You have to laugh. Poor old Stephen Hester has been bullied into declining his near-million pound bonus after a public outcry. The Royal Bank of Scotland exec was joined by RBS head-honcho, Sir Philip Hampton, who also knocked back his £1.4 million ticket on the gravy train. Bless ‘em.
It’s the arguments surrounding these two instances, though, which have proved to be instructive. One justification for paying the bonuses, pushed forward by the Tories, natch, was that such bonuses were enshrined in law by the previous Labour government, who fixed them as part of these gentlemen’s contractual terms and conditions of employment. I see. Well, as a former union convenor I’d be the last to sit by and watch some swindling bosses try and wriggle out of their legally-binding duty to their employees but that hasn’t happened has it? In fact all that has happened is David Cameron has ‘urged restraint’. Nice one, Dave. That’s telling ‘em and no mistake.
Now cast your mind back to November 30th when public sector workers were striking in defence of their pensions. You know; those pensions that were an integral part of their terms and conditions of employment. The same pensions that were enshrined in law by a previous government. I must have missed the indignant Tory MPs jumping up and down and demanding that Cameron and co should pay up and honour those employment contracts. Funny that. Mind you, I also missed the Labour leadership making the same demands as well. In fact, that spineless piece of vacuous nothingness, Miliband, actually went on record and condemned the strikers but that’s another matter.
The other one that tickles me, when discussing the obscene greed that is executive pay, is the old chestnut, “Ah but we need to pay them these huge sums otherwise where’s the incentive to do the job?” It’s strange that when the argument concerns itself with shop floor pay the situation is somewhat different. Pay cuts, longer hours, sacking and redundancies clearly being the incentives that work best for the great unwashed along, of course, with the tiresome and predictable tirades against ‘union bosses’ and their ‘irresponsible’ and ‘greedy’ members.
Or what about tax? If you’re a top executive with Goldman Sachs it seems you can arrange a cozy lunch-date with Her Majesty’s head tax bod and amicably agree to waive the £20 million in tax you owe the UK exchequer. Mind you, that’s just chump change compared to the £7 billion, yes, you read that correctly, that Her Maj’s generous tax officials decided to write off so those poor Vodafone execs could sleep a wee bit easier in their beds of a cold, winter’s eve. After all, struggling along on their multi-million pound salaries and bonuses, share options and gold-plated pension-plans must be hard enough without having the stress of worrying about such trifles as legal obligations, the law and income tax.
Still, let’s be fair here; it’s not as though these worthies are grubby, sink-estate chavs cleaning a few windows on the side so the poor tax payer is ripped off for an extra thirty or forty quid a week now is it? And at least these fellas are, mostly, white. It’s not as if they’re shifty Pakistanis or predatory Poles flocking over here in their millions and emptying the nation’s purse of those oh-so generous benefits, is it?
Cameron reckoned benefit fraud costs the nation about £5.5 billion per year. Strange that his own government’s Department of Work and Pensions estimates it at a considerably lower £1 billion but no matter; let’s go with Dave’s 5.5 and compare it to tax evasion which, along with corporate fraud, swindles and con-jobs, costs us a significantly larger £80 billion per year.
Now call me paranoid but I’m seeing a bit of a pattern emerging here, a bit of theme, maybe. I accept it’s probably outrageous to suggest so but it’s looking awfully like there’s one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor. A carrot for those at the top and a big shitty stick for those at the bottom.
OK, so we’re in the worst economic climate the world has ever seen, we’re broke, we’re scared and pissed-off and while we all need to make sacrifices maybe what we really need is a bit of fun? Something to look forward to? Maybe we need the government to blow a cool sixty million of our money and buy Her Maj a new yacht or something? You know, just to cheer ourselves up a bit, what with us all being in this together…
Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?