Crow

Crow Corbyn may not be a very clever choice to lead the Labour Party, but he does have, or at least peddle, some good ideas.

I think, in particular, of the proposed rule that the range of salary from top to bottom of a company should not exceed a factor of 20. Say from £10,000 (which is around minimum wage) to £200,000. I associated to the Red Flag slogan of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. Also a very Christian sentiment, the sort of thing one might have thought that mid-western bible bashers in the US might sign up to. But I'm sure that they don't. Far too good at smelling out commies to be caught by that one.

My suggestion would be that respectable companies should publish statistics about this sort of thing in their annual accounts - perhaps some of them already do. And while they are at it, they could include something about labour-only subcontractors, be they CEOs, cleaners or geeks (aka IT consultants & contractors). And something about zero-hours contracts too.

Perhaps there is someone out there who would pay me a token salary to investigate such matters. An entirely proper activity for a lapsed government statistician, particularly one who put in a stint at what used to be called the Department of Employment, with fond memories of their large headquarters building in St. Jame's Square. Not to mention the railings to which I chained my bicycle. A Dawes in those days, then a quite decent brand.

PS: I note in passing that plenty of public sector organisations would fall foul of a rule like this. Think of all those bosses of schools, colleges and hospitals on grossly inflated salaries and their hosts of cleaners and porters on minimum wage. Not to mention all the zero-hours contracts for lecturers at Edinburgh University.