subject: Small Business Leaders Express Concern Over Banker Bashing [print this page] Small Business Leaders Express Concern Over Banker Bashing
Copyright (c) 2010 Nick BreezeVince Cable, the business secretary this week made it very clear that the government would be coming down hard on banks that chose to reward their staff with lavish bonuses. But is that the right approach? Our instinct tells us that the rich should pay more and that this is a society striving for fairness. But then, do these ideologies stand the test of rational thought? One small business owner thinks not.In an exclusive interview with the managing director of one of London's oldest and most respected Window Cleaning companies, Gaze-A-Glaze Limited, James Bridgeman says we ought to tread more carefully. Bridgeman is not convinced about taxing the rich unfairly to pay extra taxes: "That's fair enough if you're a student studying socialism but out here in the real world it isn't really like that. A tenth of all revenue earned by the treasury is paid in taxes by the banking sector. Then there are a whole myriad of businesses like us and everything else you can think of from printing to IT, catering, tailoring, cleaning and so on, that are dependent on the revenues earned by the city. And that is not just being London-centric either. Many bankers live outside London and take their earnings far and wide into the home counties or Scotland."Bridgeman may have a point. His father started Gaze-A-Glaze twenty-four years ago when James was only a youngster. They have grown a client base of over a thousand businesses operating right across London but specialising in such areas as Mayfair, St James's, Knightsbridge and The City of London. It is the clients like these that have enabled Gaze-A-Glaze to grow and give jobs to ten guys working round the clock. Bridgeman says, "We're always employing, there is a skills shortage out there at the moment. I need good people who care about their work and are prepared to operate safely in a professional manner. We can get the business based on our solid reputation. We keep that reputation by hiring the best. But the best don't come in big supply!" He is now worried that harsh words from Minister's such as Vince Cable will have a negative affect of driving the banking industry overseas. "All this talk by the coalition about coming down hard on banks is short sighted. If they take umbridge and decide to move elsewhere, the whole country will suffer. There seems to be a gene that's crept into this country in the last decade or so; it called jealousy. Looking sideways at everyone else and worrying about how much they have is not good for Britain. We're stifling the hard workers and people who really generate the wealth in this country. Earning a lot of money used to be encouraged, now we're turning our noses up."Bridgeman could be right. It we start taxing the banking sector and publicly admonishing them for earning their bosses great wealth, what is stopping them going elsewhere. A dose of reality may not be that far away.
