Monday, August 03, 2009

Leave Barclays Alone

People just don’t get it do they?

One of the major problems with the banking crisis has not been the fact that people have earned large bonuses. It is that many people were paid large bonuses when they had not done anything to generate the funds needed to do so and had even done things to evaporate the funds to run those very banks.

In other works – people were rewarded for failing, and failing dismally.

What has happened today with Barclays is success. They didn’t (as far as I know) take government money and they have managed to make a profit. Good on them. There is therefore no problem whatsoever with their employees taking bonuses.

This country needs to become acquainted with the language and mechanics of success. You get (or should get) rewarded when you do well – not when some backra master feels like tossing you a few crumbs.

Too many people in the British workplace who add spades of value and work damn hard make next to nothing and cannot earn more in proportion to their contribution to the bottom line. At the same time thousands of ignorant, stupid, vile and downright lazy SOBs earn hundreds of thousands of pounds for doing sod all – in fact they earn their lavish lifestyles on the back of the work done by the people at the coalface. Many companies who made more profit than they had forecast but made a lot less than they did last year – used this fact to not pay profit sharing bonuses to the rank and file while senior executives continue to get hidden, expensive perks – like brand new X5s etc.

So I am happy for the Barclays staff – I wish other companies would do likewise. In order for us all to do better and earn more we need to ensure that people are rightfully rewarded for their efforts. Monetary incentives should be down to merit, not down to some monstrous class creation whereby often crass and uncultured people are deemed worthy of bonuses just because they say so and the hardworking employee with ingenuity is not.

Largesse should go to the hardworking, those who use their heads and those who take educated risk. Not to people based on some cloudy and secretive criteria.

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