The post you are reporting:
Roger - it is NOT a £7.7m bonus.
£1.2m of it was his pay, £2m was bonuses and the remainder relates to share deals.
That compares to the Chief Exec of Barclays getting a package of £9m in the same year, his bonus alone being £6.5m. If anything the RBS boss was paid a bit under the market rate for the job. Barclays incidentally did not get a taxpayer bail-out and we have no right to tell them what to pay their execs but RBS have to operate in that market.
Mark.
The growth did come from small businesses to a very large extent and that is always the case. All businesses start small. It is wrong and inappropriate to label small employers as running sweetshops, that is not true. It is also true that her policies of establishing enterprise zones helped attract foreign investors as well, like Toyota and Honda building the kind of high tech car manufacturing plant that the British car industry should have invested in, but was prevented doing so by Union restictive practices. The result of that lack of investment is clear for all to see.
There are a few, very few rogues and criminals who do run sweetshops and there always have been and they are usually below the radar with immigrant labour. I certainly would not defend them and should be prosecuted when found.
It is true that most employment is in smaller companies. They make a massive contribution to our economy and we need them and more of them.
Again you are totally misjudging Mrs T, speaking perhaps from the left wing characterisation that bears no relationship to reality. The government does not influence what businesses succeed or shift abroad directly, the market does. If we want to keep and encourage more businesses to open here and stay here then the most a government can do is to create the competitive climate that aids that. This means lower taxation, less red tape and beaurocracy, less government interference, making it easier to both hire and fire. Mrs T went in that direct hence the growth in manufacturing but then Brown and Labour went and did the opposite with the resulting economic problems we have today.
I agree with you and I know Osborne and Cameron agree that we need a broader economic base. I have said how that can be achieved but ultimately that will depend on entrepeurial men and women going out there taking risks, setting up companies and succeeding.
