Filed under: business, politics, Rants, stories | Tags: banking bonuses, bonus culture, daily mail, david cameron, ed milliband, fat cat salaries, hestor, Labour, labour party, Nick Clegg, RBS, stephen hestor, tory, UK banking crisis
First off, I have no particular sympathy for Stephen Hestor. But I think his public villification, especially by that horrible little squirt Ed Milliband, has been repugnant.
Ed Milliband claims he is not playing party politics and wants this country’s fat cat culture cleaned up, but that is nothing short of monumental and calous hypocracy. It is the Labour party that have created this abhorrent money grabbing culture and the sooner he respects that and takes a more reasoned “we’re all in this together” stance, the better.
He would do well to acknowledge this fact or at the very least blame market forces.
David Cameron meanwhile faces the whole sorry predicament like a guppy on a sideboard. Pathetic ineffctual Labour bashing and toothless anodine claptrap abound at every rejoinder. The man can’t cope as he tries to keep his Tory bum chums happy by not actually pissing all over them.
Clegg? Well Clegg just emotes.
As for Hestor; well, he is doing a very big job.
It wasn’t Hestor that broke RBS.
He’s being paid a respectable salary (a huge one if you’re a postie, a marketing consultant or a mechanic) but “in the scheme of things” it’s not out of the box. No, my ire is reserved for the next level down of what I’ve heard commonly referred to as “coke snorting, champagne swilling city boys” who, in their hundreds take million pound bonuses home for doing what exactly?
But you can forget your naive assertions of “stop the bonuses”. These people have contracts. Those contracts have performance bonuses written into them. Guys, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.
As for now, I think Hestor genuinely does deserve respect for turning his bonus down (as does the RBS chair). Both saw the personal villification (and probably abuse, verbal and physical) that would follow were they have to have accepted what was rightfullly theirs (moral or otherwise).
Now, could Ed Milliband try building the Labour Party on a foundation of positivity and political integrity instead of fuelling the hostile tripe that writers of the Daily Mail (and no doubt the Socialist Worker) so desperately crave?
