And this helps how, exactly?

To be honest, I don't know the details of the dispute between Birmingham council and the unions over equal pay for women. It's something to do with bonuses being paid to "men" which were denied to "women".

It doesn't sound quite right to me, because, as far as I can make out the bonuses were paid to people doing different jobs - for example, refuse collectors got a big bonus while care workers didn't.

I don't actually see what that has to do with equal pay for genders myself. After all, there are plenty of men working in social care and they didn't get the big bonuses either - and there is nothing to stop women working on bin collections which means they could have got big bonuses if they'd decided to do that job - but hey, I've given up trying to make sense of the equal pay rubbish (I can't make sense of it, because there is no sense to it).

What I do wonder is who has actually benefited from this court case. As I understand it, Birmingham City Council have stopped paying bonuses to people doing "man's" work - so they lose out. The women who are supposed to have lost out will get a couple of grand each maybe - but they've probably all lost their jobs by now or seen them transferred to a private care company who will give them even worse pay and conditions and Birmingham City Council don't actually have any money other than that they take off the taxpayer.

So the men working for Birmingham City Council lose out, the women working for Birmingham City Council lose out and the people of Birmingham City lose out. As far as I can see, the only people to benefit from this are the lawyers who now see an opportunity to milk councils up and down Britain for more cash.

And all this at a time when we are facing the biggest cuts since the nineteen seventies according to some think tank.

It's a bit like handing a glass of water to a drowning man.

Banks, bonuses and bosses

Apparently the directors of RBS are threatening to resign en masse if the government acts to prevent them paying huge bonuses to the "workers".

OK - bye then. Good luck finding a new job in Dubai or Saudi Arabia.

Let's just get one thing straight about this. The "workers" we are talking about here are not the clerks and cashiers that you or I meet in the branches up and down the country and earn something around the average national income. The ones in line to receive huge bonuses are highly paid already, have a large 5 bed family home in the suburbs, a holiday home in Cornwall and retain a flat in the City for the occasional overnighter with a mistress or a line of coke - or both.

It is claimed that they are owed big bonuses because they have made such a great profit this year. Whoopee! Hang on a minute though - weren't they making huge profits in previous years as well - by "investing" in dodgy unsustainable deals? How do we know that they aren't doing exactly the same again now - except they are now doing it with taxpayers money?

We don't - and they quite probably are. So, no - they shouldn't get big fat bonuses this year. However, I have no problem with their bonus being deferred until such a time when the company they work for has finally repaid the debt it owes to the taxpayer. About 30 years time or so.

The bosses argue that they are contractually obliged to pay these bonuses. More fool them. But they should point out to these people who awaiting their huge bonuses that the rules of the game have changed - and they can either lump it or leave. The other thing the bosses claim is that if they don't get their huge bonuses they may leave and Britain will lose "talent".

Look, financial institutions don't choose Britain as the base for their operations because we have a huge pool of talent. They choose Britain because our legal and financial systems are such that they can operate pretty much how they like - something they can not do in other countries. The "talent" might leave, but where are they going to go? Unless they all have a hidden talent for speaking Mandarin then I think their options are pretty limited.

Finally, although I'm not usually given for government interfering in the way private businesses operate, I think there is a case for a restriction on the bonus culture. A simple law restricting any annual bonus to a maximum of 10 or 20% of a person's annual salary is all that is needed. I think that is more than fair and perfectly reasonable.

How many years is it since Labour came to power?

Twelve years?

By some strange coincidence, the jobless total is the highest it's been for ....... 12 years!