Bonuses For Books?

In his Spectator column, Martin Vander Weyer writes:

A neighbour tells me she’s heard on the radio that Barclays chief Bob Diamond is in for a £9.5 million bonus. ‘Can’t you ask him to save our library?’ I point out that if Bob pooled his pay-out with the £3.6 million to which the trade minister Lord Green is entitled as a farewell from the chairmanship of HSBC, and the £2.4 million bundle awarded to RBS boss Stephen Hester, between them they could offer a year’s reprieve for all the threatened small-town libraries in England. A gesture like that might even herald the end of the ‘period of remorse and apology for banks’ to which Bob recently referred. The ball’s in your court, chaps.