RBS hands out £800m of bonuses as salaries are frozen
ROYAL Bank of Scotland will today impose a pay freeze on 10,000 staff, while it prepares to pay £400 million in bonuses to its highest earners.
The bank is expected to claim that it needs to cap basic pay in order to manage its costs ahead of announcing a bottom-line loss of up to £2 billion.
But it will also be seen as a move to deflect attention from the huge bonuses to be paid to those already among the bank’s top paid staff.
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But the bank will still announce today a widely-anticipated bonus round of about £400m for investment bankers, which is likely to extend to almost £800m when extended to other staff. The main beneficiaries will be traders working mainly in London, Hong Kong and New York. Although the handout is lower than last year it has attracted criticism following a “bad year” at the division.
The investment banking arm at RBS, which is 82 per cent owned by the taxpayer, is headed by John Hourican, who is in line for a personal bonus of 21 million shares – worth about £5.7m at today’s prices.
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[Business is] “the most powerful force for social progress the world has ever known”.
Divorced from reality, deranged and deluded Capitalist simpleton David Cameron.
Welfare reforms ‘hitting disabled’
The UK government’s welfare reforms are having a devastating impact on thousands of sick and disabled Scots – according to evidence published today by Citizens Advice Scotland.
The employment and support allowance scheme (ESA) was introduced in 2008 for those who were “new” claimants and is now being applied to those who are currently on incapacity benefit who have previously been deemed to be too sick to work.
The CAS report, From Pillar to Post, details individual cases of people who have been considered healthy by the ESA assessment, but actually suffer from severe health problems.
The report includes the case of a man who was considered fit to work after an ESA assessment, despite having suffered a stroke that continues to affect his right side and speech and which has left him able to only walk a few yards without pain.
[Business is] “the most powerful force for social progress the world has ever known”.
Divorced from reality, deranged and deluded Capitalist simpleton David Cameron.
Universities cut number of degree courses by 27%
The number of degree courses on offer at British universities has been slashed by more than a quarter in the past six years, new research suggests.
It reveals that there are almost 20,000 fewer full-time undergraduate courses available now than there were in 2006.
The study, by the University and College Union (UCU) found cuts across a range of subjects, from the sciences, to arts and humanities.
England, where tuition fees will rise to a maximum of £9,000 a year this autumn, has been the hardest hit, with almost a third fewer courses on offer, it claims. UCU said that the findings showed that funding cuts were affecting course availability, which could be damaging to students.
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