Populist demagoguery at its worst.

I found an article to be quite thought provoking in this morning's Scottish Review (IO'd link, but it's a free subscription only model) arguing existentially that "the leadership class in the UK has forfeited its moral authority".

Hester got crucified on the cross of gesture politics as you so well put it.

I mean on this issue... and just generally.

on here defending Hester. Not because I dont think his bonus was excessive for a job not yet finished but because in the scheme of things it is a sideshow and we should be concentrating on the main attraction which is getting the country out of the shite. Hester refusing his bonus will make bugger all difference. Every other banking executive refusing their bonus will also make bugger all difference. All it demonstrates to me is that have become a second rate country with third rate mealy mouthed politicians running the show.
If Scotlands gets its independence will you please let me in?

It's tokenism and blatant populism. I'll be fascinated to see what Milliband makes of the bonuses that are coming the way of other bankers and whether he's so diligent about demonising them. I've already heard one LibDem politician have to backtrack and say, "Well, of course, these other banks are under quasi public ownership so it's up to their shareholders... No, of course, I'm not against big bonuses per se..."

I've also heard some bankers rail against competitors who introduce what they call, "Ryanair pricing." Or in other words, someone has come along and is upsetting the rip-off, over-charging culture they've been too long accustomed to!

...but maybe high honours for 'Services to Industry' could now be deferred until the subject's retirement. So many of these are given mid career when there's plenty time to spoil the record. Andrew Witty, CEO of GSK, was given a knighthood in the New Years honours. I'm sure he's doing a good job - and being on various government think tanks won't do any harm - but he's 46. Forty-six! Surely these should be given for a lifetime of service?

Surely we have some say in how it gets spent?

Sir Fred is now just Fred, merely for thousands of job losses, a massive hit to the UK economy at the outset of the biggest recession for 80 years & causing the govt to throw away £45 billion

And have you read any of the FSA report into Fred Fae Paisley et al and their astonishing antics? (I'm not trying to be a smart arse maybe you have). Its as enraging as the DTI report into Deloitte and Rover - or for that matte Deloitte cocking up the Woolworths redundancies and leaving us with the bill - looks like plunder pure and simple

For me just saying - "Hester is a world class UK banker with a lantern jaw leave him alone for a few years to get on with it, but pay him a huge bonus just in case it works out" (even though he's thrown thousands on to the public charge and actually burned through £30 billion in value, on top of the £45 billion baillout) - it just won't do. These people and this class have nearly destroyed us as it is.

That's not 'gesture politics', its anger. It could be a lot worse and it has been at times in our history. This is agoing to be a rough few years. And even in red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist US SOME of the Wall Street scumbags are being prosecuted. Over here - nowt.

And if "the leadership class in the UK has forfeited its moral authority" - the City denizens are right up there at the top of the bloody tree. The banks ARE the government

is that, in the short term, very little can be done about "the economy". Unless you're China. So the best they can do is these meaningless things that might, for a few minutes, make some of us feel slightly less shat on.

But the shit is still falling.

However it happened, Hester did the right thing.

One way or another, I expect he will probably receive the remuneration he has given up today. Over time.

What it signifies is a certain jumpiness and shit-scaredness about the public losing faith in the banking system. Yes, we all think they're money-grabbing bastards, but we still use them. If the whole edifice is this fragile, then that's got to be a little worrying.

The important thing is that the government were forced to make them.

is it just me who smells a ritual sacrifice here? If he was to be stripped of his knighthood (which, I believe, is a REALLY big deal for non-convicted criminals), surely it should have been done at the time of his disgrace.

What really gets my goat is that I suspect the people who nod sagely at this news, and may even have lobbied for it, were probably the same ones who were riding on his coat tails during the boom times.

Don't get me wrong, he was spectacularly incompetent and deserved all the flak he got at the time but this just seems like digging up a body to give it a ritual poke for the benefit of the masses.

...have started referring to Fred the Shred as an accountant rather than a banker. Now there's a demotion for you...

(which you couldn't blame him for) idiots like Milliband would look particularly stupid with his point-scoring.

For starters, Hester probably has a pay-off in his contract. Then you would have to find someone stupid enough to take on the role. He/she would want more than Hester and you'd end up paying a recruitment firm 30% of that. He'd probably want a signing-on fee too. Which would all probably add up to more than the £1m in shares that Hester turned down.

Except, in the current political climate RBS would not be able to offer anything like the above. All the targets would turn down the job, they wouldn't be able to find anyone for a long period of time, RBS's performance would drift and this would really hit the taxpayer.

Did he deserve the knighthood in the first place? Don't forget it was a "labour" government who gave out the award... FFS!

It's not tokenism, and it's not populism. It's hopefully the thin end of a wedge. It's hopefully the scales beginning to drop from a few more eyes. It needs to happen to a lot more of the bastards*.

Consider the man who sacked 900 people from the Portman, after misleading its members regarding the takeover by Nationwide, only to trouser a £2.7m pay-off, a 'pension' of £152 kpa, and a swift jump to the board of the West Bromwich Building Society where he proceeded to sack another 150 people, only to oversee their totter towards oblivion.

There are many more like them, and they are all getting rich off the rest of us. They're not financial gurus. They are taking the piss, big time, and it needs to stop.

*/desperate optimism.

Weren't they a dance duo?

The point is that they are not the single cause of the problem (particularly Hester) but kicking them will be treated as the solution. Which it is not. The solution has to be a more structured reform of the management systems at major banks - which is rather more boring news than ex-Sir Fred, but significantly more important. Is it going on? I have no idea.

In terms of the usual punishments for their misdeeds, rioters were given sentences that were incommensurate to their crimes. In both cases, I think it was pour décourager les autres

is going to come about must be smoking some seriously good crack. Staying out of the EU agreement was nothing to do with Government policies but merely protecting our Banking sector. We are shit scared of upsetting them as because we manufacture less and less these days its our only hope of generating wealth.

My partner works in a local branch of RBS.
Her main duties are as follows:
Head Teller: well that does exactly wot it says on the tin.
Money Sense Advisor: probably ditto; she holds one to ones with customers on how to advise them how to invest money within the RBS system or if they are having financial problems, how to budget, once again within the RBS. Be aware that a LOT of (mostly elderly)customers at her branch have been loyal customers to RBS for many many years and have no wish to move their monies from bank to bank or whatever to achieve best fiscal results, but like the comfort and easiness of dealing with their local branch on sometimes an almost daily basis.
Reserve Manager: This is her most important function... she controls and has complete autonomy over The Big Safe At The Back. Nothing goes in or out without her supervision, and it has to balance to the pound on a daily basis... there is shed loads of money in the Big Safe At The Back.
Now whilst all this is relatively easy to do, it has a BIG responsability.
For this she earns less per hour than a checkout operator in Betta Buys.... however there is the quarterly bonus which used to amount to almost 3 1/2K after tax per annum, and this took her up to a decentish salary.
Now the bonus was not a given, it had to be earned by achieving various targets, both personally and Branch wide eg mystery shopper stuff, fiscal accountability, appointments made, insurances/credit cards/ pension plans sold etc,external audit compliance etc etc.
Now the local RBS is one of the better ones and 90% of bonus was at least always attained.
Last year they were told that due to the Banks problems that their bonus's were being cut... in June of last year her quarterly bonus which would have been £880 net under the old system was cut to £152. In September it was £35.... Similar in December, and this being a branch which was voted number 1 in their region two years ago, and number 3 in Scotland overall.
She is looking for alternative employment.

..is the sheer astronomical, gigantic size of these amounts of money. It's as if people were talking about tens of thousands when they say things like "you couldn't blame him for walking out". Not mIllions.

Makes an instant mockery out of any Politicians meagre 120 grand a year, or a Musicians Royalties. These sums of money are surreally referred to as "annual bonuses". These vast tax-dodging annual sums compare to a lifetimes earnings for most. The careful and modest use of vocabulary blinds people to the sums involved. And that what these sums actually mean.

When people say "oh he must to a good job" - if you apply basic moral criteria, absolutely no-one is capable of doing THAT good a job. Not when you compare him (and it's nearly always a guy) in his comfortable Canary Wharf office with the 55 year old nurse. Who after a lifetime of doing something useful to the world and to individuals, has just had the relatively miniscule pension she's been working for her whole life hit.

Personally I've always had a problem with the vast sums of money earned by people working in the misleadingly entitled "Banking" Industry. I had this problem before the current crisis. When people were turning a blind eye to what is morally nothing more than open thievery and opportunism. It's nothing more edifying or productive than a license to print money. It upsets, and seriously skews the London housing market. And leads to greed and erm... resentment.

Hester - born 1960.
Fred Wotsit - born 1958.
I'm getting a very 60s-dodging vibe here.

I saw these 'characters' in the city in the dire 1980s and told anyone within ear-shot that they'd bring the country down.
Perversely when the city was full of nepotism and jobs-for-the boys (immediate post-war years and pre-war) there was plenty of reason not to screw up 'cos your immediate family would know straight away!

Motto - Never trust a punk.
Stick by that and you'll not go far wrong.

Fred the Shred shouldn't just have been stripped of his knighthood. He should also have been stripped of his assets. He's guilty, in effect, of robbing the country. And, yes, it's not *just* him, but (to draw an obvious analogy) we wouldn't argue for a burglar to be let off, simply because other people get away with burglary.

Hester's bonus gesture is certainly just that - a gesture - but it's not an empty one. It sends a signal to the rest of society about what is or isn't considered morally acceptable. That's important, albeit intangible. Equally, the conduct of others in the financial sector sends a signal, of a different kind.

As for the rest of them... in an ideal world, every senior board member and executive in the relevant sectors would be held to account for their actions. It won't happen, obviously.

Meanwhile, in the real world: nurses, social workers, state sector teachers and other "featherbedded" public sector workers are demonised for insisting, via their trade unions, on pay and conditions which should be statutory across all sectors.

And people like my friend who has fibromyalgia undergo huge levels of anxiety and stress to "justify" their temerity in claiming state benefits for the terrible sin of, er, being vulnerable.

Never was the old cliche better demonstrated: one rule for the rich...

Can I get a list of people or occupations we approve of getting huge sums of money, and those that we don't?
And can I also get a list of the qualifying criteria?

And I'm going to take the easy, trite shot: Premier League soccer players. Worth every penny? Moral role models? Successful and deserving of their money?

I understand the antipathy to bankers. My concern here isn't actually about Hester, it's about what the political interference represents. Oh look; now Ed wants a declaration of all bankers who earn more than $1 million (sterling). But wait! Over yonder! It's Lord Mandelson ducking as many questions as he can about his client base and how he generates his business. And over thar! It's the other Milliband brother (let's call him Expenses Dave) being cagey about his earnings.

There's a smell about going after the bankers because they are easy targets - and some of them are. Get the FSA to actually do its job and stop pillorying an entire group of people. It reminds me of that "and when they came for me, there was no-one to speak up for me" thing. Bankers today. Who's next? I am seriously at the stage of hating politicians as a class - American and British - and just looking for a single intelligent, principled man (or woman). On days like this, Eck seems like a good bet!

*deep breath*

he's doing a well paid job, yes, and presumably was aware of the high profile, public scrutiny involved even before he took the job. Chances are he's doing his best and wasn't, lets not forget, responsbile for the pile of shit he inherited.

Would the bank have been better or worse without him? Who knows.

I'm getting a little concerned at the sniping in the general direction of bankers just because they earn a lot. I'm lucky that I earn a reasonable wedge, but come from a working class background and have worked for it.

No-one puts a stamp on a babies head at birth going "that one's a nurse, that one's a banker, that one will be useless and unemployable" etc. We all get much the same chance, but some make a better fist of it or have a god-given talent, whilst others choose lower paid/vocational type roles.

And don't give it the old silver spoon routine either. Hester, for example was educated at a Comp before going to Oxford according to Wiki. Born the son of a Uni Professor he was clearly encouraged to better himself. is that so wrong?

What about the likes of Sir Alan Sugar - lowly start in life but worked hard. Plenty of other examples.

There you go Fake - shoot me down. Now you see why I normally leave the clever stuff on here to others and stick with one-liners.

Very briefly

Even if they hadn't just trashed the UK economy (yes, with their equally culpable politician stooges who should be pursued too) people like Hester can't possibly be worth 5000% more than they were a decade ago.

Their pay is still accelerating too despite all the mayhem. Its not 'earning a lot' thats the problem - its stratospheric payrises regardless of performance, on the basis of a self serving going rate.

And - in the case of Hester/Goodwin - that's our money.

I would hate to see the establishment strip Sir Mixalot of his knighthood (given in recognition of his services to butts)

is smiling

This country is at its best when it is optimistic, generous and forgiving. It is a much better place when it is nurturing hope than when it is nursing a grievance. Yet the last few days have seen our country become vindictive, and this is unpleasant to see.

That's pretty much how I feel about this website these days. Where there used to be sensible and interesting discourse there are now people desperate to get the last word in with their blinkered views.

If I want to see rage and vitriol and a particularly unpleasant tone I'll go to the Guardian website. I certainly won't be coming round this way again.

the problem of measuring and rewarding the value of someone's contribution to an organisation and to society will always be undermined by work being put into the context of a hierarchical structure dominated by the idea that management equates to leadership. That hierarchical structure is one of the worst human constructs ever: no one aspires to be a manager, no one.

It's an inefficient, ineffective and outmoded system whether the work is motivated by profit targets and the entrepreneurial spirit or by waiting lists and a burning desire to improve people's lives.