Money matters.

On the one hand we have the CEO of BP being given a pay rise that takes his salary up to £14 million a year; at least I assume it is per year. I heard on one of the news broadcasts that this is a 20% rise. Workers with a much lower base rate are not allowed a pay rise at all in some cases, let alone 20% of an already huge amount. What, one wonders, does a CEO do to earn £14million? 

 On the other hand there is the suggestion that everyone, every adult, rich or poor, employed or unemployed, should receive a basic income payment of £100 a week. An unconditional basic income or UBI. Quite a lot of discussion has taken place about how much a UBI payment should be. The lowest they came up with was £77. It is proposed as a possible solution to poverty. And as a way of reducing the length of the working week. Which could be no bad thing. People have talked about it for long enough. Here's a link to a whole article about UBI.

It all comes down to the question: how much do you need to live on? And it leads on to this one: how do you spend all that money if you earn £14million. 

My first thought when I saw the headline of the article on UBI was that they were proposing that everyone should have to live on £100 a week per adult in the household. I visualised all the property being confiscated and all the savings and instant equality being forced on us all. I was reminded of a science fiction story I read long, long ago in which the naturally faster-moving people had to wear weights on their ankles to slow them down and good-looking people had to wear masks to hid their beauty. Advantages had to be eliminated. 

This money stuff comes after all the news about off-shore tax havens and politicians whose fathers accidentally dropped them in it. As well as that, we have been having our usual annual review of our rather modest savings and ISAs with an expert at our bank. She kept reminding us that she could only give information and not advice. This was partly because the bank might contact us and ask for our opinion of the appointment with their expert. She didn't want us to suggest, even remotely, that she had advised us? And that, in turn, comes from a fear of being sued if the advice proves less than useful! 

It's a funny old world!