This is something I've never understood, or to be correct I do understand it and it sickens me.
Now whenever I have left a company of my own choice, all I have expected is money earned and any outstanding holiday pay. Some have made me work my notice, some I have left on the day I resigned because of commercial confidentiality, but technically I'm still employed by them to the end of my notice period.
But it was my choice to leave, and so I forego any outstanding arrangements. Redundancy is a different matter, yes I do expect a bit of a payoff. It was not my choice, but if I were to resign then the company owes me nothing and I accept that.
But it appears to be that when you reach a certain level within a company, those sort rules don't apply. No matter how badly you fuck up, when you get to director level you get a payoff no matter what.
If I fuck up, I'm sacked, no recourse, no payoff, out of a job.
Yet, if I am a director, or one of the Gods, I get a payoff, even if I fuck up, or lose the company money, or get caught doing nefarious things, or resign and even if I quit to go somewhere else they will pay me off.
Now I realise that these sort of contracts are negotiated by those who benefit from them. Often not by themselves but for those that will follow after.
It is an old boys network, you scratch my back and sooner or later I'll scratch yours. It is a merry-o-round of company directors. Entwistle will not be out of a job for long, the next job he finds will also be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds salary grade. They look after their own, and this is always extended to the political class, no more so than it has today, they look after their own.
There is some sort of mind-set within the powers that be, that only people who have run big projects or big companies are capable of running big projects or big companies.
This is why Capita wins all the government contracts despite never delivering on time or on budget, This is why you see the same names cropping up in directors lists over and over again, the failures the hopeless and the damned.
It is like ‘Beaten Wife Syndrome’, this time they'll do it right, they've learned from their mistakes, it won't happen again, they love us really.
There was an old joke, when I was growing up in the 80s, what's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?
The optimists are learning Russian and the pessimists are learning Chinese.
Me, I've got shares in piano wire.
