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Gulf that divides soldier and a boss
• TWO articles in Saturday’s Guardian invite comparison. One outlines the case of an 18-year-old soldier described as one of the most seriously wounded ever to survive. After two years army service his vehicle was struck last year by a landmine in Afghanistan. He lost both legs, suffered serious brain damage, fractured several vertebrae and sustained 34 further injuries, leaving him unable to speak and unlikely ever to walk again. The Ministry of Defence awarded him (in addition to a tax-free payment on his discharge) £151,150 – less than half of the maximum available under the Armed Forces compensation scheme. His parents will have to sell their Doncaster home to buy him appropriate bungalow accommodation.
The other article quotes research by the US Institute for Policy Studies, which revealed this week that the bosses of 500 US companies last year typically took home $10.8 million. The chief executive of Pfizer’s pharmaceutical company (manufacturer of Viagra) took home $9.8 million, besides having personal use of a private jet valued at more than $120,000.
His predecessor had left Pfizer in 2006 with a pay-off worth nearly $200 million. Admittedly, these salaries are American, but Pfizer has a UK branch which presumably operates fairly comparable pay rates. Such financial rewards are staggering, especially when, very different from the soldier mentioned above, they risk neither life nor limb to serve their country.
I suggest two conclusions. First, that our government should never engage in foreign wars without reckoning their true cost. These should surely cover not only the purchase of bombs, fighter planes and other extremely costly military equipment but the war’s aftermath – funding for the adequate treatment and after-care of troops injured in fighting their country’s wars.
This concept of caring for war veterans was recognised as long ago as 1670, when Louis XIV of France founded Les Invalides as a home for 4,000 old soldiers. Twelve years later in England, Charles II followed this example by establishing the Royal Hospital for 300 “soldiers unfit for further duty because of injury or old age”, partly supported by a government grant-in-aid. As charitable appeals for these Chelsea Pensioners now explain: “We wish to support them in a decent and sympathetic manner... we owe them a huge debt for their loyal and courageous services to the Crown.” Surely, this remains equally true today.
My second conclusion is that the financial recompense available to even the ablest businessmen is so staggeringly disproportionate to that offered by a British government to a desperately-wounded soldier that it defies comment. However clever and hard-working they are, for them to “earn” in hours what most people only earn in a lifetime is profoundly shocking. It is even more shocking that it should so far exceed what is granted to those who suffer as gravely as the young soldier mentioned above for their service to the nation – rather than for commercial ability.
ANGELA SINCLAIR
Highbury Hill, N5
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