Morts Musings

So, while the economy’s going down the pan, & thousands are loosing their jobs, it would seem that being a banker is still rather lucrative.

Yesterdays Govt announcement that RBS executives are still to get their contractual bonuses is, to my mind, completely unbelievable!

I understand the principle that the bonuses are guaranteed by the bankers’ contracts of employment, & that not paying would certainly lead to court action which the bankers would quite likely win.

What bugs me though is that these guys are essentially being paid out of tax payer’s money; we bailed their bloody bank out! Without state help there’s a good chance that these guys wouldn’t have jobs anymore, let alone bonuses!

Surely common sense and decency would suggest that maybe, just maybe, in a spirit of contrition, for being at least partly to blame for the current economic troubles, the bankers might forego their bonuses this year.

After all it hardly seems like they’ve earned them!

If nothing else, this is something that the govt should have thought about when they were offering the bailout; not paying out bonuses should have been a condition of getting tax payer support in the first place, even if it meant altering the bankers’ contracts, & even if that meant making the whole bloody lot of them re-apply for their jobs. Jobs they should be thankful to have at all, given their performance, & the general state of the jobs market!

What I would like to see is the govt adopting a “hard-ball” position along the lines of “Sure, you can pay those bonuses, but if you do we want our money back, now”.

I know, I know, that’s just a fantasy- we can’t let the banks go under for the good of the economy, but it seems to me that the govt could have got a better deal out of the banks when the bailout was being agreed, if they’d tried at all.

I’m relatively lucky, I still have a job, but I didn’t get a pay rise this year, which, taking inflation into account, amounts to a pay cut, & yet the people that caused this mess are still getting their bonuses, &, to really rub salt into the wound, are being paid out of my tax pounds!

That might be legal, but it’s certainly not right, & I have to think that a legal system which would support the bankers, if they didn’t get their bonuses, is far removed from anything resembling justice or common sense!