November 21: Why do we value bankers more than nurses?

From: Roger Backhouse, Orchard Road, Upper Poppleton, York.

DAVID Duffy may be worth his remarkably high pay as chief executive of Yorkshire Bank (The Yorkshire Post, November 17) but would it not be equally accurate to say that he was paid £1.34m for 17 weeks work rather than “earned” that sum? Many leading bankers were paid vast salaries only for their bank’s finances to come apart. Leading banking heads rarely roll while the long suffering British taxpayer steps in to save banks from collapse.

No one’s life depends on Mr Duffy, who is paid around 100 times more than a senior nurse or social worker, even more than their junior colleagues. We’d notice if they weren’t available but would we notice the absence of the apparently highly rated and doubtless hard working Mr Duffy?

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Thanks to George Osborne’s pay freezes, the nurse or social worker will have had their pay rises severely limited below the inflation rate. And if a child dies whilst a social worker is involved they’re guaranteed tabloid Press harassing them, their relatives and friends for the sake of a “story”, the modern equivalent of burning a witch. But senior banking salaries remain stratospheric and largely out of the limelight when anything goes awry. Something wrong here, isn’t there?

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