said, let them. Osbourne is saying it would cost the taxpayer more to replace the board & the chief exec.
The bonus itself, isn't cash, but shares that can only be realised in two years. You could view that as an incentive to make sure the bank does well, rather than a bonus for past performance.
That said, I'm with the OP.
In the case of RBS
we are the majority shareholder.
I'm not an employment lawyer
But if institution X becomes a majority shareholder of institution Y, can all employment contracts of the people who work for Y be amended by X without redress?
In a word
No.
I'm a lawyer, albeit not an employment lawyer.
The only way I can see for the government to prevent Hester from receiving his bonus, assuming he's contractually entitled to it, is to call an emergency general meeting of the shareholders, pass a special resolution and sack him. He'd then have a strong claim against RBS for unfair dismissal and to recover the bonus to which he is contractually entitled. RBS would also struggle to recruit a credible replacement, which would crash its share price.
Being a majority shareholder gives you no rights whatsoever to unilaterally amend contracts into which the company you own has entered. I'm also not aware of any specific government power to vary the terms of this contract, other than increasing taxation on bonuses generally.
In short, if Stephen Hester is contractually entitled to this bonus and wants to be paid it, the government would be extremely Ill advised not to allow him to be paid, from a legal and commercial perspective at least,
Employment contracts
I'm a freelancer too, specialising in HR/Employment Law. Employment contracts - quite rightly - should be difficult to change.
But, by agreement, it can be done. On my last three or four contracts, I have worked with senior managers and directors who have voluntarily taken actions to ensure a future for themselves, the workforce, shareholders. This has included taking paycuts, not receiving bonuses, carrying their own expenses and so on.
I've also negotiated with employees and unions to create temporary contractual changes, for the same reasons - wage freezes, suspension of overtime supplements etc.
All of the above have been frequently specified by the companies' banks.
At the senior levels we're talking about in RBS, it's ludicrous for this government to infer their hands are tied. At the very least, Hester's bonus could have been deferred. If he pulls things round, I doubt if there'd have been as much fuss about him being recognised with a bonus.
The other point that is really bugging me is the constant bleating about the previous government. OK, things were bad, but this shower wanted the gig, they got the gig and they need to bloody well get on with it. Same as me when I take on a new contract which has often entailed me coming in through the front door as the previous incumbent leaves by the back. I don't get paid to cast blame - I'm there to analyse, plan and deliver improvements.
I doubt if this new breed of professional politicians - of all persuasions - has between them managed more than a 6th form social.
Any room for a shade of grey?
I've not followed this particular story all that closely, so maybe someone will correct me, but my understanding is that:
(a) RBS was in a god-awful state;
(b) Hester left an equally well paid (and vastly simpler) job at British Land to take the helm and sort the place out;
(c) he's met all the targets stipulated in his contract for a bonus; and
(d) his bonus is paid mainly in stock options, the future value of which is dictated by RBS (and therefore Hester's own) future performance.
I agree that the immediate inclination is disgust that he's being paid so much, but it's worth noting that (a) Hester had no role in creating the mess our banking system got itself into (as far as I'm aware) and if we do tell him and his kind to do one oversees we still need to find someone to run RBS, and you could argue that this isn't a great moment to reduce the quality of management.
I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit, obviously, and maybe I'm as big a twat as the bloke on the Jeremy Kyle show for doing so, but I do just wonder if maybe this one is a bit less simple than is being made out.
I don't believe for a minute that the inept should be heavily compensated for their ineptitude, but is there any evidence that Hester has under-performed or is being paid more than the market rate, heavily inflated as that market rate might be?
I guess there are two sides to this issue: the moral (should anyone earn that much) and the practical (how do we maximise the value of a state owned asset so that we can at some point in the future sell it on for a handsome amount. I get the former in this instance, it's the latter that seems a little more complex.
Honestly seeking views on this and not trolling!
OP
The OP is more about the whole myth that these people have to be paid squillions or they'll bugger off, rather than Hester specifically. That was a problem of negotiation by the same incompetents who let Fred the Shred get away with a lot more.
Ah
Fair play then.
I tend to agree - the theory that they'll all decamp abroad if they're not treated favourably is gibberish to me, and sorely in need of testing. What on earth does the end game look like if we continue to bend over backwards?
As far as i'm concerned, I don't much care what those who run the investment banks are paid so long as (a) it's possible for them to fail without the safety net of a bail out (which I suppose would mean that we'd need to separate the investment and retail arms of our major banks); and (b) I don't have to spend any time with them.
I can't say I fully understand why more progress has not yet been made on point (a), as from my (untrained, relatively ill-informed) perspective, it looks a no-brainer.0
And where are all the brits that have been poached to
these massive multi-national national companies and finance houses?...BP, er...
The plan's worked well
No-one is worth that much.
I see no compelling reason why anyone should be paid more than a skilled paediatric neurosurgeon, on the grounds that I cannot see anyone's work being worth more.
The Hesters of this world are simply smoke and mirrors merchants making relatively banal decisions fed them by the lower ranks. I'm very much in favour of calling their bluff. In fact, a maximum annual wage of £150k seems like a reasonable way to do it; I honestly cannot imagine why anyone would need more.
You're welcome to it
I would want considerably more than £150K to do a job that presumably has stupidly long hours, lots of time away from home and an almost continual spotlight on it. I would guess that it wouldn't be seen as a job for life (if any can be) either. He could be given the elbow at any time. I appreciate that if the salary was at this level threads like this one wouldn't exist. Also bear in mind how much of that salary is paid immediately back in taxes (although I would expect someone with the skills to run a bank to also know how to avoid a lot of it!)... and when you go a bit above £150K you're handing 50% over (and 40% is bad enough!).
There are a lot of layers in large corporations and each one has a salary level in line with what the employee is expected to to. I know where I work there's a drone level that goes comfortably high before you reach the lower middle management level (mind you I work for an engineering company and that's the way it should be - good engineers shouldn't be lost to management in order to get paid more). I'm very near the top of that level and would want at least £15K more to go to the next level. I think the jump to each level would require an exponential increase. My idea of the right salary for the level would exceed £150 long before I got to the top... Having said all that, I don't think my salary ready reckoner would have a £1m level on it!
OK - and to be honest thats between you and your employer
The problem is that top pay has really shot up in recent years - exponentially - and for the FTSE companies it was 30% higher last year alone.
On what basis?
For a tiny plutoctratic clique its plunder pure and simple. They're employees taking no risks robbing the companies owners of more and more money every year, while their companies lurch into oblivion. HMV is an excellent example.
Plenty of people with post grad quals working stupid hours in the private sector. I'm one and my wife is another. The difference is our salaries have stalled and our pensions trashed to bail out the people who caused the problem in the first place - and they're STILL getting vast payrises
We have to pay chief
We have to pay chief executives highly because of global competition.
We have to pay entry level staff no more than minimum wage because of global competition.
Incentives...
I can remember hearing a TUC official speaking to congress many years ago, & he made that same point in slightly different terms
Why is it that to motivate a working man we must threaten him with lower wages, terms & conditions, but management motivation requires vastly improved terms, conditions (bonuses etcetera).
A very simplistic view I know (please dont kick me too hard)
Not defending Hester, but ...
... it's nothing to do with motivation and all to do with supply vs demand. Shelf-stackers at a supermarket, say, are hardly going to ever be difficult to find, whereas (in theory, anyway) someone with the brains, proven ability & knowledge of a complicated multi-faceted sector such as banking is going to be harder to get hold of. This means the latter will cost more to put in place, as there are probably a whole host of other things they could be paid well to do.
I know this then becomes a "theory vs practice" argument: at what level do we really think a bank CEO needs to be paid? I think the OP, and the other thread "963,000 reasons", are both getting at the interesting question of what happens when laws come up against ethics: I don't doubt Hester was legally entitled to an even larger bonus, but there are ethical expectations which it seems he and his kind seem oblivious to.
'Proven ability though?
This is a sector that has failed beyond anything in human history and depends on colossal (and ongoing) bailouts and QE just to stay in business. We'll never get the money back - even if the banks weren't backed with worthless assets and geared at 26:1 the amounts of money are so titanic it would take decades to sell the shares without flooding the market. And the loans/guarantees - gone, absolument disparu. We're on teh hook for the lot and the chances are they'll be back for much more this year.
The banks are BANKRUPT. We've lost the lot. But the people who run the banks are apparently worth several hundred percent more than they were a few years ago. Only this time its our money.
not demonstrated
I remember someone saying the same thing to me 30 years ago, so it is hardly a new concept. Usually put forward by the very rich. In the US the Republicans say that they need low taxes on the rich to encourage them to create wealth. If that is true, why do so many businessmen get rich and then move into politics (which on their logic means they are not creating wealth).
Poor people spend their wages, benefiting the economy. Rich people sometime spend, sometimes invest and often just sit on it .
Global competition?
You mean like getting the bloke from Santander in to make some sense of the mind-bogglingly crippled mess that is the Lloyds Banking Group, only to watch him stagger off almost immediately for 3 months debilitated with stress? Do me a favour.
Funny how you rarely see these ridiculous earners...
....crack a smile though.
Perhaps they do it behind closed doors.
John Terry lives behind a perpetual grimace.
paparazzi
if they smiled the photo would be in the papers as "smug, rich bastard laughs at us all". They probably get special frowning training to avoid that.
Top banker wanted to sort out bust bank
Hiding to nothing, unmanageable debts, Euro crisis, answerable to lynch mob.
Or
Hiding to £2 million quid risk free income a year, succeed or fail you'll get it anyway (his Long Term Incentive Pan is over and above his bonus and thats worth millions too), no personal accountability whatsoever, a couple of years of that and you can retire debt free.
Worth distinguishing between 'lynch mob' and 'unfavourable headlines'.
Not really
That job was the biggest poisoned chalice imaginable. The company was screwed and under 'normal' circumstances, would have gone bust. There was no guarantee the new CEO could actually fix it. From Hester's perspective, he would expect to be able to make this kind of money without risking lifelong opprobrium if he dares to ask for what he's been promised in his contract. He'll also been mindful that if the bank turns out to be unfixable, he would be jeopardising the rest of his career.
I'm not defending Hester seeking to enforce his contractual rights, but when he took the job on, he was told what he might expect if he stabilised the business and unsurprisingly, he'd quite like to get that.
It's a lynch mob, let's not kid ourselves. The only way this is going away is if he does what the press-driven mob tells him. Exactly the same thing happened when Jon Moulton tried to buy Rover Cars and make them get real. I give him one year in the job after this row - he'll want out asap. Good luck finding anyone willing to take on the job after this mind.
We're not going to agree :-)
He's no shrinking violet and his 'remuneration' - completely independent of results - is £7 million. A year.
Impossible to feel sorry for him given everything else that is going on, how much the sector he is a luminary of is responsible for our plight, and - IMHO - how much worse the bastards know its going to get this year.
Steal billions and people think somehow you must be worth the money. Steal a bottle of mineral water and go prison for six months,
Seems like he agrees with you anyway
he doesn't want the shares
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16772525
Thats
Teh other guy
Peston (BBC blog) says he didn't expect the bonus but they merely changed the name at the top of some TOCs when handing the job to Hampton after some other gadgie knocked them back.
Fine negotiating there. No wonder the City is gouging the public purse, much easier than earning it
Hire a social worker
They have a similar spec for a couple of orders of magnitude less pay.
Annoying double post
oops
RBS - in effect it's a nationalised bank
when the state owns the asset then it's nationalised - even if they intend to sell it off again later.
What are other state employees being given (not offered, not negotiated, given, take it or get lost) ?
Well for 2 years a 0% pay rise, to be followed by 1% (maximum !) for the rest of this parliament. With inflation running around 4% on average across those 5 years that's a considerable pay cut. They are also being told to work longer, pay more into their pension pot, and take a reduced sum out.
So, if you happen to be running a state owned bank (i.e. you are the government) and you decide that an employee who earns more than £1million should get a near 100% bonus then it shouldn't come as a surprise that other state employees may question the "fairness" and "all in this togetherness" of that decision.
Not that it matters, but for the record I work in the private sector. I just happen to think that effectively taking ~20% off the salaries of nurses, teachers, social workers etc may act as a disincentive to retaining/recruiting the best and the brightest to these jobs and that in a few years time we may come to regret this.
That's an interesting point
I don't agree with the casual way in which hundreds of thousands of hard working public servants have been clobbered by this government. God knows, the last people we should be making life harder for are teachers and nurses.
However, I don't see how you can reasonably compare Hester and his role to that of any other public servant working in Britain today.
His market value (I.e what others are willing to pay him) is extraordinarily high. That's partly a reflection of his skillset, but also partly a reflection of the confidence which the financial markets have in him. Simply put: appointing a Hester to lead your company strengthens your share price, or at least prevents it falling too much. That's the essential logic behind the hire. Bring in someone with less experience and the markets will quite simply hammer you, thereby reducing the value of RBS even further, which is exactly what the government is presumably looking to avoid.
The austerity measures are a similar story, as I understand it. Morally, the idea of penalising teachers for the largesse of bankers is, of course, repugnant. However, had we not enacted these measures, or something very similar, the bond Market would have reacted by refusing to lend to us other than at punitive rates of interest.
So, what do you do? All the practical solutions are morally horrific and all the moral solutions are impractical.
I think three things have got us into this mess:
(i) the fact that we couldn't let the investment side of the banks fail in isolation without dragging down the retail side with them;
(ii) the resulting bail outs, which mean we're now, as a nation, even more in thrall to the markets than before; and
(iii) the fact we didn't save enough during the boom years, which again means we continue to rely on the markets for ongoing credit.
I have a fair idea what we should be doing to ensure there's no repeat of point (i), but I have no idea what can be done about points (ii) and (iii). And it's those points which, until they're somehow resolved, will continue to see us forced into ridiculous positions like this one.
But in this case
the share prices have dropped drastically since he took over.
Hence...
..."reducing the value of RBS even further".
The theory is that their share price would be even further in the toilet without Hester or a Hester-alike at the helm.
Send for Antonio immediately.
That should do it.
Nice
and nicely impossible to prove !
Which is why
It's "the theory".
I prefer
The blatant and shameless telling of the public to f*** off and mind its own business :-)
What disturbs me
is the way it's descending into personal and vicious attacks on the man personally. Whether you agree or disagree with the bonus and I'm somewhere in the middle, the Mail, Express and Mirror attacks on him are unjustified. They are once again starting a feeding frenzy.
I have to assume Hester pays his full whack in tax as he's in the public eye so approximately £500k of his £1million comes back to the treasury. But the same papers have no problem with Rooney, Terry et all trousering over a million a month and paying only 13% tax due to grey areas such as Image Rights and dubious practises as supplying cars and holidays to the WAGS. In fact they glory in it, breathlessly telling us of Balottelli's latest episodes of flashing the cash, the scamp!
If Hestor turns the bank around and the Taxpayer gets the money back and makes a profit then fine, at least there will be something tangible at the end. I would rather the papers dug into the Byzantine world of the Premiership accounts and find out what's going on there. I'd certainly like them "to just go" I wouldn't miss them!
Hesters money is capital gains
Like most people paying tax at that level of income its optional, and its at a much lower rate than you or I pay.
The papers will be happy to point the finger at Hester, Brown, Darling to divert their readers attention - the boards of the media groups are rammed with bankers who are on a fortune
Footballers are also the under-talented beneficiaries of a rigged monopoly that battens itself onto the UK economy. Sky hardly pays any tax at all. And the footballers abjectly fail at the highest level year in, year out. The resemblance to the financial sector is amazing.
Eh?
What do you mean that regularly fail at the highest level? Like winning the Premiership or the Champion's League? If you're talking at international level, then be under no illusion that the World Champion Spanish side are making a few quid at their respective clubs. With the odd exception (I'm looking at you, Torres) the highest paid footballers are paid because they regularly contribute to success. If they don't they will find their value falling. The existence and operation of the various fantasty football games demonstrate how this works.
The analogy doesn't hold up. There is a lot of money in football. The people who make the most money are generally the most talented footballers. It's a meritocracy in that sense. The amount of money in the game is obscene but it is given voluntarily by people buying tickets, the television companies and advertisers. Who do you think should get the money other than the people providing the entertainment that brings all that money in?
The clubs ARE all bankrupt
Their reserve teams are full of squillionaires. The UK national teams are demonstrably shite. English players in particular appear to be unremittingly dreadful people. We've had this row on here several times so no point rehearsing it again - I am deploying the Dave Amitri Defence i.e. no pint trying to convince me smiley thing :-)
It all feels like a conspiracy against the gullible to me.
The UK national teams
Don't pay the wages you're talking about though.
The clubs do. And while I agree that football is shockingly run, some of these overpaid players have taken, say, Man Utd to three out of the last four champs league finals, others have a massive commercial value in terms of drawing sponsorship and shirt sales and all contribute to the Premiership being the world's most commercially successful league.
Oh, and the most highly paid sports team in history is apparently Barcelona, who I'd say have been worth every penny these last four years, and I don't even support them.
Not saying all of the above justifies the Winston Bogardes of this world, just that, like everything else discussed above, it's complicated.
But we aren't disagreeing Dan
My point is that loads of players get paid unbelievable sums succeed or fail, play or not, regardless of performance. Even if they are journeyman thugs
The clubs are all essentially bust and mostly rely on foreign plutocrats with a need for tax losses, or Rupert Murdoch.
A ghastly situation and very analagous to our supposedly world class financial services sector.
Man U are sui generis of course in UK terms but they've been laden with the Glazer's debt to pay off after a basically hostile takeover in which the City made an absolute fortune
I don't disagree with a lot of what you say here
God knows, as an Arsenal fan I'll happily hold forth all day long on the terrible things fiscal irresponsibility has done to the game and the need for FFP.
However, I don't see how the quality of the national sides comes into a discussion of player wages and i don't really see the financial services parallel.
It's also patently untrue to say that all the clubs are bankrupt or rely on plutocrats. You're talking about a high profile minority there.
Anyway, let's agree to disagree. You seem to know your own mind on these subjects, which is fair enough. Internet discussions which go beyond a basic statement and explanation of the parties' respective views seldom do anyone any favours.
Incidentally, why are you a fake Geordie?
Hi
Happy to agree to disagree - though the idea that most clubs are by any definition bankrupt is from the FA - Mind you it is one of those factoids that lodged into what I am pleased to call my mind a few years back.
I'm a Fake Geordie because although I am very proud and happy to live/work in the North East for a decade or more now, I grew up in Bucks and lived in London for yonks. Friends at work call me a recovering Southerner. They have some other phrases too...
Ha ha - I bet they do!
I'm a Londoner married to a Geordie, hence my interest.
I'd never been up there before I went to meet the in-laws, but found I absolutely loved the place, fantastic part of the world.
I get my arm twisted on a semi-regular basis to move up there but am never quite sure what my quality of life would be like as an unrepentant Southerner.
Weeellll...
My quality of life is genuinely far better. Less stress just doing the ordinary stuff, and it is a proper city. I loved London and still do but getting around started to take too long out of every day. Our kids have yet to forgive us for leaving London though (even though it was before they were born)!
We live in the Tyne valley so its hardly back of beyond but the teeming metropolis it isn't. It is very beautiful here as you obviously know but its the people who make it a joy. They're all bloody mad but very kind with it. Work hard play hard would also be accurate. But mainly bloody mad
Aha
That all tallies almost precisely with my own impressions when visiting.
I was (and remain) stunned by the countryside, particularly the coastline, and the Geordies themselves. They have an absolutely fantastic attitude to life and are great value.
Good to hear that all of the above is borne out by your own experience.
Have you seen the Eye's cover
with the Huhne Defence crack? Heh.
Hurray for sanity
Agree with you Gordon, there are far more people who are less deserving of their inflated salaries than he is. The problem is we follow the line of the likes of the Daily Mail et al and jump on the bandwagon. I tell you what, none of the talented entrepeneurs will want to ply their trade in this country the way we are going. This crap doesn't exist in the USA or Hong Kong, Tokyo, Frankfurt or Paris. It doesn't even exist in Moscow or Beijing. We used to compete at the top level in World Economics but I fear we will soon be relegated to the second tier oh and we can sell off all of our assets at the same time. Unbelievable.
Except, as members of the great unwashed,
we don't really have any interest or leverage in how much Wayne bloody Rooney gets thrown each week, and he'll only waste it on {redacted - Legal Ed.} anyway.
The CEO of the RBS, however, works for us. We own his firm. He is a public servant. That's what makes his case different.
And I haven't read the Daily Mail since I volunteered to change the lining in the blind little old lady next door's budgie's cage in about 1972. Or the Express since I asked to use my Great Uncle's outside lavvy in 1965.
Did your neighbour's budgie ...
... then develop a different attitude to migration?
(Cheap shot - couldn't ignore it)
No, but
I have noticed that the Express have continually printed smear campaigns ever since.
I dont disagree
that his salary and bonus package might need to be re-negotiated given his failure to turn round the fortunes of RBS. My problem with all of this is that it is not by any stretch the biggest problem we face in this country. 3 million unemployed and rising.A government that is dogmatic beyond belief and who will not listen to any sensible propositions to improve our lot unless it involves an awful lot of grief for the ordinary working bloke. Decline of all public services to the point where they may stop altogether. Slaughtering anything to do with the arts. Closing libraries. The list goes on.
Charlie Brooker on the subject
C. Brooker gets it in perspective.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/sharing-obsession-re...