Published: 3 February, 2012

• Stephen Hester’s waiver of a £963,000 bonus was welcome, although perhaps not quite as generous as it appeared at first glance.

After all, it seems that his total package of share awards may still amount to £8m.  

While he started young packing Polos in a sweet factory, he now owns three homes, including a 350-acre estate in Oxfordshire.

Does he deserve (or need) greater wealth?  

Mr Hester has economised the bank’s costs by cutting 3,500 humbler jobs.

Those cuts surely help to supply the pool of cash funding bonus awards.
In the City, greed seems infectious. A charmed band of those at the top do excessively well compared with those lower down.  

Since such pay awards are blatantly unhelpful in reducing the budget deficit, this can only be achieved by requiring taxpayers to accept reduced pay and pensions plus severe cuts in welfare benefits.

This is what many people are understandably protesting about: it just doesn’t seem fair.

If one person earns in a week a sum which takes another a hardworking lifetime, it seems reasonable for the poorer person to protest, especially when it’s by scrimping on his wages and welfare benefits that the rich man’s pockets are filled to bursting.  

I would personally subscribe to state regulation of the permitted range of pay variation.

A maximum figure of 40 times the lowest legal wage has been mooted as a reasonable limit to the rich man’s salary.

In many cases today the difference is well over 400 times.

This seems far from fair.
Angela Sinclair-Loutit
Highbury Hill, N5

• If it’s any consolation to Stephen Hester he has my deepest sympathy for the abuse he has endured as the result of his bonus payment.

I, like most other people, think he did the right thing.

I certainly would not have liked to be in his shoes if he hadn’t.

He was put in that position by this government, which has made noises about bankers’ bonuses but as usual done nothing, no doubt testing the water to feel the public reaction.

Well, now it has seen the reaction I hope it has learned from it.

I look forward to seeing what it actually does about it.

But I don’t hold out much hope.

Fred Goodchild
Islington Pensioners Forum