It's just what Fred is used to

No one should be suprised that Fred Goodwin isn't willing to give up his obscenely generous pension. To him it marks a considerable drop in income - the poor man is probably struggling to know how to make ends meet.

After all his multi-million pound pension pot is but a trifle compared to what he's used to. As well as several million a year in salary and bonuses, there were the perks, like the private jet.

He's been used to flying around in a £17.5m private jet that can carry 19 passengers between Edinburgh and Beijing non stop. In one report, the 32ft cabin was described as allowing 'passengers to walk about on the “soft, deep pile carpeting” or relax on the “supple leathers”, according to its sales blurb.'

And if we expect Fred to have a conscience about this, we are kidding ourselves - he bought this jet, which costs around £9,000 an hour to run, at the same time as he was making 18,000 people redundant.

Only intervention will stop greedy people like Fred (and he's not alone) running amok again as soon as the economy picks up. And the first thing should be a law that says that no one in a company can earn more than ten times (and I'm being generous) the salary of the lowest paid worker.

I'm sick of hearing about how we must reward these high flyers who create all our wealth. They don't do it alone. Without all the people down the chain, they are useless. The Sir Freds of this world can come up with all kinds of fancy schemes (hopefully some of which are not as dumb as his) but unless there are people to implement them, they are just hot air.

It is time the people who really make companies successful - the workforce - were given as much attention and consideration as the bosses and the shareholders.