The Floods! We should all help pay for this national disaster. Although not everyone will agree...

Fee has it all explained by KJ...

SOURCE DAILY MAIL: Institute of Directors blasts Barclays for short-changing shareholders and dodging EU cap on bonuses
The Institute of Directors slammed the bank’s decision to hike its bonus pool for last year by 10 per cent to £2.38bn. It said it ‘cannot be right’ for bonuses to be ‘almost three times bigger than the dividends paid to shareholders’. The row erupted as Barclays announced it has hiked its bonuses by 10 per cent to £2.4bn, despite a slump in profits and thousands of job cuts. But it said its ‘casino bankers’ enjoyed a 13 per cent increase in their windfalls, sharing a pot of £1.57bn. The bank also awarded a higher proportion of its earnings as bonuses. The scandal-hit lender also came under fire for trying to swerve restrictions on bonuses imposed by Brussels in January. The cap limits banks to paying a maximum of one year’s annual salary as a bonus, rising to twice salary if shareholders approve. This was supposed to stop the casino-style behaviour that led to the financial crisis. To dodge the new rules, Barclays has been dishing out monthly cash payments to top staff since January: these are classified as part of employees’ basic pay, so do not count towards their bonus.

SOURCE GUARDIAN: Lloyds Banking Group chief António Horta-Osório gets £1.7m bonusHorta-Osório's bonus comes on top of his £1m salary, £500,000 pension contribution and a payout from a long-term incentive plan that could amount to around £2.9m – half the potential sum – when it is formally revealed next month. Lloyds total bonus pool to incentivised staff is £395m. The bank reported a statutory profit of £415m, but a loss of £802m after tax. It lost £606m the year before. TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady was unimpressed: "With Lloyds still owing billions to the taxpayer and the amount it has had to set aside for PPI mis-selling rising by a whopping £1.8bn (to £9.8bn), now is not the time for its chief executive to be taking a multimillion-pound bonus." Unite national officer, Rob Macgregor said the payout to the boss – in a year when staff had been handed 2% pay rises (which is below inflation) and after 35,000 roles had been axed since the 2008 bailout – was a "kick in the teeth to the taxpayer."

SOURCE TELEGRAPH: Financial crisis has left 'permanent scar' on UK wagesThe financial crisis has left a "large permanent scar" on UK wages, with some salaries not expected to recover to pre-crisis levels until 2022, according to the Resolution Foundation. Even by 2019 - more than ten years after the crisis began - median incomes will still be 3.5pc below their pre-crisis peak. James Plunkett, director of policy at the Resolution Foundation, said: “As things stand, the recovery rests on consumer spending. And that spending rests on a diminishing savings rate, not income growth. With so many households already struggling with their debts – even with rates still low—a savings-led recovery is not a happy prospect.”

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