TIMES ONLINE: The filthy rich, as Peter Mandelson affectionately calls them, are different. It is not just that they’re rich but that there’s something about being extremely rich that blurs ordinary perspective in all but the most exceptional people. Power may corrupt, but extreme wealth blinds and deafens.
One of the many glaring pieces of evidence for this, available in abundance these days, is the inability of Sir Fred Goodwin to see himself as others see him, or to see his astonishing payoff as others see it. Fred the Shred quite clearly does not feel any of his vast pension pot is undeserved, even though he presided over record losses at the Royal Bank of Scotland.
He is not ashamed to demand huge sums of money, as of right, from taxpayers on low and modest incomes; he seems to feel they ought to reward his incompetence. Thoughts of shame or making amends don’t seem to enter his mind. He even feels he has made several sacrifices or “gestures” in his severance agreements, which squares it.
In this, Goodwin displays the same plutocratic blindness as another top banker currently receiving unwelcome public attention – Eric Daniels, the chief executive of Lloyds, who, defending bonuses in front of the Commons Treasury committee last month, appeared to consider his annual salary of more than £1m as “modest”. When asked why banks such as Lloyds, rescued by the taxpayer, should pay any bonuses at all, he said that “the recipients of bonuses that I am referring to are people like you and me. They have relatively modest salaries”. Modest? Like you and me? Not.
Like Goodwin, Daniels appears to have parted company with reality as most of us see it. I can well imagine that Daniels may have felt a bit peeved at times by the thought that there are lots of bankers and businessmen out there who are indeed paid hugely more than £1m a year. He must meet them constantly at smart parties and convocations of the great and the good in sunspots. It must be quite irritating. >>> Minette Marrin | Monday, March 2, 2009
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