Saturday, February 16, 2008

Why not stop rewarding ministerial failure first?

How tremendously amusing, the Chancellor Alistair Darling has attacked city bonuses that reward failure saying, "[b]oards need to ask themselves, 'Are we behaving reasonably?'… If you're leaning over the fence talking to your next-door neighbour, can you justify what you've done?"

Isn't it deliciously rich to hear a politician complaining about rewarding failure in the city when, under the terms of the Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991, any minister that leaves office, for whatever reason, gets thrown a severance package of one quarter of their salaries on their last day in office?

Charles Clarke? David Blunkett? Stephen Byers? Peter Mandelson? Peter Hain? How many complete failures in office have there been in the last ten years who have received a fat wad of cash when they've had to resign in disgrace and left a complete mess in their wake?

Don't get me wrong, some of the rewarding failure in the city is bloody absurd. However politicians should get their own house in order before they start pontificating about how the private sector is acting unreasonably.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That an incompetent minister and Chancellor, (should read chancer) has the "brass" to comment on bonuses ,and then read in todays papers that another of his `ilk`Madame Hewitt is a prospective replacement for Mandelson sums up this dreadful venial administration. To rub salt in the wounds, with what can only be described as a nursery cabinet,the wonder will be can the damage these cretins have brought about be repaired

JH

Anonymous said...

In civvy street if you are sacked or resign(to clear your name hah) you get nowt,nothing,nada.Why should these pratts get my money for being crap?

Alex said...

There is little undeserved in the "bonuses" for failure. Nearly all of those are guaranteed payments made by contract to induce the person to take the job. Others are payments to settle obligations on breaking the contract (i.e. paying off less than the salary due for the remaining period of the contract). I doubt very much that any board votes for a payment to a failed executive out of the kindness of their hearts. That would be a breach of their duries as oard members for a start.

Shows how little the Chancellor knows about the real world.

Unsworth said...

Oldest trick in the book. The minute anyone criticises you, take their criticism, double it and launch it at someone else. "Diversionary Tactics for Beginners, Chapter 3".

Elby the Beserk said...

Aye, with you on this Dizzy - witness the cunt now on £1 million a year to run Northern Crock. Previous track record? Making a total Horlicks of stakeholder pensions, so that they never got off the ground. Shame for Gordon that, as he would have been able to nick the savings of even more people, had they.

Some years ago, Sheffield Wednesday paid Ron Atkinson the best part of a £1 mill to get them relegated. I wrote to them to tell them, next time they were in such a spot, I would get them relegated for the princely sum of £250K, thereby saving them a notional £750k.

They didn't reply.