I’ve just had an interesting heated discussion with my parents and ended up calling them communists!
My dad was having a bitch about the RBS chairman, Sir Fred Goodwin, and his eye-popping pension. Naturally he thinks it’s a disgrace and that he should lose his pension because he’s failed at his job. God, it was like listening to someone reading the front page of the Sun.
I tried to explain that a pension isn’t performance-related pay, that his contract said that he was entitled to it and that the British government can’t just ignore the law and tear up a contract because someone is shit at their job. I said that once they’d got away with doing it once they’d do it again and again. I tried to explain that socialists are jealous people and that they would do it to more and more people and that it wouldn’t be the people at the top with all the money that lost out because they’re the ones who give the parties all their money.
“Yeah, it’ll be Joe Public that loses out, not them buggers in charge,” said my dad. Erm, isn’t that the point I’ve been trying to make for the last 10 minutes?
There’s was no talking sense to them, they were convinced that Goodwin’s pension was so outrageous it was worth giving the British government carte blanche to break the law whenever it suits them and I ended up telling them they were communists. Like so many people, the poll tax was the straw that broke the camel’s back and they voted Liebour to get rid of the Tories. They can’t wait to get rid of Liebour now after the balls up they’ve made these last few years. They’re just the sort of fickle swing voters that make or break a party’s fortunes at an election, people that will vote for a party that they don’t support and one to which they are ordinarily diametrically opposed on the strength of a single issue.
Disaffection with the whole system has caused such a general disinterest in politics that people see no problem voting for someone they don’t want to get rid of someone else they don’t want or because they agree with one thing a party says on a topical news item. People feel like they aren’t being listened to and that no matter what they say or do, nothing will change.
It’s a sad state of affairs but that’s English politics for you.
Technorati Tags: Communists, Parents, Disaffection
Did you explain to them how much politicians earn in pension? The ones who said that he wasn\’t entitled to what was agreed on his contract?
The Government who try manipulative tactics to try and get you to agree to lesser terms of pension and employment rights. The ones who earn such an obscene amount, what right do they have renegade on agreements
I hope this sets a precedent for claw-backs of the New Labour clique’s pay and pensions, crooks they are…
Wonko, are you a “useful idiot” for the super-rich? You are a working man, why are you defending their greed?
I’ve had the same argument with my father just the other way around,it was about CEOs and Stockmarket brokers in the US.
It turns out that even after the stimulus bill has passed and billions of dollars have already been spend on banks,the CEOs and other highranking employees are still giving each other huge bonuses for basically running their company into the ground.
Obama and the democrats promised people that there wouldn’t be any more of these payments but the truth is that the goverment can’t actually do anything about this since they would actually be breaking the law.
Im not saying that the goverment should just be able to break the law but something has to happen so that they can’t keep on rewarding their own stupidity.
A free market is a nice idea but the truth is that if the private sector fails,the goverment has to step in
or basically,we would all be screwed.
Im not a communist but the idea of the goverment handing out loanes to companies in need sounds much better to me than paying the banks money so they can keep it and probably even stuff their faces in the process.
Jerry.
Here in th UK banks have failed in the recent past without major knock on effects.
As with any other business in administration, the assets are sold off to raise money to pay the creditors. The savers money is guaranteed up to £50K via taxpayer bailout. The share and bondholders loose but that is the price for not reining in the poor management and controlling bonus culture.
There are plenty of financial institutions which are not in trouble, to take over the good investments from failed banks.
The issue of Fred’s pension only arose because of the bailout, if RBS was wound up last year he’d be on about 20K now.
I’m not sure that the government would break any laws, they’d just do what they always do and make up some new ones – they’ve done it well over 3500 times since they got in.
Unfortunately you are right about about the pension. He got it, fair and square – that’s capitalism for you. Quite why the government is picking on him when there are so many other well paid failures seems a bit odd to me.
“Disaffection with the whole system has caused such a general disinterest in politics that people see no problem voting for someone they don’t want to get rid of someone else they don’t want or because they agree with one thing a party says on a topical news item”
That or they don’t bother to vote at all : (
I suppose that’s the attraction of direct action and protests. At least it feels like you are doing something.
And for the record, I’m not jealous of anyone, especially Fred Goodwin. That’s one person I really wouldn’t want to be right now.
it could be a lot worse, he could be turning into a scotsman!!!!!
…maybe i’m wrong here but surely he has his pension because the government let him have it, they were to keen to get him out or too incompotent to read his contract, to to bother doing it properly and sacking him
his huge pension is one thing but it is symptomatic of this incompotent government that he actually got it and we are only starting to argue about it in march
i mean, ffs, surely if you buy something, you read the small print and think about it and if you are the government and have to legislate to change the rules to do it, you do it carte blanche and over compensatee for greasy weasle bankers ripping you off?
“Disaffection with the whole system has caused such a general disinterest in politics that people see no problem voting for someone they don’t want to get rid of someone else they don’t want or because they agree with one thing a party says on a topical news item. People feel like they aren’t being listened to and that no matter what they say or do, nothing will change.”
Hence…..
http://tinyurl.com/bde7hu
keith, yes, i agree, the BNP are vaguely racist in a skinhead sort of way and labour have Gordon Brown, which is a bigger millstone?
I think we are moving into a time where, it is a parties bad policies that are more important than its good ones soon it will be a case of
foreigners & Gordon Brown vs No Gordon Brown and no foreigners, it may seem like a steep price to pay but Gordo has to be removed
I’m lucky up here, he has almost no affect up here, so my choices about who i hate are a bit more open, a tactical vote for westminster has no long term effct on me or my countrymen, so that has to be viewed through an interesting prism