Guardian - Polly Toynbee - Goodbye, good times. Now Labour has to show just whose side it is on
That might be politically survivable if Labour could honestly say the pain was fairly shared. That's exactly what European finance ministers debated fiercely on Wednesday. Executive pay was, said the EU monetary affairs commissioner, "scandalous" when so many employees have their pay pegged in the name of keeping inflation down. Luxembourg's prime minister, who chairs the Eurozone finance ministers, said these "excesses" in pay and bonuses were "a social scourge" that had fuelled the banking crisis. Germany and the Netherlands are introducing new taxes on high bonuses, pressing for EU-wide action. Germany urges a €1m ceiling on what a company can deduct from tax for any employee's pay. Britain, of course, will have none of it, and Alistair Darling sat through the debate in silence. When Brown introduced his policy package as a recipe for "opportunity-rich Britain", one Labour wag remarked that Britain was indeed a land of opportunity for the rich.
We know whose side they're on. keep to the Fen Causeway
(Written by the "City Editor", an approoriate label, I suppose) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
