Letter: Greedy bastards

Sir: Seeing your headline "Fury over `greedy' bosses attack", (15 September) I wondered if I had not last year voted for the wrong party. Reading your editorial ("Forget `fat cats' and focus on fighting inequality"), I wondered if I have also been reading the wrong newspaper.

Can neither you nor the Government understand it is not the occasional outrageous behaviour of a "privatised" boardroom but the steady, consistent increase in apparently the majority of boardroom salaries at three or four times the rate of an ordinary employee's pay year after year which engenders the deep and growing resentment of our present situation, and a government which seems either unaware or unconcerned of the potential dangers it invites?

It is irrelevant that "there are simply too few really high earners to pay for a sustained attack on poverty", as you put it. The point is that when poverty and its effects continue to grow, it is immoral and shameful that a privileged minority should ensure the steady increase in their own remuneration at a rate far in excess of that allowed to the rest. At the same time to preach wage restraint for the masses is the most repugnant hypocrisy.

A J NEEDS

London SE9