Co-operative Group - time to show we really care.

In his satirical observation of 70s Northern life and social mores, Peter Tinniswood's Brandon family reflected the decline of traditional working class culture and the aspiration - as voiced by the upwardly-mobile but socially inept wife, Pat, to middle-class values. Most frequently expressed in her urging her hapless, and largely disinterested spouse, Brandon, to be a 'young executive'. Pat embodied much of that generation that would later embrace Thatcherite values of self-interest and later materialistic excess. The demands of the executive class have now 'evolved' into a demand for ever higher pay, without the justification of hard work or measurable success criteria that are accepted or understood by few outside the immediate 'charmed circle' at the top of an organisation. If Carter Brandon ever did climb the greasy pole to become an 'executive', he would now be one of those - like Euan Sutherland - who argue that high salaries and bonuses are justified merely on the basis of job title, without a corresponding increase in corporate value or profitability. News that the Co-operative Group now wants to award Sutherland with a pay and bonus and pension 'package' worth £3.66 million, with similar increases for the rest of the board, means that the final bastion of non-shareholder led endeavour on many of our high streets has now fallen victim to the prevailing, though ultimately illogical, business ideaology that management should be rewarded at levels that are out of all proportion to pay levels endured lower down in the organisation, but justified by remuneration committees on the basis that 'talent' has to be retained - even though there is no evidence of a demand for it elsewhere in the general employment market. Tinniswood's Brandon family books - A Touch of Daniel, Mog, Except You're a Bird and I Didn't Know You Cared were turned into a TV series by the BBC under the title of the final book - I Didn't Know You Cared: when it comes to the Co-op that title could prove to be highly prophetic - Co-op members should care, and show they do, by refusing to countenance the inexplicable rise of the 'executive' in an organisation that has hitherto prided itself on being led by them, not some mystical charmed circle remote from the shopfloor and answerable to the Stock Market, not the membership.

The Day the Co-operative Bank Stopped Co-operating.

Once upon a time there was a bank that did not exist to make a profit for its shareholders. Instead, it was owned by its members and shared its profits with them. It did not sell products that its staff didn't really understand and it wasn't concerned with taking over as many other banks as it possibly could to grow its market share. Unspectacular banking - and it was ethical too: it refused to lend to businesses that were involved in the arms trade or in tobacco products, for example. But then it bought a building society. That was also a mutually-owned business (we used to have a lot of those, but most converted to become banks, and turned out to be run by people with about as much idea of banking as I have about football or brain surgery). Unfortunately, the building society, in order to compete with the bad banks that used to be mutually-owned, had made some spectacularly bad lending decisions and they sank the bank that co-operated with its members and its lenders and borrowers. And no amount of hiding behind spurious arguments, such as it was actually a 'plc' all along, just owned by a mutual organisation, will change the fact that ethical considerations and member dividends have now been sacrificed: we just lost another of the few mutuals, and in spite of the need to open up banking and increase competition, that everybody agrees on in principle, we now have one less alternative to choose from.