Of Course Our Politicians Deserve a Pay Rise!

If this government is to be believed, the country is in an economic mess because we employees have too many rights, disabled people have too many benefits and there's planning laws to prevent building on the green belt and the unregulated building of monstrous light-blocking, home extensions.

Then there's the fact we have far too many libraries for our country's level of literacy.

Nothing to do with the politicians and (as yet) unprosecuted bankers then...? Or that rather expensive war we've just had? Or the big corporations who make a mint out of Britain whilst hardly paying a penny in tax?
Or the refusal to stamp out health and benefits tourism to bring us in line with pretty well every other western country?

I really do resent the way these times are turning me into a political animal against my will, though I continue to have no party politics as such ('least of the evils' doesn't quite cut it for me). I just know injustice and hogwash when I see it.

Furthermore I've yet to see a single Tory action make a blind bit of difference to the economic situation in real terms. Where are the affordable business rates for shops? Where are the bank loans for small businesses? Where is the nationwide audit to find out what skills and services our nation is actually short of/which areas most need employment so efforts can be directed in the right places? There are only so many novelty shops full of pink fluffy nonsense that can be sustained.

I have no answers - the politicians are paid to come up with those. I am just a question machine. But let's keep on asking the questions until our 'public servants' are forced to come up with some acceptable answers and be accountable to their electorate as they should be. Plus if they want that 40% pay hike that is being bandied about, they need to earn it. I suggest the introduction of 'payment by results'.

As for the Andrew Mitchell 'Plebgate' affair, some of us were actually more bothered that this politician gave £16m of taxpayer's money (ie OUR money) to a Rwandan dictator mate for reasons, and presumably a backhander, known only to himself.

Or else, let's have a general strike so they listen.

Who Do Bankers Think They Are?

'If I don't get a seven figure bonus this year, I'm emigrating' I threatened my boss.

He laughed.

So I rang Prime Minister David Cameron's Office and repeated my threat, emphasising how ruinous to the economic recovery my departure would be if this country were not prepared to renumerate the top rate to the top people.

Ok, so I didn't really phone David Cameron's office, but you get the picture.

How come bankers can hold this country to ransom, and not even over their obscene salaries, but their obscene BONUSES? And believe it or not, the actual industry term is 'compensation' (???????)

Why do the rest of we employees (most of whom do not even receive bonuses) lack this snake-like mesmerism over our government to persuade them that our workaday mediocrity is actually genius in disguise so that they live in terror of us hightailing our talents elsewhere?

If ALL banks were capped by the government at the £2,500 max per banker pledged by the LibDem government when they came to power, where are they all going to go in protest? There are only so many top banking jobs abroad paying even more, and other countries may actually follow suit if they see Britain taking a firm stand as many can no more afford it than we can in a worldwide recession. Plus countries such as Dubai are on the edge of bankruptcy in their own right, having been constructed on a house of cards known as debt. Greece has already toppled over the edge. Spain is teetering. Japan and China will soon get over the novelty of their newfound wealth and realise they don't have to pay these a-holes as much as they think.

I firmly suspect if we lost half, we wouldn't even notice, so they don't scare me with their threats to emigrate. And let's not forget they're the ones who got the banks into the mess they're in, forcing us to bail them out in the first place, so they should be incurring performance penalties and paying US compensation, not to mention actually acting in our interests!

Why would we need people at the top of the financial pyramid who regard our savings as casino chips? This was never the way banks used to behave before they watched 'Wall Street' and decided it was a documentary. They used to be solid institutions we all trusted and we were rewarded with stability and predictable steady growth in return. Old fashioned things known as 'Codes of Conduct' also kept them in check.

Hardly thrilling, but then losing your hard-earned pension or life savings is hardly thrilling to the victim, yet from the 1994 Lloyds name scandal to today, it seems not a fig has been learned. Or earned by these wondrous winged beings in charge of our piggy banks.

I remember when 9/11 happened in 2001, a financial expert on TV predicted the whole world would suffer at the loss of at least 1500 top people in the financial world. Not a word more did I ever hear on the subject, so perhaps the loss was entirely personal, to their friends and families, rather than the global economy.

Businesses Not Bonuses

Nick Leeson was jailed for six and a half years for what today's bankers receive obscene bonuses for - namely bringing our banks to their knees.

This morning on Radio 4's Today programme, Barclays Bank Chief Executive, John Varley opined that most people wouldn't consider the expending of 15% of a business's total costs on bonuses unreasonable.

Well that's where you're mistaken and completely out of touch with public feeling Mr Varley. During a recession where the majority of British employees are suffering pay freezes, pay cuts and even worse, job losses, many of us feel that ALL bonuses are grossly insensitive and ought to be frozen indefinitely at the very least, particularly in the banking sector largely responsible for the economic black hole we now find ourselves in, and which taxpayers have been forced to bail out, so consequently we expect some gratitude and favours in return, in addition to seeing performance-related pay implemented.

As for the old chestnut that you 'can only recruit the top people by paying top banana', for all the good the 'top people' have done, a bank may as well let the janitor loose on the system to have a go. At least the janitor is more likely to consider the customer and the consequences of his actions and is less likely to be motivated by blind avarice.

Even the Royal Family during World War II recognised that it was politic to announce they were going to be consuming the same food rations as their subjects at the Palace which, whether a short-term gesture of support for their subjects or otherwise, contributed greatly to the public morale at a time when it was besieged from all directions. The Royals were never so popular indeed.

The banks do not even have the decency to make a gesture such as suspending bonuses or lending to small businesses and the demolition of our once proud nation goes on.

I urge everyone who feels as I do to vote with their feet and close any accounts with the big 4, taking their business to a smaller or more stable bank. I myself defected from the Royal Bank of Scotland to Smile internet bank (the online version of the Co-Op bank) nearly 10 years ago now. It was easier than getting a new credit card and banking regulations have long prevented your old bank making it harder for you than a tearful pleading phone call. Whilst my interest rate with Smile has sadly plummeted over the years to become as poor as the big 4, at least I have the comfort of knowing I am supporting an otherwise ethical and stable enterprise, and one which does not send me any junk mail or spam whatsoever.

Marmalade and Cheques

Marmalade and cheques. Just two of the things that made this country great. Both at risk. I also miss asterisks. Rude words seem so much less f***ing rude without them. The more in-yer-face society gets, the more it loses its power to shock, and let's face it, its power (though I must own to a sneaking temptation to succumb to this t-shirt when I saw it at Camden Lock the other week).

We have a society now which lets us 'vent' - ie rant and rave about its injustices using as many rude words as we wish to get it out of our system, whilst stealing back by stealth our historically hard-won civil rights to peaceful protest and other restitution under the guise of 'terrorism prevention' and then does what it always intended to do - either ignores us, turns into an inflexible Big Brother extorting money with menaces whether we owe it or not, particularly from those who might be law-abiding enough to pay whatever fine our overweight wheelie bin chip has grassed us up to the council for, or pacifies us with a load of empty politician speak (ie ignores us) - the first thing I would ban if I became PM by the way. Any colleague who had been tutored to appear honest by a presentation coach would be out on their asterisk.

And while it seems like a cop out, my second action as Prime Minister would be to save everything we currently have that is at risk such as post offices, analogue signals, pubs, free cash dispensers and the aforementioned cheques, without which it is not only OAPs who would be lost - some of we younger voters still write a fair number of them too. How else do you send money through the post for example when it is not appropriate to open an online account with that party or individual and you wouldn't want them having that much personal information about you anyway? What will charities do when they want a big f***-off cheque for someone who's just abseiled down the local hospital to raise it proudly for the presentation photograph? Not only was my first cheque book a meaningful rite of passage into the adult world, I went on to process cheques as one of my first jobs - and dispute it costs as much as banks are trying to l** it does - well I know I was paid peanuts for processing in excess of £3m a day anyway. Plus what about all the years banks sat on the money for 3 days creaming off the interest until it appeared in the payee's account? Delays continue to this day I believe, not to mention the massive charges imposed when they bounce or render an account accidentally overdrawn. Then there's the charges to stop them. Far from being some altruistic gesture the banks have bestowed upon the customer out of the goodness of their steel-vaulted hearts, I would have thought cheques have until now been a nice little earner for them and am astonished they want to do away with them. Credit cards are no more secure after all, though perhaps more lucrative for the banks with the interest rates charged and some with monthly 'reward' or yearly fees attached, not to mention their share of any transaction fees.

Well that's enough venting from me - I'm off to eat some more marmalade. Later on I might write a cheque for an evening newspaper. I'm anarchic like that.