HERE we go again - five days after the election and we are already getting extreme views being published again. I'm talking about people believing that the Government will be slashing public spending and raiding pensions to pay fat cats - I can only assume that some individuals are just jealous of others that may be more clever, hard working, talented and/or more successful than the average person. The regime of allowing bankers to earn so much money existed throughout the governance of the Labour regime over the last 13 years so there's no point in moaning about the new Government's response to it five days into the new Parliament. I wonder if we could put the bankers' bonuses issue to bed once and for all.

Firstly, the bank bail outs are only a loan and the collateral taken in return is through the ownership of their shares. The banks have remained very profitable (remember a significant proportion of the one-off losses incurred by them were due to the massive mortgage swindles in the US being disguised as quality investments - do have a look at the annual Mortgage Fraud Reports on the US FBI website) and the Government will get all that money back, with mega interest, when it decides on the best time to sell those shares back into the world stock markets.

Secondly, I calculate that at least an additional £68bn has been collected in additional taxation in the last 10 years alone purely as a result of some of the profits of the banks being paid out in bonuses rather than shares, dividends or employee share options. If that hadn't been collected in that way, the Government would have needed to borrow that £68bn to balance its books which means that the National Debt by now would be well over £900bn. Here's the maths. Corporation tax on a £1m being kept by the bank would be £280,000. Pay that out as bonuses and you've got 40 per cent income tax, 1 per cent employee’s NI and 12.8 per cent employer’s NI. That's tax of £538,000 and collected much, much sooner than Corp Tax as well. So thank heaven for bankers' bonuses and the fact that the banks and their employees remain in this country giving us the benefit of that additional Tax Revenue. We are in deep muck if that work and therefore source of tax revenue ever gets forced out of the UK.

It therefore follows that we should thank all rich people for staying in the UK, paying already huge taxes and for putting up with the fact that the previous government frittered that money away on stupid things eg paying huge benefits to lots of people that can't be bothered to work (legitimately).

Thank goodness for rich people putting their money back into the economy when the banks won't - I know of more business deals being done with entrepreneurs and private investors and business angels than with the High Street banks. Get rid of the freedom to earn what we feel we deserve and stifle opportunity and creativity and we end up more bankrupt than we already are. We all have the same opportunity to gradually create wealth so we should stop moaning at people that simply succeed in achieving their ambitions.

FRANK JURGA

Woodside Avenue

Swindon