That Sir Fred Goodwin’s £693,000 pension – which would cost £30,000,000 to buy – has become a symbol of all that was wrong banking system is no real surprise. It is a ridiculously large award for failure.
But ministers demands that he should give some up only present the government as impotent, as Goodwin makes clear he’s hanging on the loot. Unfortunately, if the law is on Goodwin’s side, he really doesn’t have anything to lose by riding out the storm.
Rather than invite Goodwin to cock a snook at the rest of us, government should instead be developing long-term solutions to the problem of reckless incentive schemes in key private sector businesses.
This crisis has shown that large important private sector organisations are capable of developing incredibly irresponsible incentive schemes that only benefit a few select individuals. The shareholders, who actually owned the banks, were somehow persuaded to sign off schemes that were not in their own, let alone the wider, interest.
The banks developed incentive schemes that offered incredible rewards to those who took incredible risks, whether those risks paid off or not. The shareholders were too many and too diverse to provide effective oversight, which means a new and possibly complex form of regulation will be required in the future; that’s what ministers should be concentrating on.
Peter Hitchens claims not to understand how BNP supporters have come to discover his blog for the Mail on Sunday should be taken with hefty pinch of salt.
As this biography of Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers — which includes the Mail on Sunday — reveals, the Mail titles have always been the fascists’ media of choice.
Peter Hitchens is careful to protest that the BNP don’t really read his blog. If they did, he explains, they’d realise that they were on common ground on all sorts of issues.
Before they attack Peter Hitchens, the man himself protests, the BNP should take some time to understand his views on Europe, the Labour Party, the Civil Contingencies Act, the Black Police Association and the growth of Islam. And having developed an understanding of the views of Peter Hitchens, the BNP will surely feel less inclined to attack him.
The problem with Oasis is that there is that they lack the ability move their music forward. Any Oasis track could sit equally well on any Oasis album.
So the news that, being up for best band and six other gongs, they might sweep the NME Awards leaves me perturbed.
But those, like Chris Goodall, who challenge the anti-nuclear lobby in its heartland deserve praise and encouragement.
Sadly, no form of electricity generation is kind to the environment. Wind farms face significant protests while the Severn Barrage would harness the tide, but disrupt wildlife.
Meanwhile, no democratic government will be able to convince the people to make the radical lifestyle changes required to reduce their energy consumption; fuel protestors are already geared up for action. So we need to replace polluting power stations and probably build more on top.
As many Manchester pubs struggle for survival, Withington MP John Leech has denied that his signing an Early Day Motion in support of the Axe the Beer Tax Campaign (also supported by the local Labour Party and parliamentary candidate Lucy Powell) places him at odds with previous campaigns against licensed premises.
John has been a vocal opponent of new licensed premises, even where those premises have kick started significant pockets of regeneration in his constituency. In previous correspondence, the MP has argued that new pubs should be restricted to non-residential areas such as Manchester city centre.
Now with pub closures across the country hitting six a day, John has signed up to a campaign focused on locals… the kind of pubs found in residential areas, right at the heart of the community.
Responding to an accusation that he is simply jumping on a populist bandwagon, Leech appears to draw a distinction between pubs and bars. The former, which apparently benefit the community, are undermined by the latter, which do not.
John Leech is a fan of The Beech, a traditional pub that has seen better days on the same strip has the Lead Station, which is often credited with kick starting Chorlton’s bar revolution.
Any suggestion that the Lead Station has damaged the Beech is nonsense, because the Lead Station caters for communities to whom the traditional pub has limited appeal. It has a good daytime trade from parents, mainly mothers, with young children who enjoy dining together. Chorlton is home to a number of communities – it is multicultural – and in a competitive environment, the pubs that have found success are those that have carved out a niche for themselves.
It seems that in John Leech’s world the only pubs worth saving are those that appeal to a very particular sub-culture; traditional drinkers in traditional pubs.
It’s just as well given what happened, but I can’t help noting that she neglected to take off her bra.
Anyway. When I was at school, just down the road from this girl’s hometown of Barry, we set up a t-shirt printing business as a school project and a UV lamp was used somewhere in that process. One lad took it home and was delighted at the way it lit up his bedroom. Both he and his girlfriend were burnt and everyone knew how far they’d got. Which was quite far.
The kids faces are so obviously manipulated by CGI. There’s no real talent involved and the music, while irritating, doesn’t actually stay in your head driving you mad all day as it should.
Elton’s back as I continue to test new ways of adding exciting multimedia content to Stephen Newton’s Dairy of sorts…
Once again it’s 22 December 2008 and we find ourselves at the Manchester Evening News Arena for Elton’s Las Vegas show, the Red Piano. The video behind Elton, which features Justin Timberlake hamming it up as the man himself, was a real highlight of the show.
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