Nick Clegg really doesn't have the first idea about what the word "liberal" means:
Nick Clegg has committed the government to a crackdown on excessive executive pay, saying that austerity in the public sector had to be balanced by curbs on "irresponsible and unjustifiable" pay rises in the private sector.
The clue here, Mr Clegg, lies in the word "private" - that means it is absolutely none of the government's business. How much business owners choose to pay executives is entirely a matter to be agreed between those business owners and those executives.
This is simply Mr Clegg seeking cheap headlines by playing to the gallery.
Clegg said he was particularly outraged by a recent report saying that directors working for FTSE 100 companies had had pay rises up by 49%. He said they were getting the extra money even though their firms were not doing any better and that this was "a real slap in the face for millions of people in this country who are struggling to make ends meet".
Outraged! Get that folks - now even if the headline is true (and trust me, dear reader, it isn't) it is still nothing to do with Mr Clegg unless he is a shareholder in one of those FTSE 100 companies. In which case the place to raise his concerns is the general meeting of the company not an interview on the BBC.
In the end, it isn't a zero sum game. High levels of executive pay do not lead to lower wages elsewhere. And the FTSE 100 companies are international businesses employing international executives.
Finally, Mr Clegg, let's look at the realities of this high pay. The Chief Executive of Sainsburys - a massive, multi-billion pound turnover business - earns around £900,000 per year. This is less that Carlos Tevez, who occasionally turns out to play football, earns in two months. I reckon the shareholders of Sainsburys are getting a rather better deal, don't you. Mr Clegg?
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