When you’re Mayor of a city as cosmopolitan as London, it’s important that you try and keep as many people happy as possible. Men and women, rich and poor, black or white — and, despite Boris’s undeniable Conservatism — Labour and Tory. As such, BoJo doesn’t snipe at the Labour Party nearly as often as he did back when he was an MP (as much of a shame as that is, given his typically acerbic wit), but he’s really gone for it recently in his blog.
The most recent entry, published the next day in the Telegraph, involves a fairly scathing attack on Labour deputy Harriet Harman and her recent comments regarding the ‘nauseating’ payout that Sir Fred Goodwin, the man who seemed intent on bringing down the Royal Bank of Scotland, will receive as a pension — approximately £650,000, a figure that Harman has described as ‘not going to happen’, as it is ‘unacceptable’.
It’s easy to agree with Harman on this — after all, no one wants to think that the people who have mired the country in its current financial mess should be allowed to profit one penny from it. Unfortunately, and as Boris points out, there’s nothing she (or we) can do. The rules have been made, and now they have to be stuck with. Unfortunately, this time it means that the fat cats get the cream. We have to accept it this time, but lessons need to be learned in order to prevent another catastrophe further down the line.
It’s a controversial piece, certainly, but well worth a read. It raises some interesting questions about precisely who’s to blame for the whole business, and serves as a reminder that — no matter what the Government might portray as being the case — this situation is not as simple as it first appears.