22 November 2011

Quote of the day

The CBI big cheese (from The Independent here):

The president of the CBI has warned that Britons need to shed their "sense of entitlement" if the economy is to recover. Speaking at the employer body's annual conference in London, Sir Roger Carr argued that people in the UK are experiencing a "cultural cold shower" thanks to rising global competition.

"Most of us... have grown up in the West with a sense of entitlement – to jobs, opportunity, wealth," he said. "What's happening all around us is a cultural cold shower, a move from entitlement, a recognition that things have changed, nothing is by right: we have to earn our place in a vigorously competitive world as individuals and as nations."
"Sense of entitlement" is it?  I'll give him "sense of entitlement".  This is the man who was chairman of Cadbury up until it was sold to Kraft.  But he found himself an even softer billet as chairman of Centrica (formerly British Gas), the company which thinks it is "entitled" to hike up fuel bills as often and as stonkingly as it chooses.  And he is the chief of the CBI fatcats, whose "sense of entitlement" enables them to pay themselves so well regardless of the performance of their companies.

And this guy thinks he can preach to the rest of us about a sense of entitlement?

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