The Royal Bank of Scotland is reported to be pressing ahead with its plan to pay £1.5 billion in bonuses. Meanwhile, Corus is 'mothballing' its steel plants on Tesside making 1,700 people redundant, not to mention the consequent losses to the local economy. Apparently, the Teesside plants have lost £130 million in six months. Now then, just supposing: instead of paying those bonuses to the idiots who caused the recession which has caused the orders for steel to dry up, why not use the money to keep the steel plants ticking over until such time as the economy recovers and orders for steel pick up again? A back of the cheque book calculation shows that there's enough money there to cover Corus' losses for five and a half years...
A significant advantage would be that all those people would stay in employment and be paying taxes rather than claiming benefit. No bankers would lose their jobs. Surplus steel could be used to rebuild the bridges lost in Cumbria during the recent floods. And, I don't know if this might set a precedent (he said ironically), but a bank would actually be investing in manufacturing industry rather than merely gambling and/or ripping off its customers.
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