What we earn

I've resisted blogging in the past few months, trying to calm my rants and accept the world as it is and not as I'd like it to be.

But last night I watched the BBC2 programme by Peter and Dan Snow on what people earn in this country and I've been incandescent ever since.

The smugness with which the super rich justify their obscene earnings is guaranteed to get my hackles up, especially the traders in the City. They are little more than gamblers in a spread betting casino that happens to concentrate on stock price fluctuations rather than a batsman's score. They make nothing, yet we are supposed to believe they contribute greatly to our economy.

And don't get me started on the woman who pays a company over £1000 a day to fold her jumpers because she's too busy to do it herself. Have these people lost all sense of reality?

Compare that to the guy that Dan Snow spent a day with cleaning the sewers under the streets of London. He takes home less than £20k a year. He works in foul conditions, made worse by the fact that people use the sewers to dispose of things that should never be put down there. His constant companions are rats. The smell is unbelievable.

If he didn't put up with these conditions, those fat cats in the City wouldn't be able to spend their day glued to a computer screen - the stench would drive them out if not the disease. Which is more valuable?

And compare the woman who charges £450 for herself and £350 for her staff to fold jumpers with the care workers who look after our sick and elderly for less than that per month.

We are told that the market sorts out what people are paid, that jobs are worth what someone will pay to have them done.

But those who advocate the market only like it when it suits them. When the market looks like bankrupting Northern Rock, they run to the state to bale them out.

Gordon Brown inflicts a below inflation pay rise on those who work for the state while allowing private industry wage rises to soar above inflation. Is it any wonder that public service finds it hard to hang on to its best people. Fortunately for the rest of us, there are still enough people with sense of duty or calling who are willing to do the important jobs for a low salary, but is it right that we continue to exploit them?

Capitalism has come close to destroying the planet and may still do so as China, India and the old Soviet Empire adopt more of our Western 'Greed is Good' philosophy.

Many of us are beginning to realise that we need to change the way we live if future generations are to have a planet. We also need to change our attitude to what is important in our society and who deserves to be rewarded for the work they do.