bonus | Talking Bollocks

Posts Tagged ‘bonus

Apr

Banks recovery is a cheap trick

Categories: Bollocks, Economics, Labour, new labour, News and Politics
Tags: "credit crunch", bail out, banks, blame, bonus, financial crisis, interest rates, Jamie Dimon, Joe public, JP morgan, Labour, putting prices up, share the pain

Simple strategy: Make the public pay

I get a little irritated when Labour supporters blame the current financial crisis on the banks as they’re merely trying to sidestep their own incompetence. The generally accepted root cause of the credit crunch amongst Economists is interest rates held too low for too long and the blame for this lays with the chairman of the America Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan and, in the UK, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

This is not to say that others should not share the blame. We, as individuals, were to blame for knowingly borrowing far too much and, yes, the bankers were to blame for their incompetence in lending far too much and for tying themselves in knots with odd financial instruments such as credit derivatives.

However, I too am angry with the bankers because they are not sharing the pain. It might be argued that the rich, by definition, never suffer during financial crisis but what irks me is the bankers arrogant inclination to actually raise their income by large amounts while everyone else is having to cut back. Today’s Guardian reported that the head of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, received a 51% pay rise!

What planet do these morons think that they’re on?

Bankers argue that they have done a brilliant job in making profits for the banks since the credit crunch and in so doing dug the banks out of the mess they were in. This disingenuous as they have achieved all this merely by the putting their prices up. Competition has dropped out of the market, base rates are ludicrously low let yet loan rates and fees are high.

So who is really paying for the banks recovery and Mr. Dimon’s bonus? You are! Joe bloody public again. The same poor bastard who also paid for the banks bail out. You don’t need to pay a £3m bonus for a trick like that.

Whenever criticised bankers usually reply that you have to pay the market rate or you will lose people. Well, OK, let’s lose some of these people. Firstly, where can they go? Secondly, if they have so little solidarity with their fellow countrymen then bollocks to them and thirdly their past performance IS an indicator of future results so good riddance to them.

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Jul

Hampshire Councillors cut spending to give themselves a bonus

By jonesxxx 1 Comment

It's not an honorarium Ken - unless you work for free

I hear that Ken Thornber, Conservative Member for Brockenhurst and leader of Hampshire County Council, has been TALKING BOLLOCKS!

It seems that the council had a policy of not awarding bonuses and in addition had embarked on spending reductions through efficiency savings. Excellent work you might think except that in their own case the councillors decided that they should receive special one-off payments to recognise the councilors achievements.

One off payments to recognise achievements? Hmm.. What does that remind me of? Oh, yes. A bonus! But hang on, I thought that Hampshire council had a policy of not awarding bonuses, presumably in an effort to reduce costs. Part of the efficiency savings, so to speak.

Ah, but these were not bonuses claims Ken Thornber, these were “honorariums”.

Well, I don’t know about you dear reader but I hav never heard of honorariums before. In the past corrupt council officials such as Mr. Thornber may have got away with his fancy talk as nobody would have been bothered to look the word up. Thankfully, today we have the web and a quick reference to Wikiepdia reveals:

“An honorarium is an ex gratia payment made to a person for their services in a volunteer capacity or for services for which fees are not traditionally required. This is used by groups such as schools or sporting clubs to pay coaches for their costs. Another example includes the payment to a guest speaker at a conference to cover their travel, accommodation, or preparation time.”

That doesn’t sound right does it. The councillors are not volunteers, they’re paid employees.

Let’s check out Thefreedictionary.com

“(Business / Commerce) a fee paid for a nominally free service”

Well that isn’t right either. A councillor doesn’t provide a nominally free service.

One can only conclude that Ken Thornber is lying in order to disguise the fact that he has forced all his staff to give up bonuses in order to make savings so he and his friends can cream off some of the savings for himself. What a bastard!

Let’s see if we can find a picture of Mr. Thornber shall we. Here we go. Hmm. He has a nice tan doesn’t he? I bet he can afford a lot of nice holidays…..with someone else’s money.

Dec

New Labour Undead

By jonesxxx Leave a Comment

New Labour Undead

When Tony Blair left I was glad. At last the kingpin of the age of spin had gone. Though I considered Gordon Brown to be incompetent, I thought that at least he was sincere.

Then Peter Mandelson was rehired to help paper over Brown’s failures. Then Blair tried to become president of the EU. Now I hear that Alistair Campbell is back! It is like watching one of those hideous American zombie movies where the zombies get there heads cut off and are inert for a moment before one of their gnarled hands reaches out and grabs you by the ankle.

Does nobody remember the dodgy dossier? Did Doctor Kelly really kill himself? What about those stupid little pledge cards? Do we not care that our leaders are total bullshitters?

On the news today I heard that Brown now has a bee in his bonnet about over paid civil servants. I’d be more impressed if he started cutting down on overpaid special advisors. He wont do this of course as the top layer of the cabinet are all ex-advisors, speech writers and other hangers on. Toadying and spin is now the fast track to a safe seat and an eventual cabinet position.

I just heard the BBC say that some nit wit is saying that top bankers are like top footballers and you have to pay them large bonuses. Whoever they guy is he was Talking Bollocks! But hold on, if we change the analogy slightly it might work. Perhaps top bankers are like top footballer who you thought had scored a lot of goals and won a lot of games last season but then you woke up and found it was all a dream and the footballers have scored no goals and lost every game they ever played. Put it like that and the bankers are exactly the same as top footballers.