"Staff at Northern Rock have been handed bumper pay rises and a £200 Christmas bonus, even though the bank owes the taxpayer almost £30billion," flaps the Daily Mail. The pay rises are "disgraceful and entirely inappropriate" scream shareholders, "Why should employees, who have good pay packages anyway, be rewarded when we lose money?"
Funny isn't it? For years directors awarded themselves millions of pounds in bonuses without a peep out of shareholders as long as the dividends - all dependent on a high-risk business model - kept rolling in. And now listen to the screams when people who stand behind counters all day get a few hundred quid extra. Not for them the luxury of playing the stock market: they're more concerned with feeding their kids and keeping a roof over their heads. Let's either nationalise this wreck or flog it off to anyone prepared to guarantee taxpayers' money and 6,000 jobs. If the shareholders don't like it, tough - any fool knows markets can go down as well as up.
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