Along with big bonuses for the relatively few, the UK banking sector has created many average and, indeed, low-paid jobs. Thus we learn that the majority of Lloyds staff earn between £17-18 000 per year, which suggests that some earn rather less than this, as well as those who earn rather more. We also learn that the average bonus this time around is £1 000. Frankly, if Lloyds staff on the average and lower wages have a bonus, I really don't mind.
Besides, the present frenzy of "Banker Bashing" is, in my view, a useful distraction from the much wider spectrum of responsibility for the present economic crisis. After all, precisely what was the Treasury Select Committee doing several years ago, when there was already plenty of evidence of the "bubble" ? Not a lot, I suggest.
The fact is that a sort of collective delusion - some might say mass hysteria - had gripped (and, in some case, continues to hold) the consciousness, or lack of it, of vast sections of the public, private and, dare I say, voluntary sectors. This collective delusion brought with it the conviction that the boom of recent years could go on, and on, and on, and the belief - bordering on a religious fervour - that the economic bubble was, in fact, not just for real, but for ever.
It was not just the banking and wider financial sector but this Government - and its friends (until recently) in the media, construction/house-building and other "favoured" industries, that "sold" the economic bubble on; and, in particular, political apparats like former government economic adviser (and now doom merchant) Ed Balls, who, incidentally, is not going to apologise.
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