Inconsistencies & Questions

As of 1st April 2009 the total annual remuneration of the Prime Minister was £197,689. The boss of RBS gets an annual salary of £1.2 million just for turning up to work and millions more if he does anything useful. Way down the pecking order from the boss, annual financial sector bonuses exceed the Prime Ministers salary. Whatever ones view of Gordon Brown there is surely something wrong here. Why does Gordon (or anyone else) want the job? Could it be that power is more important than money? I wonder if we capped ALL financial sector remuneration at £200000 p.a. how many would actually quit?

Barons & peasants yet again

Two stories in today's [8th August] Financial Times. On the front page, Stephen Hester of RBS bewailing the continued criticism of the bank(s) saying that the numbers of top performing staff leaving had doubled in the first six months of 2009 after the bank agreed with the government to place restrictions on future bonus payments. The fact that all Mr Hester has to do is to get the banks share price to 70p in three years to earn himself £9.6million, does, I'm sure, not influence his view of the role of the bank for the public good. I had no sooner finished mopping up my tears of sympathy when lo, on the back page of the FT Money supplement, we find that the banks are refusing financial support to SMEs forcing some sound and valuable businesses to go bust in the process. The global financial industry had to be kept afloat (sadly) but we should have allowed Northern Rock & RBS to go bust just to make the point to the others & deny Goodwin & Applegarth their grotesque rewards for failure. It has to be probable that depositors funds could have been protected for the same kind of money that has in any case been pumped into these two banks.

Sick joke=British justice

John Kiely was today jailed for 5yrs. It should have been 20yrs & he should have been stripped of everything he owned. This man terrorised hundreds of poor people who had borrowed trivial sums from him on which he charged outrageous interest. It was reported that he had made profits of £2.9m from 2003 until his arrest. Only last year he was given a Licence to trade in financial matters. So much for regulation & justice. Meanwhile 1400 female shoplifters, of whom 80% will re-offend within two years of release, are clogging up the prisons at a cost of some £35000 p.a. each. Is this really financially smart,let alone justice?

Barons & peasants again

Headline on the front page of todays Observer: ' Pay freeze threat to all public workers'. The small print doesn't say whether this will apply to those on the top of the pyramid as well as the worker ants at the bottom but I'll take a decent wager that excuses will be found along the lines of 'need to attract the best talent' so that the 'haves' are exempted from pain. How long will the mass of the people continue to put up with this? Sadly, since they seem to think that voting Conservative [ or failing that BNP or UKIP] will do something for them, I fear it will be quite a long time.

Barons & peasants

David Schwartz writing in the Financial Times of 4th July describes the £9.6m pay package for the new RBS chief as 'draw dropping'. Apparently this is justified by the challenge of the job. David Schwartz says " Funny that, I thought he was paid £1.2million a year [the basic salary] precisely to handle a challenging job. The RBS Board appears to believe £ 1.2m merely encourages [him] to turn up for work each day. Getting him to act costs extra" It is truly extraordinary that this supine Government, who now own this catastrophe of a bank with our money, are allowing this to happen. It has to be an organ like the FT to protest about it. Hooray for them - one might have thought they'd be on the bankers side.

Bye Bye BNP

Across the whole EU those MEP's who are of similar persuasion to the BNP increased by 8. The Front National (France) lost 4 MEPs & is virtually bankrupt. Vlaams Belang (Belgium) went down from 3 to 2. Nick Griffin is described by one potential collaborator as “not very smart”. To qualify for Group funding under EU rules they need to form a collaborating group of 25 or more from a minimum of seven different Member States. Because they can't agree on much except general hatred it looks like the best the far right group will do is 14 MEPs. [the PW of Geert Wilders (Holland) has decided it will not join any group]. In truth the BNP has been given far too much attention. The way to stuff them back in their box is to attack their policies as necessary, not give them massive publicity by throwing eggs at them. Their influence in the European Parliament is effectively nil.

Invisible Europe

My EU blog of 18th May was sent to the local papers on 26th May and finally published on 6th June!! Our 'Party Manifesto' for the EU emerged about 4days before the election. Our first EU Election broadcast never mentioned Europe. Fat lot of good all that was. In the NW,apart from Chris Davies, our local and National EU election effort was invisible.'Don't mention the EU' was like the Fawlty Towers 'Don't mention the War' sketch. If we really are the pro-Europe party then our leaders have got to stop pussyfooting round it and meet UKIP, the BNP & Eurosceptic Tories head on on every possible occasion.If we think that relentlessly putting the case for Europe is a vote loser will the leadership please say so then I can resign from the Party & save myself a stack of money and a lot of hard work.