Bonkers Bankers

So this week we are full of self-righteous (and envious, let’s not deny it) rage about Mr Stephen Hester who was to be awarded 20 years’ salary for a normal person as a wee extra for being a jolly good chap. That is on top of his 20 years’ salary for a normal person that he receives in one year. We are doubly annoyed about this because, as we keep being reminded, we tax payers own his employing bank, so should we not have a say in how our bank’s dwindling resources are deployed?

However, I don’t wish to be drawn into an argument about whether or not Mr Hester deserves his bonus because I know precisely squat about running a bank, and presumably he knows quite a bit about it, so this makes me completely unqualified to offer an opinion one way or the other. For me, this is more about endeavouring to imagine what on earth one could possibly do with all that money. And more than that, who on earth actually needs that kind of money. There are people living in the rich countries of the western world who cannot afford to put food on the table, and then there’s this guy, who could live very comfortably on a tenth of his salary, never mind his bonus.

This is where I get worried. Our politicians are mostly millionaires, born and raised in wealthy families, the original silver spoon brigade. I don’t begrudge them that at all. I was raised in a normal family where the overdraft was well-used, but I wouldn’t have traded my childhood for a silver spoon version because I have witnessed many times the fact that money does not buy happiness. However, it concerns me that our politicians cannot possibly empathise with the very people they have been voted in to government to look out for. They have no idea what it is like to have to make a choice between putting food on the table or money in the electricity meter. Heck, I can’t really imagine what that’s like, so how could they?

I wonder if Messieurs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne sip Darjeeling together in the withdrawing room at 10 Downing Street and wonder what all the fuss is about.

“I mean, it’s under a million pounds! What on earth is wrong with everyone? It’s not as if we’re paying him £100 million! That really would be too much.”

“I know. I mean, the poor man has to have some capital to service his yacht, and that Lear jet can’t be cheap to run, but how else is he to meet all his commitments? We can’t have him using Easyjet like the Great Unwashed.”

These are the same people who are withdrawing / reducing / scrapping benefits for low income families, voluntary sector organisations and public services. This is where the money is really needed. This is where that million pounds could make a real difference to peoples’ lives. That’s why people are so annoyed about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I recognise that we live in a capitalist world and I am perfectly ok with that. I realise that to redistribute wealth forcibly is to suppress ambition and potentially to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator, which wouldn’t be good for anyone. We have to be allowed to make choices. But trying to squeeze money out of people who don’t have any (people on benefits getting less benefits, people on low and middle incomes paying more tax, etc) is no way to address the situation we find ourselves in. People who take a job which involves a bonus are perfectly entitled to take that bonus, of course they are. It’s not about entitlement. It’s about doing what’s right for society. Most people have to budget because that’s the only way to make their disposable income stretch to cover everything it needs to cover. Why shouldn’t everyone have to budget?