For one awful moment I thought that the natural order of things, that is to say market forces, had become distorted. However, it turns out that Sir Fred Goodwin (I keep almost saying Ron Goodwin - he wrote 633 Squadron) is receiving a pension of £693,000 p.a. That’s alright, then.

Talking of market forces, one of the main arguments for the obscene salaries, bonuses and pensions received by many in the higher echelons of British industry is that they are needed to attract and retain the ‘best people’. This is fallacious on several grounds.

First, we clearly have NOT attracted the best people. Our banks have been run by a bunch of egotistical idiots, as has most of British industry. Senior management in, say, Germany, are paid less well than in the UK. Can we say, in general, that British industry has been better managed than German industry? Certainly not in the manufacturing sector.

Secondly, the idea that everything should be left to market forces (that ancient Thatcherite mantra) is absurd. We do not leave the consumption of heroin to market forces. If our government really believed in market forces, it would, for instance, permit secondary picketing. I am not suggesting that either heroin or picketing should be deregulated, simply that one cannot rely entirely upon market forces. Even if we accepted the idea that a theoretical perfect market would regulate prices and pay perfectly, we do not have anything like a perfect market in executive pay. The company is theoretically answerable to shareholders for all their policies, including remuneration. However, although we all own these companies (through pension schemes, and now, in the case of the banks, as shareholders), we do not have the chance to vote at AGMs. The votes are largely cast by the pension funds. The people who run the pension funds and the people on remuneration committees are, for the main part, other over-paid executives.