Smug to Judge

A scientific study has shown that the wealthy sic successful become desensitised to the real problems other 'unsuccessful' people face. They become harsher and more willing to be critical of failure to achieve without those benefits that their own success bestows on them. Quickly forgetting the past struggles they had to surmount those same problems that suddenly disappeared when they had the added clout of success. Success does indeed breed an attitude of success which then surmounts obstacles.

Vince Cable generally gives the impression of someone who has ideas and does test them before mouthing out. So I was taken aback when he took a neutral line with Zero Hour Contracts. How can you be neutral? This is abusive advantage taking of the vulnerable. It is disgraceful, how can any MP condone such practice.

The unemployed are pressurised and intimidated by the real possibility of benefit withdrawal unless they can weekly demonstrate they are seeking work and are willing to take work any offered. There are no middle grounds. They are subjected to weekly scrutiny by uncivil servants to see to just that. Uncivil servants that are no doubt themselves performance monitored to ensure they wrinkle out the target margins.

Potential Employers can hang out the bait of work and can then haul in a rich harvest of unemployed desperate to keep their benefits alive. All without cost or commitment from them, just hang this out on the line of hope and expectation. Zero hours means they contract nothing but the lure of a promise, yet require the applicant to to commit to making themselves available at a moments notice. To be plucked, at their leisure, if and when they have a passing moment off work increase. Outrageous. Totally an unfair terms contract.

The most evil act one person can play on another is to falsely raise hope and expectations. All the more so when that other person is vulnerable, threatened and in need of hope. A hope that is going to based on the shallow insubstantial offer of a possible something in the wind. Wake up Ed Balls there are no positives, this is an evil manifest.

Living the Make Believe

In what century did Vince Cable acquire his I-Spy primer to the financial world? The idea that the shareholders make a positive influence in the banking institutions remunerations is laughably naive. Pension or Investment Funds, Insurance Companies and Banks themselves hold the greatest majority of shares in the Gilt-Edge companies quoted on the StockMarket. They have no interest or commitment to the companies they hold shares in other than the immediate shortterm one. Will their investment make them more money than any other option? They do not have any long term concerns as to the growth and sustainable development of the companies invested in. Worse, they work in an incestuous world where their key figures are on the executive board of the major companies invested in. Nominate me and I will nominate you in turn. The scratch my back and I will scratch yours rule being first and number one rule of their closed club. So these investment institutions, the overwhelming majority shareholders, are going to police the remuneration packages of the Banks? Only to the extent of seeing who got paid what then making sure they got more when their own pay rise comes round. 

Which is not to say the small individual investors cannot make an impression, as they did just few months back. Collectively they registered a minority protest vote at the remuneration packages proposed. The institutions block votes had the overwhelming majority. The 'small' investors protest vote was duly noted, their obvious concerns would be given consideration, but at the say time, it was pointed the Board was not bound by it in anyway. They had their comfortable, legal, majority. 

The old model of the shareholders with an interest in and a financial commitment to the long term success of a company, collectively voting for a long, stable and secure future has gone. The investment institutions have sidelined them and institutions goals are way off the health of the company invested in. We need to tinker with the share-holding model. Only individual shareholders to be allowed to vote for remunerations, reserves, dividends and appointments to the Boards. Any shareholder with shares in excess of x,000's being required to prove that they are an individual and their address is not shared with any other share holder. That way the incestuous insider nominations will be broken together with the leap-frogging of ever higher salary deals. We might just get back to investing in companies for their survival and long term success.