Should City Workers Voluntarily Return their Bonuses to the State?

[rabbitstew]

Would that be the Big Society in action? ie an acceptance that the City owes the State a lot of money at the moment which it is only refusing to return in the form of not paying out bonuses because it argues that the problems we now have are not the responsibility of any one individual.

And do City workers genuinely believe they only do a good job in order to get a huge bonus? That it is only the scent of money that makes them financially astute? It's not as if that theory has worked very well to date...

(yes, this is a flagrant attempt to carry on my Big Society thread...).

Maybe it was simply the fact I put this under politics? It's just that I wasn't sure where else to start it. There isn't a section on self enlightenment.

Can you just give it a break now and do something else?

You've bored the tits off everybody.

Just write whatever it is down on a sheet of paper and set fire to it, whatever's simplest for you.

The thought of this garbage clogging up Threads I am On for the next 3 days fills me with horror, so please just stop tonight.

Rabbit you haven't upset me in the slightest.

But this thread is a bit like dancing with a pissed bloke.

please stop telling me about people who work in the city. Saying 'they don't know how lucky they are' is again a sweeping bag of generalized nonsense.
You are still talking about the city when you mean banking.

I must away now. I hope you find what you are looking for

rabbitstew- Have you been smoking the ganja?

Or, try thinking of it another way. The free market says that the wealthiest bankers make the most money for their bosses, so deserve to earn the most. Fair enough.

The free market also says that hospital cleaners are ten-a-penny, because their job does not require great skill and therefore they get paid very little. But if a group of hospital cleaners do their jobs very badly, they could effectively be responsible for the deaths of many people. In other words, the free market hasn't done a good job of assessing the true worth of the job in question - by paying so little, it has attracted people with no motivation to do the best job they can and with no understanding of why their job is so important. They assess their value by the amount they are paid, because that is what the market does.

So, sometimes the free market is wrong. Can you really blame people for feeling a little bit angry when, from their perspective, some very wealthy bankers in the past have been paid colossal bonuses for illusory profits? And that when these profits turned out to be illusory, they refused to give the money back and refused to be sacked??? If a social worker made mistake after mistake over a long period of time and her mistakes resulted in lots of children suffering at the hands of their parents, what would you think? Should you be constructive, accept that she did not mean to make those mistakes and try to help her learn from them for the future, or should you get very cross with her, tell her she is useless and then sack her?

I personally think that both with bankers and social workers, we should try to be a bit more understanding. It's not as if the bankers realised their profits were illusory (I hope!). I'm just questioning, though, whether some of us have double standards in the way we treat each other.

havr reported your 03:50 post

Um. But all the people that screwed up in Banks were sacked. I know. I was there. I saw it. Along with lots of people also getting sacked because they happened to be in the wrong department at the wrong time. We let over 1,000 people go because of all of this, and only around 30 of them had actually 'screwed' up (CD-squared traders, structured products dealers, prop guys).

The ones staying are trying to fix all the shit left by the ones who screwed up.

If you've got a failing school, and you sack all the bad teachers and ask the remaining good ones to work twice as hard to fix the problems, do you then turn round and have a go at them and ask them to give half their salaries back?

No, I don't. But that is what appears to be happening.

In the current economic situation, we have, effectively, to put more value on the jobs that make money, because we need as many people making money as possible at the moment. The problem is, this makes the people whose jobs are not about making money feel undervalued and underpaid.

What can we do about peoples' feelings? That's all I'm trying to say. We shouldn't refuse to acknowledge their feelings, because that just makes them angry. The status quo may be quite logical, but it just doesn't feel fair to many people and they need to understand why unfair is fair.

ps sorry pagwatch. I was being lazy and making sweeping generalisations when talking about "the City," as you rightly pointed out. It's not that I don't understand that there are many different types of people in the City with different roles to play, many of which are not directly profit generating.

How about the feelings of the "City workers" (most of whom are not bankers and do not get large bonuses) who have spent the last three years being hung, drawn and quartered by the media every day and now face proposals to have 30+% of their salaries paid 5 years down the line, maybe, if they have not been fired or changed jobs?

Many "City workers" work ridiculous hours, nights, weekends, are always on call and have to make sacrifices (mostly in terms of family life) that many others would not imagine. Job security is much, much lower than what most other people with similar skills have: as somebody said above, it is not unusual for thousands of people to be fired because a few screwed up or simply because there is a change of direction. Most "City workers" I know have been made redundant more than once in their lives, usually for reasons unconnected with what they did. None of them is in the large bonus bracket. Is it really so unfair that their comp reflects the level of skill they have, the extra sacrifices they make and the very high likelihood of losing their jobs? I don't think so.

I do agree with you that the subject needs to be debated more responsibly, but I do not think threads such as this one (especially given the title) help.

London is (was?) a global financial centre and many "City workers" move to London from other countries to work. London or the UK are not so fantastically lovely that people who have family ties elsewhere will bend over backwards to stay here if the job they are doing is vilified every day by people who do not understand it (and could not do it), if the political climate is so uncertain that their employers are considering reducing investment and shifting work to more stable countries and where tax rules change all the time.

If London becomes a less attractive financial centre, it is not just the "bankers" who will suffer:

1. For a start, the tax take will be much, much reduced, so either the government finds money elsewhere (raising taxes on others) or public services are reduced;
2. All the other people who work in and around the City (secretaries, cooks, cleaners, lawyers, receptionists, post and print room staff) have less work/ get fired;
3. all those who provide services to "City workers" (bankers and those at 2 above), such as nannies, nursery workers, physiotherapists, domestic help, plumbers, gardeners, hairdressers, tailors, waiters, teachers, doctors, fitness instructors, etc have less work;
4. people at 2 and 3 may get fired and definitely pay less tax, further reducing the tax take and increasing the effect at 1;
5. As the people who no longer work in financial services move elsewhere, prices of good level housing stock in and around London fall;
6. as people in 2 and 3 above no longer need to live near their place of work, they move out too, and prices of mid-to-cheap housing stock fall, also there is less demand for rental property, so buy-to-let investors find they have to finance their mortgages themselves or default; etc etc etc. The "bankers" in the meantime have moved elsewhere and are still making money, but the UK is not benefiting from it; on the contrary, many "ordinary people" are worse off. I wish the politicians would stop and think about the long term consequences of what they see as free political capital to be made by "banker bashing".

And in case you are wondering, yes, it is true, jobs are disappearing already as banks/funds relocate whole departments to Singapore, HK, Switzerland, the US. So I know secretaries, economists, financial advisers and risk managers (none of whom got big bonuses, all of whom made large sacrifices for work) who have lost their jobs directly and exclusively as a result of the posturing around this subject.

Thank you, SuiGeneris, for acknowledging that what I am trying to get at is worth discussing. Thank you also for discussing it with me. And I also agree with you that I set entirely the wrong tone with this thread at the beginning in the mistaken belief that it would be a quick way to provoke a discussion.

Hopefully there can be some constructive discussion on this thread, now. If not, then I guess it is better to go away, as suggested, and maybe someone could start another thread another time under a less provocative title? I daren't start one myself, as I appear to have attracted the label of a City basher! Which is not what I intended to be or am.

Rabbitstew, I have also reported your highly offensive 3.50 post. If this thread is something that, as you say, you are using as a sort of self-examination exercise, I suggest that you stop posting for a while and have a good think about yourself in private without having to post that sort of nastiness. And this is the first time I have ever felt it necessary to report a post.

I don't work in the city but why does wanting to work in in make you a greedy twat. The fact of the matter is a lot of the best paid jobs in the whole country are in the city so why would you not aspire to get them.

Would a more constructive post be: is it wrong to be scared that the current level of cutbacks might be so great as to do permanent harm to the Welfare State?

I think the problem with this thread is I feel like I am the messenger being shot. What I expressed is not my genuine opinion, it is an expression of confusion and fear, but people keep going back to it as though it is my opinion and making me defensive. I have been thoroughly offended by what I see as personal attacks, which has made me feel the need to attack back, that is all. I agree I have occasionally been offensive. No-one else seems to realise that they are also being a bit offensive.

Oh dear
Rabbit
As the mother of a boy with severe autism I tend to the view that those who use autistic as an insult are incredibly stupid and yet think they are clever.

The irony of course is that one of his symptoms, the pen which frustrates me the most is his determination to continue with his chosen line of conversation with a total inability to grasp that he is boring the fuck out of people.

You are not the messenger being shot, what a strange delusion of grander. People are not disagreeing with you because you have bravely articulated a truth we are to scared to contemplate. People are disagreeingvwith you because you are bossy, opinionated, suck up furiously to anyone who agrees with you and dismiss as not grasping your point anyone who disagrees.

Stop your faux apologies as well. If you want to apologize then get that shitty autistic swipe deleted

Sorry. I will get that swipe deleted - I'm not sure how. How do I ask mumsnet to delete my own comments? And I actually have a ds who is thought to be slightly autistic. Maybe I am therefore slightly autistic myself.

(ps part of the reason for all this obsessional self questioning is that I have another appointment coming up for my ds and I'm feeling rather stressed about it and feeling the need to understand myself and be understood).

Are the proposed cuts not bringing Government spending back in line with the amount we raise in tax though. The previous Government increased public spending but they didn't really increases taxes to pay for it, instead choosing to borrow. We can borrow no more so we must now either increases taxes or reduce spending

Rabbit
Just report your own post via the button next to it.

I remember going through diagnosis. It is a very difficult time. I hope you get sone good support and a good outcome.
Autistic is not an insult and should your ds have asd he will have a range of abilities and challenges which can be hard but are never dull.

I think looking for tendencies in ourselves is part of the process. We all do it a bit. And tbh maybe examining why you are trying to figure yourself out and whether it is helpful or perhaps just a distraction, may be a good idea?

There is a great deal of support and help in the sn section. Sn does not appear in active conversations - you have to click on it to find posts.
I hope you find it helpful.

Thank you, pagwatch. Thank you so much for realising that I am desperately trying to distract myself. And I have turned to the sn board many times over the last 6 years, but as I have no diagnosis, I don't feel the ability to post very often, just trawl for advice, so you probably haven't seen much of me on there. I realise now that, given how stressed I'm feeling, posting on politics was not such a great idea!

ps I have asked for the post to be deleted.

I would ask for the entire thread to be deleted.

There are many kind folk on here who have dealt with your nonsense on here with a great deal of patience.

I suggested last night that you pack it in.

A few hours later you start making stupid & unpleasant comments which need to be deleted.

If your current condition means you don't take hints I will plainly say: "Go back to reality, your behaviour is not acceptable."

If you have issues which need addressing I am sure (if you have lurked for so long) you
can easily find an appropriate place and manner of addressing them on MN.

Agree, I have been an inadvertent troll. I will ask to delete the whole thread.