The latest at the Rock

From the Daily Wail (yes, I know):

Disgraced bank Northern Rock will tomorrow lavish £9million in bonuses on its staff - simply for repaying part of its bail-out loan from the Government on time.
The taxpayer-funded handout - equivalent to £2,000 for each worker - was labelled ‘crass’ and ‘indefensible’ last night.

Well surprise surfuckingprise. Northern Rock has been state owned for hardly any time and already the taxpayers are having their hard earned thrown around for a fucking weak reason. Of course these days we expect "equivalent to £2,000 each" to mean 10p for the teaboys and a fortune for the boss, and I did think it was going to be more of the same. But I forgot that with NuLab running it things might be a bit different.

The payout, which applies to all 4,400 staff at the Rock, is only the first stage in an incentive scheme that could see the state-owned bank pay more than £50million to its workers over the next few years.
On an average salary of around £20,000, this equals a bonus of £2,000. Staff can also look forward to another 10 per cent bonus in 2010 and 15 per cent in 2011 if the bank repays its government loan on schedule.
A fourth bonus, worth 25 per cent, will follow for lucky workers if the bank leaves state ownership and is successfully returned to the private sector.
For a worker on £20,000, this means total bonus payments of around £12,000.

Fuck me. I bet the Northern Rock staff must be wishing it had gone tits up and turned them into public sector employees ages ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at the staff, who after all must have expected P45s not so very long ago. But it seems that the government have taken it over with no more idea of how to run the fucking thing than the previous lot. I mean Christ, by all means pay everyone bonuses but after the fucking business is making money, eh? And not just for settling up part of a debt on time. How many people get a bonus from their mortgage lender for paying an instalment on time? No one.

Still, at least the new boss isn't getting a big fat lump of cash as well... oh hang on, what did that bit say further up?

The Rock’s new boss Gary Hoffman, 47, who is one of Britain’s best-paid civil servants on a basic salary of £700,000, is also in line for a super-size handout.

Jesus suffer and fuck, he's barely been there long enough for his arse to make a dent in the chair. The best that can be said is that he and the other senior execs aren't getting their bonuses right away, and that's really not much. So typical of both a badly run bank and a government project - money being hosed around all over the show for very little at all.