Bank of England: Public sector fat cattery gone mad – now £250,000 housing allowances!

The new governor of the Bank of England will receive £250,000 per annum for housing expenses

We have lived through some exploitative times, with those at the top of the power pyramid helping themselves and their friends to taxpayers’ hard-earned income. One thinks of the MPs who get £400 a month just to spend on food. Why they can’t buy food out of their income like everyone else is hard to understand, as are a multitude of other allowable Parliamentary expenses.

Now though there is another unpleasant example of exploitation, and although it is not a politician benefiting the job has been handed to the recipient by the government. The new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is to receive £250,000 EVERY YEAR as a housing allowance. How is this justified? What sort of palace does the man need to rent? Granted he will be living in an expensive area, but it is already full of people who don’t get anything like that much money as a housing allowance. How was this amount decided upon? It is utterly ludicrous, especially when civil servants are telling the public to cut back, and the government is cutting spending. Why does he not have to pay for housing out of his salary like everyone else – except MPs? After all he won’t be hard up – his basic salary before the housing allowance is £480,000.

Who thought this was a good idea? Economics is not a science and there is no such thing as a good economist. There are only lucky economists, whose decisions happen to fit in with the way the international markets are moving. Goodhart’s law tells us that whenever an indicator is manipulated for policy, any observed relationships between it and other indicators will break down. In other words, there is absolutely no need to pay absurd rates to get so-called top people for the job. Anyone with basic training could do as well or as badly, and whoever was chosen should not be paid such an excessive amount.

I haven’t even mentioned the £160,000 pension contributions that will paid for the new governor by the British taxpayer. When will the people given important and prestigious roles take them because they want to serve their – or another – nation? There will be enough absurd praise when the time comes for them to be receive peerages and knighthoods as thanks from a grateful nation for them doing their very well-rewarded job. When will the ruling elite in the UK realise that tax revenues are not their private coffers to spend and dispense as they wish.

The UK has returned to a time of spendthrift monarchy, except that the spendthrift is a series of governments. The new governor cannot be blamed for the amount of money he is offered, but the politicians can be for offering it.  The UK needs a political shakeup, starting with the power of recall for MPs who are doing a bad job.