November 29.

Michael Heseltine's defence of British Gas in increasing the salary of

its chief executive by 75% is almost offensive in itself.

His implication that a company cannot hold its own among other

corporations if its executives are not receiving equivalent salaries is

absurd and dangerous. It is what a company delivers, not how it wastes

its resources, that establishes its status.

I do not swallow the notion that we have to pay ridiculous fortunes to

retain competent executives. I am confident that I could replace any one

of them from among my own acquaintances, who would happily serve for a

reasonable salary.

These excessive salaries are nothing less than abhorrent, and

seriously pose the question of whether we shouldn't establish a ceiling

on salaries.

This is long overdue. No-one, absolutely no-one, is worth half a

million pounds a year. And to the extent that one is paid beyond one's

worth, one is a social liability.

It is time we more generally recognised that one's status in the

community depends upon one's contribution to it, not on what one takes

from it.

Peter Bell,

Ferndale,

Kyle of Lochalsh.