Its the rich what gets the gravy

Before I begin the main text let me recommend http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/12/welfare-cuts-cameron?INTCMP=SRCH,

There are three interesting item of news that got me going.

(i)  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/13/tesco-boss-sells-shares-profits-warning

This explains how a senior director of Tesco's sold £200,000 of shares just before the announcement of the drop in profits!  One of the defences of this is this only represented 5% of his shareholding. That means his shares are about £4 million pounds. It would take someone on £20,000 a year  about 10 years to earn the amount that this director got by selling 5% of his shares.

(ii) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/14/ed-balls-labour-cuts-pay

Here we have the Labour shadow chancellor of the exchequer agreeing with the freeze on public sector pay. Most people may not be aware but most public sector workers are quite badly paid. Just compare with (i) to wonder quite whose side Mr Balls is on.  There are well paid public sector employees, Members of Parliament, judges, some senior civil servants and even some bosses in loacl government and the agencies like HMRC.

Balls is well in touch with the 1992 and even with the era of the Thirties but he seems to have forgotten the lessons of the Winter of Discontent  That was caused by an attempt of the then Labour Government to crack down on low-paid and public sector workers. It is possible to argue that this gave rise to Thatcherism.  Control pay BUT start at the top not the bottom. One very successful idea was flat rate rises, this really helped the lower paid.

(iii) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/jan/14/tonyblair-scotland?INTCMP=SRCH

Again from the Guardian:-

£315,000
The amount of tax paid by Tony Blair's companies on estimated earnings of £12m. What a guy. What a guy.

If he paid at the rate the ordinary guy would pay that should come to about £5million.

As I said the rich seemed to live a charmed life and when sacrifices have to be made it is the poor that neck!

Bullying Bosses

  Mr Gove wants to get rid of badly performing teaches quickly. But all he is doing is creating plans that will enable heads to get rid of teachers they don't like. He might himself believe that all badly performing classes are caused by bad teachers but he has, as usual, produced no evidence to support his claim.

  In many cases it is the head who is the cause of the problem, it is often when there is a new head who reorganises the school to fit with their prejudices that undermines teachers and their favourites get special treatment and suddenly quite successful teachers find themselves struggling.

  The general problem of bosses who surround themselves with yes-people and make life difficult for the others is one of the biggest causes of bad performance in any environment. Of course there are "very bad" teachers as there are "very good"  teachers but the numbers in both cases are small.  Also not many bad teachers survive for that long, it is a very depressing job if you are not good at it.

 A more complex problem is that some teachers are good for some children and bad for others. Recently I came across the situation of a teacher not performing particularly well but then changed the year group he was teaching and  found his feet.

   Enabling one individual to have that much power is always dangerous, it is always easy to see that with Mr Gove. Why the Liberals agreed to the latest education act which they rushed through parliament is a mystery to me and possibly even to them.

Fraud by the big boys

Did anyone notice the report from BDO about business fraud, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16471820?

I haven't heard politicians campaigning about this.Should we have an anonymous phone line to report businesses we think are cheating. To go along with benefit fraud, they would immediately banned form trading until an investigation took place.

Do you think that would stop companies cheating, I hope so!

 

Bankers & Politicians

  Mr Cameron wants shareholders to have more say in the pay of executives, but how effective would it be?


   One difficulty is that large numbers of shares are owned by large pension funds and insurance companies. The bosses of these companies want the same high rewards as the companies they invest in. So why should they try to restrict the earnings of the people whose income they will use as comparators. One way to avoid this would be to allow one shareholder one vote irrespective of how many shares that individual or organisation owns.  I realise that all sorts of tricks would be used to avoid this but basically it would even up the voting and would encourage small shareholders to get involved.

  It might also have the advantage of discouraging irresponsible floats on the stack market where owners float a company, take out a huge profit and then watch the performance decline. If they were to lose control over their pay they might think twice.

   An alternative might be to give all workers a say in the rewards that the senior staff get. Those who were doing a good job would clearly get rewarded but those who were rubbish would soon find themselves getting poor rewards for their efforts, Those at the top would not like this, they would come up with an argument that nobody would make tough decisions, of course they might have to make decisions which some people will not like. But bosses who cannot make most of their workers understand why these decision is the right one are probably not very good managers.The would never be unanimity but that is not the gaol, the purpose is to get most people behind the decision.

  There is a tendency to blame workers for companies failures but this is a very rare, just look at the recent history of company failures. Note that the most successful car plant in the world, at the moment, is Nissan's factory in Sunderland.  What this suggests is that British workers are as good as any, it is British management that that fails, why is a more difficult question!

 

Posh boys

   Why are people so upset by Dianne Abbot's comments. Her earlier one describing Dave & Nick as two posh white boys was one hundred oer cent accurate.

   I never knew that calling someone white was an insult, perhaps it would be good if it was. But I think that description, especially if you include the third, George, explains their arrogance and attitudes completely.

   What has always me is what "posh" people can get away with. I remember a policeman from the East End saying that some of the vandalism that kids in the East end get sent down for would be just considered high jinks when done by "posh" kids. Despite what anyone says we are a class-ridden society still lead by the ridiculous royal family.