Who Is Paid Too Much?

In a week when one England football manager has quit in a huff — he was very expensive but not very good — and a potential new one has ended his decade long struggle with HMR&C, I have observed a number of other pleasing signs of progress in our society. Ridiculously high salaries and bonuses in all walks of life are being increasingly questioned. Inevitably the bankers are at the top of the list of those subjected to public opprobrium but the leaders of Network Rail and directors of FTSE100 companies have also been made to give up their bonuses for failure. We are a long way from getting the right results overall but we seem to be moving down the right road at last. I use still the basic premise that if we think that the British Prime Minister is worth only £142,500 plus his MP's salary of £65,738 plus a few perks — like free cars, Chequers for the weekends, etc — say £250,000 all told, why does anyone feel that it is right to pay £1m or £2m or £10m [Bob Diamond at Barclay's] for various leaders of private companies that may not even be successful? It is suggested that if we object too much banks will up and move to more favourable climes. It seems that banks in Germany and the USA are saying similar things. We can only view with amazement the prospect of juggernaut lorries and air freighting companies shifting all the paperwork and the staff from one country to another in order to avoid a few percentage points on their operating costs. In some cases they will be queuing up at the airports as they pass each other in the departure and arrivals lounges.

There are some of us who wonder, as well, why some chief executives of local authorities are earning — or at least, getting paid — as much or more than the Prime Minister? These people used to be called town clerks but with the elevation of their titles their wages have spiralled into the stratosphere. Now the taxpayers of Bristol are demanding that their chief executive takes a £50,000 per annum pay cut to bring her into line with the pay level at neighbouring Bath. The bureaucrat in question is, of course, resisting this proposal on the grounds that she is good value for money. The good citizens of Bristol are being asked to sign a petition demanding that the councillors cut the salary of the said bureaucrat. I think she is unlikely to get much support in the city and councillors will have to address this demand. It will not do to suggest that there is a contract agreement. Everyone in the country is suffering from reduced income and job security, apparently except many in the public sector and among the bankers who caused all the problems in the first place. The government and the people in this country have massive debts and although the Governor of the Bank of England seems quite happy to carry on printing money in order to inflate away the debts, some efforts must be made to slash the public debts which are demanding that we borrow £42 billion of extra money every year in order to pay the interest on the debts we have already. This is simple madness. It has to be corrected and bringing salaries and bonuses into line is an essential part of the mechanism of correction.

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