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The Compensation of Sin is…
I heard Sam Laidlaw, Chief Executive of Centrica who own British Gas, speak on the radio about energy prices on the BBC’s “today” programme on Radio 4. He spoke well, as you would expect from someone who runs a very large company; the arts of propaganda have developed since the days of the late unlamented Dr Goebbels. I was not too interested in what Mr Laidlaw had to say until he answered the last question, which was whether Mr Laidlaw was paid too much.
His answer was not, of course, an answer at all, but a propaganda statement. Mr Laidlaw explained that he donated his bonus to charity (in 2013 his pay was about £1 million and his bonus was £4 million but I do not think that mr Laidlaw is giving the whole of his bonus to charity because some of it is deferred) and talked about executive “compensation” rather than wages, salaries or pay. He was asked about his pay and answered about his compensation, as though he was not even paid for his work, but merely compensated. Virtually every highly paid person in business does not think that he or she is paid for their work but “compensated”. Presumably Mr Laidlaw is of this persuasion because he has in the past joined schemes to avoid tax believing no doubt that tax should only be paid on wages, not on compensation.
It is an ugly concept that someone is compensated for turning up to work and doing a job. It infers that the worker should have been doing something more important, possibly more profitable and instead of doing it he or she is doing the job and receiving not remuneration or a salary of a pay packet but “compensation”.
I used to pass a Church in Poplar which had a sign outside “the Wages of Sin is Death”. I have not passed it recently. Perhaps it should now proclaim what the compensation for sin is.
Filed under: climate change Tagged: bonus, Centric, compensation, executive pay, sam laidlaw, tax avoidance, wages, wages of sin 
Source: http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/the-compensation-of-sin-is/
