Thursday 12 February 2009

Barbie voices an opinion

I don't do political or social statements often but there's one current news subject that I have a very strong opinion on so I just can't not give it a mention.

RBS are still insisting that they will be giving their staff bonuses even though the general public seem to be against it and the government (who bolstered the company with £20billion of taxpayers money) are also against it.

I'm not one to usually agree with the government about much but in this case I really can't believe that performance related pay bonuses could or should still be paid if the company in question has done so badly it needed to be bailed out! I know many staff members from within RBS have stated that they need the bonuses to supplement their income and that its only 10/20/30% of their annual wage but I still have no sympathy (its not as if the average staff member of RBS is that badly paid). I have worked for companies that have had similar bonus systems and if they didn't have a good financial year we got no bonus. That's how these things are supposed to work people!

One of the most recent excuses I have read on the subject is that the bank needs to pay the bonuses in order to keep the best staff in their business. With unemployment figures rapidly rising I hardly think the staff will be jumping ship with ideas of getting another job very quickly. Maybe the government should insist that if bonuses are paid the bailout is immediately due to be paid back?

That my view anyway. I don't care who agrees or disagrees. I am currently an RBS customer but I'm rapidly considering moving bank, especially if this goes though. Maybe its only this kind quiet defiance that will wake them up... loosing a lot of customers?

Sunday 8 February 2009

Too old for your tastes?

Whilst travelling into work every day on the bus its normal to hear the strains of music seeping from various MP3 players. Normally the worst offenders seem to be those listening to dance music (probably because of the tone and pitch of the music (and possibly because I don't really complain when someone's listening to something I like!)) I noticed the other day however that one of the annoying bleepy tracks was coming from a guy who was a bit older which just seemed plain wrong. I don't know what I thought happened to dance music fans when they got older but the idea of a 40+ year old listening to it just seems a bit odd. This notion is music genre biased however as I regularly see ageing rock music fans and think nothing of it.

So...
The big question is... Is this

More acceptable than this?