I Have a Dream.

Whether it's greedy politicians or obscenely overpaid bankers, company directors and CEOs, right-wingers and ardent Capitalists will always say: "You have to pay top money to get top people."

Urrrrrm no, actually. In fact, it's frequently quite the reverse. When you pay top money you get people whose sole interest and driving force is...........well.......money! 

This riches-for-the-deserving rot has been peddled by the powerful ever since rabid Capitalism took hold in the West 40 years ago but it is not a universal doctrine. You see, it doesn't apply to the rest of us!

WE can't demand top dollar to take up jobs, just because we have the most experience, the highest skills and the best track record. Nope, those at the top will always appoint those they can PAY THE LEAST, invariably the young. To boot, the young are also the most malleable and willing to accept the poorest conditions. Employers know they will have to accept what they're given and buckle under to get any form of a start in life.

All that fits in with the "market" ethos. The primary aim of companies is NOT to provide the best, value for money products or services. It is to make as much money as humanly possible. Consequently, they want top people whose only interest in life IS money - how much they can make for their shareholders and themselves.

Quality, reliability, excellence and performance, let alone abstract concepts such as morals and ethics, are of ABSOLUTELY no importance. They are, in fact, derided as the interests of failures.

With this as a backdrop, it is therefore ridiculous that we should be shocked to learn many of our political, financial and corporate leaders are greedy, corrupt sleaze merchants. Many are, let's face it, by any clinical definition, psychopaths.

If we want REAL change we have to start with our MPs. Put them on realistic, middle-to-higher-middle incomes (that's NOT £82,000-a-year!) for FULL-TIME work as our representatives, with NO consultancies or second jobs allowed, NO homes "flipping", NO fucking duck houses, NO wives/girlfriends as £80,000-a-year "secretaries" etc, etc.

That would soon weed out the greedy, what's-in-it-for-me? troughers who currently infest Parliament. "What, £45,000-a-year? I wouldn't get out of my call girl's bed for that!" 

You would actually get many more people whose only goals were to serve and work to improve society, not themselves. Maybe then they would get laws passed to adequately raise basic wages, curb executive pay, put customers and employees ahead of shareholders, crackdown on the bonus culture, properly regulate banks and STOP tax fiddling by the rich so they can actually contribute fairly to fixing the whole sodding mess!

Hang on. My alarm has just gone off. Marilyn Monroe isn't here after all. This isn't a tropical island. Damn, it was all just a dream.