Up with which WE will not put!

Following on from yesterday's dose of humorous prepositional pedantry, here is an example of one thing 'up with which we will not put'.

Bankers bonuses!  Specifically the bonuses for the Royal Bank of Scotland!

The corpulent Mr Hester - not many lunches missed

Here is an image of a man who clearly hasn't missed many lunches while fighting to make his company profitable on behalf of its shareholders, the UK taxpayers.  These UK taxpayers are the same people who bailed out his beleaguered bank; the same people who have just seen the profitable part of Northern Rock sold off to Richard Branson at a discount price while we continue to carry the can for the rest of it.

It seems reasonable that we should start get quite upset about this now.

Can you imagine any other kind of company where the employees are rewarded for making a loss?  No profit always means no bonus, right?

Are the rest of the public sector workers going to be rewarded for their efforts in a similar way?  Of course not.  Their meagre bonuses are strongly related to the achievement of targets.  What is the difference?  Why does this man get a special deal?  Why doesn't someone tip over the trough that he has his snout embedded in?

If you live in UK I hope you signed the petition that was run by Avaaz, called  Osborne: Stop the RBS Fat Cats.  It is too late to sign that one now, but Avaaz is an organisation that is really beginning to be noticed by the barely elected government.  That particular petition reached over 100,000 signatures.  In spite of that, the Prime Minister has caved in and granted the discretionary £1m bonus to his crony. 

Now we can only try to shame Hester into not taking it.  Another highly noticeable campaigning organisation, 38 degrees, has now started a petition which has already gathered a lot of support.  At the time of writing it had already reached 55,000 votes in one day. 

I'm sure Hester feels that he has done something to deserve such a large sum on top of his already inflated salary.  I doubt that the word 'shame' is in his vocabulary.  However, please do join the rest of us in expressing our disgust at the things that happen in our name by signing the 38 degrees petition.

Fair's fair.  It would be alright to reward success (to a reasonable extent), or even to hold back this bonus until a success was achieved and pay it then.  But to pay a bonus for failure is simply outrageous!