Bonuses and Pensions

Current and recent outrage about bonuses and pensions has directed at company directors and members of Parliament. Both are groups of people who pay each other over generously with other people's money, and directors often seek to escape into prosperous obscurity if things go wrong.

 I suggest that payments to directors should be determined annually by a ballot of shareholders. One way would be for directors to be paid annually in arrears and for each shareholder to indicate what payment should be made to each director for the previous year's work, The actual sum paid would be the median of all the individual sums proposed, taking into account the sizes of shareholdings so the choice of someone holding 15000 shares would counts as 15000 choices.

 MP's pensions could be determined when they leave the Commons by a ballot of their former constituents. Each elector could write down the annual pension he considers the former MP deserves, and the  actual pension would be the median of all those figures. 

An afterthought: people should never have trusted anyone called 'Sir Fred'. Whatever his friends call him, he should have been knighted 'Sir Frederick'.