Corporate pay / What the BBC doesn't say

The issue of gross inequality was raised by the BBC today with a report being published on the massive differences between average and CEO pay scales. There are acres of these kind of numbers out there, with today's report reasonably moderate (but extremely timely) in its conclusions. Among its findings, that pay for "top executives at a number of FTSE companies had risen by more than 4,000% on average in the last 30 years" - this is compared to average workers' pay rising 300%, though this of course ignores the rise in cost of living. It calls for transparency in remuneration and states that this situation is 'corrosive' to the UK economy.

An interesting example of corporate thinking can be found on the BBC page for this story, where 'executive headhunter' Heather McGregor compares workers having a say in their bosses' salaries to children having a say in what their parents spend their money on, saying if workers don't like it they can 'move to Cuba'. Does this even need ridiculing?

Equally interesting today was the announcement that The Committee for Standards in Public Life has recommended for big-money donations to political parties to be combated by raising the level of public funding by 23 million. The BBC then quoted Nick Clegg as saying that in this age of austerity we can't be asking the public to fund any more politicians, and left it at that. The stupidity of this can't be overestimated - at a time when military funding is dredging public pockets, when we are handing massive tax breaks to companies such as Vodafone, when banks are being bailed out, trident being sponsored for billions, nuclear power stations planned that almost certainly run well over budget, we can't afford 50p per person per year to reduce the impact of money in politics. Ladies and Gentleman, the BBC and its Omissions Orchestra. ('Thankyou, we're here all week').