How much of the North Sea oil revenues that were coming in from 1979 to 1997 under the Tories, was put aside for a 'rainy day'? We didn't end up with much to show for them....by the time the Tories were voted out we were still running deficits every year and had crap public services.

It is pretty shameful that in 17 years in office the Tories only balanced the books for two years, the other fifteen they ran deficits every year despite the revenues coming in from the North Sea oil.

Also wasn't Britain 'transformed' back then or something, thanks to Thatcher getting the unions off businesses backs, and deregulating the financial services industry (and we didn't have minimum wage or immigration under the Tories) so surely during this boom time we could have been running large surpluses for the rainy day that would inevitably come when Labour would come in and ruin the country.

That's a simple fix too: just include "sub-contracted by" alongside "employed by".

It already works with those companies that have signed up to the London Living Wage

Well done on tossing away any tiny shred of credibility you had remaining after repeatedly having your backside handed to you on this and other threads.

On a basic £1.2m salary, you could get 5 good people on £200k and send £200k back to the exchequer. Are there really not 5 people who could do what Hester does, as a group?

So that is your only comment on the reports that the government caved in to threats of resignation or the possibility of resignation?

If there is no truth in it Peston who is hardly what you might call left wing and the BBC are going to get sued out of existence.



RBS just canned an IT project that cost £200m. They are starting again.

Their share price is also down to around 28p so he has not added any value to the company which is what we as taxpayers need to get our cash back not some imaginary £50m you have dreamt up for the sake of your argument.

The main problem we have at the moment with the banks is despite most of them being bailed out none of the ones banks including RBS are lending as the government would like them to. And he gets a bonus for that!

So why, given the above did the government not veto the bonus? They can do so and Hester knows that is the deal so there is no question of broken contracts here. It appears they didn't because of threats or perceived threats to resign.



So you do not think the bonus chasing culture had anything at al to do with the banking crisis? We have had banks go bust because of the bonus culture. Remember Nick Leason? There was very recently some French bloke who lost his bank a fortune. Huge bonuses encourage risk taking and also encourage people to make deals that are in their interest so they get the bonus and often go against the interests of the wider population due to thinks like currency speculation and other dubious ways to make money.

There is no problem with paying a CEO of any company a high wage. However there is no need to add to Hester's £1.2m salary to the tune of over £900K.

It is also true that banking CEO's get a far higher remuneration than say the boss of engineering firm and the main reason they do is this merry go round of bonuses given by remuneration committees who site fear of them leaving if they don't. It is complete and utter rubbish.

If there were the government would not be paying £1m to him in salary. Compared to other MD's of similar sized banks his pay is pretty small.

There is not a huge queue of potential candidates of suitable quality prepared to do that job for half the market rate - that is not the case.

Woah. At the risk of turning this into a Thatcher thread. Are you old enough to remember the 3 day weeks, the rubbish piling high in the streets, the powercuts, the "putting your name down" for a telephone?

This was the UK pre Thatcher.

The problem is the high flyers are the hedge fund managers and private equity directors i.e. the risk takers. Most British pension funds don't want to invest in either of these two areas as the consider it too risky. Given the relatively low level of risk your pension fund will use it is no surprise that the returns are pityfully. You don't have to be genius to buy government stock!!

They should be allowed to engage in their business like anyone else. They should not be given a guarantee by the governement (i.e. Taxpayers)

Oh here we go again with you spouting your DM propaganda rubbish. Thing is I'm disabled and my husband is a public sector worker so at least WE know what you've posted this week about the disabled and now the public sector is just plain rubbish and quite frankly laughable.