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.
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