Thursday 27 June 2013

It just isn't fair.


I cannot think of a suitable title for this post, other than the rather childish bleat above.

Sir Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has retired and is to receive a pension said to be "to the north of £5million."  On top of that he now becomes a member of the House of Lords and can receive £300 per day (yes, per day) attendance allowance.  And that's tax free.

Both pension and attendance allowance are, of course, public money, taxpayers' money, our money, part of the expenditure the government is so anxious to cut.

In the same week the government  has decided to save money by stopping  the payment of unemployment benefit (now fancifully called Job Seekers' Allowance, JSA) for the first week of unemployment.  The JSA is £56.80 per week (yes, per week, not per day) if you're under 25, and £71.70 per week if you're over 25.

Most of us have seethed with indignation whilst, for five years or more, the leaders of the bankers and private sector firms have rewarded themselves lavishly for, at best, modest performances and , too often, for failure,  whilst one in five of our families suffer acutely from the "austerity" caused by the financial crisis.  Why, we have asked, does the government let it happen?

It beggars belief that we live in a society in which  the government itself distributes our money in such an obscenely unequal fashion. 

1 comment:

  1. tell me the old,old story - one law for the rich and another for the poor.
    King was a disastrous governor anyway - a pompous procrastinator. Let's hope the Canadian does better.

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