HOW MANY DOTS CAN YOU AFFORD TO SPEND?

A riddle:

Adam Crozier has departed Royal Mail and has been hung and drawn for his troubles. 380 of his employees have the task of chopping his body into 380 pieces. One employee gets Crozier's earlobe, another a rib, another a finger, and so on, until each employee has a piece of Crozier to do with as he wishes.

If each employee chooses to sell his piece of Crozier on the open market, how much money will he earn?

The answer is exactly the same as he earns from working for Royal Mail for a year. It would take the average Royal Mail worker 380 years to earn what Adam Crozier earned last year.

Ah yes, the free marketeers protest, but the market demands that we pay him £3.5m a year. But just as recently so many others have, Roy Mayall reveals this appeal to the market for what it is:

It’s a self-perpetuating system. The ‘best management talent’ employ ‘the best management talent’ in order to ensure that ‘the best management talent’ are always in control.

As for that old ‘marketplace’ excuse, I think we’ve all see through that by now. These bloated wages are not imposed by some outside force, but by themselves. The marketplace is the euphemism by which these huge disparities of income can be spun. Executive pay is on the rise while our wages are being squeezed and the service is being run down.