Poll Result - And the new poll: The Environment Agency Bonuses

It seems Picking Losers has an overwhelming readership that are either staunch believers in the right for the individual to choose or you are a bunch of hippies. 61% of you voted to legalise cannabis regardless of the harm both physically and physiologically it can do you. A quarter of you want it reclassified as a class B drug and only 12% were happy with the Blair government’s policy.

This week's poll tackles the issue of the Environment Agency staff receiving bonuses despite the recent flooding. The Environment Agency’s chief executive, Baroness Young, and eight other top executives were awarded bonuses averaging 10 per cent of their salaries shortly before the recent floods. There have been subsequent calls for them now to give these bonuses up. Baroness Young received a 15 per cent bonus of £24,000 on top of her salary of £163,000. All the bonuses were performance related, yet the National Audit Office report earlier this year which said that fewer than half the flood defences in high risk areas were being adequately maintained. Surely the fact that they received their bonuses reflects that they hit all the targets that were required of them by government? The problem with the public sector is that bonuses can not be linked to financial performance and so have to be linked to less tangible government targets.

Should the executives have their bonuses stripped from them as a result of the flooding, but still be inline for them next year if things improve? Or have the recent floods got nothing to do with the bonuses that were awarded before the events and they have every right to hang on to them? Or is it wrong to offer bonuses to public sector bodies given that they are working to government targets with no tangible measures?