By Ray Fleming
EVEN after all the excuses, justifications and dismissals had been made -- and there were plenty of them to be seen and heard in the media yesterday -- the latest figures on senior executive pay in Britain are a scandal.
Mick Davis, the boss of the mining company Xstrata earned 18'426'105 pounds last year; Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy was paid 12'038, 303 pounds. Yet it is not so much the amounts that shock but rather that the pay packages of blue-chip directors have swollen by 49 per cent in the past year. Let me repeat that:
THE PAY PACKAGES OF BLUE-CHIP DIRECTORS HAVE SWOLLEN BY 49 PER CENT IN THE PAST YEAR.
This at a time when growth has been at zero, prices are rising, cuts to essential public services are everywhere apparent, wages have been frozen, unemployment increases and life for ordinary hard-working and retired people gets more difficult by the week.
Have they no shame, these occupants of FTSE 100 boardrooms, who must know how inappropriate their greed seems to any objective observer of Britain today?
How can a government be expected to persuade the general public to accept austerity and hardship while its principal supporters improve their standards of living exponentially and obscenely? No wonder the Occupy movement is getting so much sympathy and understanding. The protestors are saying what needs to be said.