John Prescott yesterday launched an online grassroots PR campaign to protest against the £1bn bonuses that the Royal Bank of Scotland plans to give out to its employees, despite needing a £20bn state bailout just a few weeks ago.
Following on from Barack Obama’s successful use of Facebook as part of his Presidential campaign last year, and the National Union of Students’s victory over HSBC 18 months ago, John Prescott has launched a group on Facebook to call the British public to action to protest against the Royal Bank of Scotland’s planned bonuses.
On his blog Prescott recognises Obama’s use of Facebook. He said:
“He has also been very successful in creating an online army to support his fiscal stimulus package through Congress – and we should use that people power here.”
“We must utilise these same online grassroots tactics to force these greedy and indifferent banks that the taxpayer bailled out to give up their bonuses.”
But can Prescott replicate Obama’s success in the UK?
With just 4,991 people signed up to the Facebook group so far things don’t look too positive. Especially if you consider that the average tax payer in the UK has paid £1,000 to the banks in tax. Therefore the tax paid the by all of the users in Prescott’s facebook group equates to less than half a per cent of the £1bn that the Royal Bank of Scotland plans to give away to its employees as bonuses. That said there were only 4,955 people signed up when I started writing this blog post.
I shall watch how this campaign evolves with interest. (No pun intended)
Matthew, I hope you’re well.
This is an interesting issue, the very fact that the government aren’t stopping these bonuses right now makes me feel quite ill. I have been working in public relations for nine years and everywhere I have been my company has been successful. However, I have only ever received one bonus and that was for Christmas when I worked in an international consultancy in London and we had generated three times more profit than the previous year. The very fact that these companies/banks would be dead and buried without our hard earned tax makes me angry. How can they complain about losing their bonuses?
They want to get a job in PR then they would know how to live off a budget. Don’t get me wrong if you succeed you should be rewarded but when you fail you should get nothing!