A report has been released from the High Pay Commission which was set up to look at executive pay and to consider if high executive pay is a good thing or a bad thing. The results seem pretty conclusive and the report states that.

“There’s a crisis at the top of British business and it is deeply corrosive to our economy. When pay for senior executives is set behind closed doors, does not reflect company success and is fuelling massive inequality it represents a deep malaise at the very top of our society…”

Executive pay levels have risen around 3,000% since the 1980s while average earnings have risen around 300% over the same period.

Nobody could claim this was fair but many respond by saying that you need to pay the best people to attract them to these top jobs. The alternative is that they would go elsewhere in the world to earn the high salaries available in other countries.

We can look to recent history to confirm that this argument is rubbish. Some, of these ‘Best People” were behind the banking crisis, earning huge salaries and bonuses as they burned the system down. The supposedly brightest and most knowledgeable. The ones on enormous salaries as payment for their ‘exceptional talents’ destroyed everything.

You will surely remember them because these were the same people who were unable to add up simple numbers. They were the people who thought it was possible to walk on water and conjure vast profits out of thin air so they could take home huge bonuses. The only thing they were right about was the fact they could take huge bonuses and get away with it. The mismanagement, lack of an understanding of basic arithmetic and stupidity was breathtaking and has damaged the lives of countless millions of people.

Another argument used to defend high rates of pay for executives is that they get paid for success in making their companies bigger, stronger and more profitable. The reality is often very different.

High salaries and bonuses often encourage the executives who benefit to make takeovers of other companies that appear to offer short term gains but often lead to long term problems. The cost of takeovers and expansion often leads to companies that are over extended financially, have few reserves and are thus unable to survive or prosper when circumstances move against them.

Examples that come to mind, based purely on reading what is in the public domain are:-

Northern Rock enjoyed a rapid expansion based on a risky business plan that required everything to remain as it was with little room for error. This expansion was seen as a wonderful thing by those deciding the salaries of the executives but left the bank open to collapse when the plan fell apart when the money supply became more difficult. Ultimately the UK government had to take over the bank to prevent its collapse. The chief Executive who masterminded its rapid expansion and ultimate demise walked away with an annual pension larger than many people would earn in their lifetime.

MFI was a successful retailer with stores around the country. It was successful until a management buyout, at a price that amazed many, all funded with borrowed money. It was a recipe for disaster if ever the company suffered from a downturn is sales caused by a recession. Sure enough it did and it closed its doors.

In both these examples it was not the employees being lazy or lacking commitment that led to the collapse. It was the way the company was managed and run by the people at the top.

There will be plenty of critics who will claim that this report and the frustration of the public over high executive pay is simply envy. i.e. If I can’t have high pay then why should you. There will be plenty of people who do think that but I suspect most people do not object to those who achieve great things being rewarded for their work. This applies as much to the office cleaner and the administrative staff as it does to the chief executive.

Many people in lower paid positions work just as hard and are eager to do whatever they can to make the company successful. Many lower paid staff are more loyal than those at the top. It is common for top executives to move on to a new company after a few years while the lower paid employees put their heart and soul into the company and gamble their future life on the success of the company.

Every member of a company contributes to its success. It can be said that the executive management chooses the direction of travel but it is the administrators, the salesmen and women and the guys and gals in the warehouse delivering the goods that makes the company work. Much like the Army where the generals make the plans and the poor bloody infantry put their lives on the line a company can only be successful when the workforce take those grand plans and somehow make them work.

Nobody is going to suggest that everyone should earn the same but it is a false argument to claim that the only way to get good people to run a company is by paying them 30 times as much as the average employee. Not everyone can run a company, just as not everyone can be a great footballer, but there is a wealth of talent available throughout the country and many would, given the opportunity, do a better job and be very content on a half or even a quarter of what many top earners get paid.

Executive pay is often spoken of as risk and reward. Executives take risks and get rewarded when they are successful. The sad fact is they are often rewarded for failure too and in the process they destroy the lives of those employees who were loyally working for the company for many years. If they want to earn high salaries based on a true risk and reward then they should lose everything when things go wrong just as their ex-employees do and they can benefit when things go well, just as their employees should.

Fairness in pay and conditions of executives and employees alike would help rebuild the divisions in society and encourage us all to feel as though we are in this together. At the moment it is very clear that is not the case.

There is something in nearly all human beings that makes us relish power over others. Very few of us have the power of life and death over others but many of us enjoy the feeling of power enjoyed by being the boss or a manager in a company. There is something in our psyche that relishes power.

How we choose to use that power can decide both how successful we are and how long we can enjoy the power and authority we have earned or been given. Gaddafi lasted over four decades but he made few friends along the way, apart from those who made enormous fortunes through corruption and abuse of power. How much is their wealth worth to them now though? I would not want to be in their shoes now with the man who protected them from the public, gone.

The lesson must be that no matter how much power you have you must keep the people under you on your side. They may not love you and they may at times resent you but you need to keep them on your side to a degree even when times are hard and life is difficult.

The collapse in the banking system in 2008 led to the banks being bailed out which has in turn led to nations struggling to find the money to fund all those things they were previously able to pay for. Ultimately the people are being asked to pay the price and as this has dawned on people they have begun to rebel at the way this has been done and the people who have benefitted from a biased system.

There are protests all over the world at the way rich bankers have been enjoying high salaries and huge bonuses while ordinary people have to cut back on the essentials of life and go without help and assistance from government because the bankers want all the money for themselves.

The people are beginning to wonder why they should suffer when we see so many wealthy people continuing to enjoy a life that most of us can only dream of. Most of us support the idea of rewards for being successful but judging success in simple monetary terms is no longer enough.

It is all too easy to look back to previous times through rose tinted glasses. Business and politics have always been tainted by dubious and corrupt practices, They always have benefitted some more than others but there was a trickle down effect that produced jobs and benefits for the whole of society. What seems to have changed since the 1980s and the widespread freeing up of markets and financial dealings is that money has become the most important thing in the world. Profit always was the ultimate motivation but now people and jobs have become a far less important consideration.

The banks care only about money. The financial markets care only about money. Even governments seem more focussed on money than people these days and the people are beginning to sense they have been forgotten.

Perhaps this is the ultimate fate of capitalism. Perhaps it becomes so incestuous that the original purpose of money as a tool to simplify trade has been forgotten. When money is the only motivation and dealing in money can be a very profitable enterprise it is all too easy to forget the people who are the only reason the system can work. When those ordinary folk at the bottom of the food chain have no work and no prospects the system begins to break down and the people beging to turn against the system.

The death of Gadaffi is proof that no matter how much power and control you have, the system depends on keeping the people behind you. The worlds financial system is so far removed from people that few can possibly understand how it works. All we know is that it isn’t working for us.

The banks have become such an integral part of the system that governments felt they had no alternative but to support them but the effects have been devestating for millions of people around the world. Whatever the worlds leaders decide to do next they need to remember the lessons of Gaddafi. They may not face being found in a sewer and shot through the head but they do face the wrath of the people if they forget who they are supposed to represent

It would be easy to blame events on a disaffected youth who have poor education and job prospects. They probably do feel deprived and disappointed with the prospects for their lives in the future but that is no excuse for looting and burning your way across town.

My father went into politics as a young man because he was shocked at the deprivation and poverty. He told me of kids going to school with no shoes to wear. He told me of children dying of scarlet fever, an illness we would not worry too much about today because we have decent healthcare available to all.

The kids that are starting riots on the street of London are not deprived in anything like the same way as people of a generation or two ago. They are not looting food to feed their starving kids they are looting TV’s, electronic goods and sportswear. They are not demonstrating about a lack of basic essentials like food or basic clothing, they are having a bit of fun and grabbing the goods they feel entitled too because the opportunity to overwhelm the police suddenly appeared. They somehow have the idea that it is OK to smash their way into a shop to get a smart new LCD TV, or the latest fashionable training shoes.

These are not starving and desperate kids. They may be disappointed with their lives but looting and burning will change nothing. It may even lead to smaller funding cuts to the police and greater cuts to welfare and local development group support to make up for it. It is good for no-one and bad for all.

The start of the riots following the death of a man who police were trying to arrest may have brought people onto the streets to air their grievances and even protest but that was done in an ordered and civilised way which enabled them to express their feelings in an acceptable manner. The current wave of violence and rioting has nothing to do with any legitimate protest. It is simple violence for violence sake.

These young people are taking an opportunity to get out there and, lets face it, have a bit of fun. Who wouldn’t enjoy smashing things up and setting fire to buildings. We all enjoy a bit of destruction but the difference is that most of us would not dream of actually doing it.

There has always been an acceptance that no matter how upset you are about things, violence is not the proper way to deal with it. When my father grew up and went to school with children who had no shoes, where families had to live on very little food and live in incredibly cramped accommodation with a family living in one small room, people did not go out rioting and looting to get shoes. They may have been suffering terrible depravation and they had a real grievence but they knew it was wrong to behave in that sort of way.

Our society has changed. The more we are given the more we expect and when we don’t have a big TV or the latest trainers our young people are feeling deprived and disaffected. The consumer culture which has been encouraged because it is so good for business has in it’s wake created a pent up demand from those who cannot afford the lifestyle advertising encourages us to aspire to.

We have a celebrity culture where everyone wants and expects the best of everything and the feelings of entitlement mean that a significant proportion of people feel that if they can’t get what they want legitimately then it is OK to just take it anyway they can.

There is no excuse for the behavior we have seen on the streets of London. This is not an Arab spring or a fight for democracy. This is plain vandalism and criminality. There are legitimate concerns that should be addressed. We do need to do more to help young people have a decent future but we also need to look at why people feel a big screen TV is so important they will loot a store to get one.

Our society has become so focused on possessions while it almost ignores our need for genuine personal contentment and satisfaction with being a decent person. We have seen the Bankers ripping off the nation so they can have their mansions and fast cars. We have seen MP’s taking advantage of a very loose system of expenses and ripping off the public. We have recently discovered how some newspapers have lost all sense of reason and ignored any moral argument in favour of making money and every time we hear of yet another rip off by those in powerful positions we also hear that it is the ordinary man in the street who has to pay the price for these other people’s greed.

If you are a young person in Tottenham, Croydon or Hackney, you have no opportunity to gamble millions of other peoples money to make a fast buck, like the bankers. You can’t rip off the expenses system because there you don’t have one. You can’t make millions by tapping into peoples phones and selling lots of newspapers on the gossip you discover because you are just an ordinary person on the street. You work, or want to work but your opportunities are restricted if there are any at all.  The only thing you do have is the power of numbers against a stretched police force.

There is no excuse for the rioting we have seen taking place in our streets. We do, however, have every right to expect that the outrageous excesses of those in power should cease and that fairness should rule in our society. A democratic society should be fair to all, not just the rich and powerful.

We must use the power of the law to prevent further acts of vandalism and punish those who were in many cases, I am imagine just started having a bit of fun until it all got out of hand when they got carried away with their newly discovered power. In a way they are no worse than the bankers, except they used violent means rather than pressing keys on a keyboard, but our society needs to look at itself and find out where we went so wrong and what we can do to improve it in the future.

We all depend on a basic belief in the rule of law. When significant numbers think otherwise we will all lose as society falls apart. There is something very rotten in our modern society. It is driven by greed and self interest and it is not good for society or democracy. We need to make fairness and justice our prime motivation rather than profit but those young people who start riots on the streets of London must realise this is not acceptable in any way and it will not help us reach the just and fair society we all want.

It was a shock to most people when Quatar was awarded the prize of hosting the world cup as it seemed an unlikely place for it to be held but in the modern world we know how much money talks.

There doesn’t even need to be anything dishonest because the sponsors of major sports events have such power over where they occur and what form they take.

Sport is supposed to be about excellence and the money does help achieve that but it brings with it a whole raft of other problems. The accountants begin to take over the sport, taking decisions based on money, not on what is best for the fans or the sport itself in the long term.

Sports events like the World Cup or the Olympics have always been ‘bought’ but in the past they were bought on the basis of what was best for the sport, who could provide the best facilities and who would do most to benefit the sport for the future generations.

It may be that Quatar can do all of these things and do them well but there are several features of running a major football competition in a hot desert country where drinking alcohol is not generally permitted that make it seem a very surprising choice.

Rumours of corruption within the Fifa organization have been around for years. These complaints are not new but there does seem to be a growing recognition that all is not well and some major changes need to take place to demonstrate that deciding where the world cup is held is done entirely for the right reasons.

Unfortunately money talks and it talks louder than the fans of a sport but ultimately any sport depends on its fans and if they were not there the money would not be there either. It is a co-dependancy and both sides should have a voice in what and how significant decisions are made.

“Suspended Fifa vice-president Jack Warner has made public an e-mail that claims Mohamed Bin Hammam “bought” the 2022 World Cup finals for Qatar.” BBC Sport – Qatar’s Bin Hammam accused of buying 2022 World Cup.

Japan is said to be the most prepared nation in the world for coping with the effects of earthquakes and they have survived very well it seems, with buildings relatively undamaged by an enormously powerful earthquake.

The word Tsunami is Japanese. They have been aware of the possibility and preparing for such an event for many years. The result of the tsunami on towns and villages on the North Eastern coast of Japan is staggering. To see the ground stripped bare where a town once stood is to see how powerless we humans are when compared to the forces of nature.

Thousands of lives have been lost and for many, perhaps most of the survivors life will never, ever, feel the same again. How can anyone ever hope to overcome such a devastating shock and come to terms with the fact that everything you ever knew and recognized has disappeared. Friends, family, local landmarks and poplar places you visited, all gone, leaving barely a trace of their previous existence.

The consequences of the tsunami on the nuclear power plants on the coast appear to have been extremely serious. The cooling plant which is essential to the safe maintenance of the reactor core has been damaged and made ineffective. The management of the power plants have resorted to using seawater in an attempt to keep the nuclear rods cooled to a safe level. As I write this they are still struggling to achieve this basic requirement.

Throughout all the chaos as every risky rumour has appeared the people in charge have talked it down and argued that everything was under control and public safety was not at risk.

Shortly after each of these comforting announcements we have heard that actually things are worse than had been admitted but everything is under control. It would seem to be the case that what they think ‘under control’ means and what we think, are two entirely different things.

Perhaps all businesses are like this and it is standard business spin but when you are talking about an industry that has the potential to cause enormous loss of life and cause serious illness in many thousands of people you have to ask if the use of business speak and spin is appropriate.

There is an incredible lack of transparency and, it would seem, honesty in the nuclear industry. Throughout it’s history it has been secretive and less than honest about problems it has faced. Things do not appear to have changed over time and we are still assured that nuclear power is a safe and very green technology.

There is no doubt that events in Japan are exceptional. Things like this do not happen every day but there is no way of knowing that some sort of natural disaster will not happen tomorrow in the UK, the USA or anywhere else. The problem with exceptional events is that they are exceptions to the rule and as such are difficult to plan for.

Perhaps the biggest lessons are not that there are risks to using nuclear energy but actually that we are using too much energy. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves if we really need this much energy. Is it that important that we have brightly lit stores selling us electrical goods that use even more energy?

Nature has demonstrated just how insignificant we are and what a fragile species we are. Technology doesn’t keep us safe and it could even make us weaker. In a society dependent on centralised water supplies, food supplies, energy supplies and needing access to mobile phones and the internet, we are not well prepared for coping with a disaster where all those resources have disappeared.

No doubt Japan will recover from this disaster and we wish them well in their recovery but lessons need to be learned about being prepared for unlikely but catastrophic events and whether control, support services and supply lines should be more localised so that one area being devastated does not mean that larger areas are severely affected by the consequences of that devastation but we must have more transparency and honesty from the nuclear power industry if we are to make sensible choices about energy supplies in the future.

It is a wonderful thing to see the people having a voice at last and having a say in how their country should be run, and who should be allowed to get the money produced off of the backs of those ordinary people who work hard every day to provide for their families.

It is hard to argue that this is not a good thing and the only people who would see this as a bad thing are the people who have benefited from such evil behavior. The people who have taken millions of pounds and stashed it away in their personal bank accounts.

So we should all work hard and support efforts to prevent these evil people who cheat the populations of their countries out of their hard earned money. No longer should the Banks and financial institutions of this world be allowed to get away with such behavior.

Time after time we have heard politicians critisise the city institutions that have done all but destroy our country along with many others but those same politicians have done little to change the structure of how these companies operate. Ordinary working people are now suffering because governments chose to side with the banks rather than the people who elected them to power.

Anybody who has worked in these financial organisations over the last ten years should ask themselves if they made the right choices and decisions. They should ask themselves if their bonuses were truly deserved or whether they took those bonuses under the false pretences of actually doing something constructive and beneficial to the company they worked for.

Either the bonuses were deserved, and the people who decide such things were acting in the best interests of their shareholders or they were not. The argument that you have to pay such high salaries and bonuses to retain staff only works if it is actually a good thing to keep those people and that assumes they are going to help make the company successful.

It didn’t work in the past so why should we assume it will work in the future?

It is hard to understand that so many huge corporations could be brought to their knees by careless and stupid behavior by so many apparently highly talented and highly paid people. If they are that stupid then it was criminal behavior to pay them so well. If they are not stupid then they were acting criminally by knowingly destroying the businesses that were paying them. Somebody should be going to jail but of course, nobody has.

Nobody has gone to jail because these small cliques of powerful people are able to ignore any laws that apply to ordinary working people. The take vast sums of money and stash it away in their private bank accounts while ordinary people suffer and have to pay for their greed.

We need a peoples revolution to take back control and prevent these little dictators controlling our lives and denying ordinary woking families the opportunity to lead happy and healthy lives.

The Post Office reports that the rubber bands are biodegradeable and they are reused where possible. The cost is around £2,600 per day which must be petty cash in terms of the numbers of letters and packets dealt with each day by the PO.

Meanwhile the Keep Britain Tidy campaign says that they do not consider dropping rubber bands as the worst litter in the world but it is still litter.

It amazes me that while you can get fined £65.00 for dropping a cigarette butt apparently rubber bands are free to drop and are not considered a significant problem.

How can this be justified? A cigarette butt dropper is some sort of master criminal who must be stopped at all costs while you can run along the high street dropping rubber bands and be considered a minor nuisance.

It is no wonder people are so anti establishment these days. We have no respect for those in power because they are such hypocrites. If a rubber band is not important litter then nor is a cigarette end and if ciggarettes are terrible litter then so are rubber bands. Double standards just demonstrate the foolishness of those in power.

Of course rubber bands are litter and so are cigarette ends but to fine anyone who drops either of them £65 is ridiculous. We should all be more concerned about our local environment and educating everyone to show respect for our house, streets and parks is the only way for a civilised society to proceed.

So, David Cameron is to be appluaded for owning up to the fact that the government plan to sell off large parts of the British woodland was not such a good idea.

The plan has now been abandoned and the Minister responsible, Caroline Spelman, has appologised to Parliament and the country. It cannot have been an easy thing to do but admiting to mistakes is a sign of good character and something to be admired.

The idea of selling off large areas of woodland found was very unpopular in all areas of society from rich and poor and from the politcal Left and Right.

It was hard to understand what the point of it was when the minister was arguing that there would not even be any financial benefit to the treasury. It was very difficult to see what the point of it all would be.

The U-turn will no doubt be seized on by the opposition but we should congratute the commitment to common sense that this change seems to demonstrate. If a government are so certain of their infalability that they pursure their policies without regard to public opinion then democracy loses.

We saw the result when Tony Blair pursued his plans for going to war in Iraq disregarding a million people on the streets of Britain opposing the move and millions more at home disagreeing but not taking action. The issue is still a big factor for many of us who felt it was a bad decision and the Tony Blair and his Labour government have been tarnished ever since.

It would be a great thing if Minsiters and government were more ready to admit to making mistakes and change direction when they are clearly on the wrong side of the argument but they should also make efforts to argue a case if they feel it really is the right thing to do.

If they can make the case for something and convince the public it is the right thing to do then good luck to them but conversely when they cannot they should accept that perhaps they were wrong and drop their plans.

U-turns lead to more democratic and better government. A few red faces may be the sign of democracy in action.

BBC News – Forest sale axed: Caroline Spelman says ‘I’m sorry’.

Perhaps the only solution is to revoke the laws that make it illegal to do your business in the street but I don’t think anybody wants that to happen. The only real result I can see from closing all these toilets is that more people will shop online and the shops in Manchester will have fewer paying customers.

The lack of public toilet facilities will hit the smaller shops most as larger stores and retail shopping centres often have their own facilites for shoppers to use.

It does seem to be that we are moving back into the stone age when it comes to council services. Quite who is to blame for that is open to discussion but the overall feeling is that basic council services are worse these days than they were 30 or 40 years ago. I wonder if the problem is that there are too many additional requirements on councils these days over and above the basic requirements they used to provide or, maybe, we just expect too much of them.

Money is tight for many and even those who still have plenty of disposable money are more cautious about spending it. People are reducing their dependency on credit cards and using them less but the biggest change has been the growth of internet shopping.

If we take the case of HMV closing 60 stores as an example. They sell music CDs, computer games and other things that are all available online at often lower prices. Given that I can travel through the snow to an HMV store and pay a high price of I can sit at home and spend less money and within 5 minutes order my CD for home delivery or even dowloading the music as MP3s to play on my MP3 player which would I choose?

The high street and shopping malls face a crisis. Online shopping is going to grow and grow and while we all enjoy browsing in the stores we all want to buy at the best price. It may be that shopping malls become more like art galleries or museums where you go to just look at things before going home and purchasing online from Amazon and other online retailers.  Perhaps in the future we will be charged an entry fee to enter a shopping mall for our viewing entertainment.

Shopping is moving online and that seems to be an unstopable movement. It’s going to be tough times ahead for high street shopping.

BBC News – HMV to close 60 stores as sales and shares slump.