| In the week when Robert Crawford,
head of the Scottish Enterprise quango, trousered a pay rise taking his personal wonga
cache to a completely reasonable £200k per annum, senior economists have explained to the
JT why the salary is reasonable and not an exercise in taking the piss. Professor
Beaker of Strathclyde’s Department of Making Stuff Up explains: "Dr Crawford is
bravely pioneering a new model of entrepreneurial behaviour - risk-free sponduliks
accumulation, or, if you’re a betting man, the ultimate each way bet."
Pausing only to grope a passing undergraduate, Professor Beaker continued:
"The old idea of entrepreneurial gain involved the idea of concomitant risk, in other
words, you could land flat on your arse. But now, as Doctor Crawford’s wage packet
demonstrates, it is possible to enjoy the lifestyle of a successful businessman without
taking any personal risk." |
In a world too long in thrall to
cynicism, Minister for Miracles, Wendy Alexander, bravely defended Crawford’s rise as
a reward for "productivity gains" within SE. "Last year, Dr Crawford took
the difficult step of making 500 co-workers redundant. It's only fair that this
risk-taking entrepreneurial behaviour be rewarded - by taking the resultant salary savings
and handing them over to Dr Crawford." Ms Alexander then began to
write the relevant productivity ratio up on the board to illustrate her point but got
mixed up over whether you took total output and divided it or multiplied it by the number
of cost centres.
In any case, Professor Beaker concluded, SE remuneration policy was now fully in
line with the best practise model increasingly in use in the private sector, viz: a bunch
of directors awarding themselves inflation-busting wage rises while lecturing the rest of
us on the need for "restraint". |
