Sat in the pub this week, chewing this over with my other half and a colleague, feeling so very disgruntled and realising that this was all we were able to do. Or is it? I am sure we are not the only ones to feel so frustrated about what is happening. We have children who cannot get on the housing ladder, mostly due to the banks not lending but also without pay rises over the last year or two, they are gradually eating into any savings they may have built. They are being penalised through no fault of their own.
So when you hear the profits that have been made by Barclays, in particular, you really cannot fathom how this is being allowed.
Even with reading as much as you can about how this is allowable, it still does not compute to the way we have to work in our companies. On 3rd August, Radio 4 Today's programme John Varley of Barclays defends the profits / bonuses, it is definitely worth listening to ('Barclays defends £2.98bn profits'). It is heavily stressed that Barclays has not received taxpayers money - they did not need to. Why? Because they were able to sort themselves out by going to Qatar and Abu Dhabi (Times Online - Oct 2008).
And why did they do this and not fall in with the other banks for government help? Well, this link helps to explain: 'Barclays preens while others face reality'. As our 3rd largest bank, how can the government allowed this to have happened? 32 per cent of this bank is now owned by another nation! It just seems so wrong!
A paragraph in a Chinese paper, explains a little more about the way Barclays worked to avoid being tied to the government: 'Breaking with convention'
There just feels to be something dirty about the whole process, a form of underhandedness that if we tried within our own companies, we would be penalised.
Am I wrong? Let me know.
No comments:
Post a Comment