Letter: Barclays bonanza

Is IT ironic or merely par for the course that Scottish Enterprise (SE) announces a grant of £6.6 million of taxpayers' cash to Barclays Bank to locate one of its operations in Glasgow on the day before Barclays announces that the well-named Bob Diamond will be its new chief executive (your reports, 7 and 8 September), with a pay package worth potentially £11m per annum, and who is reported to have already amassed a fortune of £100m in his 14 years at Barclays?

Would Barclays really have located elsewhere without that sweetener? Are grants to such companies not somewhat akin to the description by the late Prof Peter Bauer that development aid was "an excellent method of transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries"?

Bill Jamieson (Comment, 7 September) accepts the SE figures that every 1 invested generates 8.80, which surely cannot be an annual rate of return, so how many years (and maybe other investments) are required for that payback?

He also quotes without comment that 2,000 firms increased their turnover last year by 376m; but how much of that was due entirely to SE's support and what profits were generated from these increased sales?

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews, Fife

Barclays Bank, in a most insensitive manner, has negotiated a package with Bob Diamond to run the bank in return for a massive 11.5 million per annum.

This is a complete snub to the government and the people of this country, and customers of the bank should be encouraged to close accounts and move to another bank in protest.

Bob Diamond may well have the Midas touch in making money but no individual in any circumstances should be paid such an obscene amount of money.

Dennis Grattan

Mugiemoss Road

Bucksburn, Aberdeenshire