NOT for the first time the Government is at sixes and sevens on something. The latest subject for the shaky hand on the tiller is pay rewards.

Here is Business Secretary John Hutton speaking in March to the Progress lobby group: “Rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country. Rather than placing a cap on that success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people.

“We want more millionaires in Britain, not less. Our overarching goal that no one should get left behind must not become translated into a stultifying sense that no one should be allowed to get ahead.”

And here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, speaking to the TUC this week: “Pay matters right across the board — in the private and the public sector — in the boardroom as much as on the shop floor. You're rightly concerned about excessive bonuses.”

He added: “Excessive bonuses, which encourage traders to take excessive risks, at a time of easy global credit, were one of the major reasons for the global credit crunch. We need to learn the lessons to prevent this happening again.”

* IN his crowd-pleasing attack on City bonuses to the brothers and sisters, Darling said: “People seem to get money for failing, not succeeding. And that's got to change.” Hmmm. Darling's annual salary is £137,579.

City chips in for rainforest

TO the City dinner at Mansion House last night for the Prince's Rainforests Project. Speakers in aid of the Prince of Wales's charity to save the fast-receding rainforests were the Prince of Wales, Lord Levene, Sir David Attenborough and Stanley Fink. The City turnout was impressive: Tom Albanese from Rio Tinto, Sky's Jeremy Darroch, Sainsbury's Justin King, LSE chairman Chris Gibson-Smith, HMV chairman and Citigroup banker Robert Swannell, KKR's Dominic Murphy and Finsbury's Roland Rudd, among many others.
It was part fund-raiser, part awareness-raiser — with Prince Charles hoping to encourage the City to come up with financial instruments via TIMOs (Timber Investment Management Organisations) that will promote investment in rainforests.

Trading for worthy causes

HATS off, too, to BGC Partners. Today's the interdealer broker's annual charity day, with all its trading profits worldwide going to charity. This year, 20 bodies will benefit, including The Prince's Trust and Anthony Nolan Trust.

BGC will take in celebrities to man its trading desks. In total, 120 stars will be attending, including Olympians Ben Ainslie and Rebecca Romero, actors Joseph Fiennes and Kevin Spacey, rugby's Martin Johnson and football's Sir Alex Ferguson.

It's always on this date because BGC came out of Cantor, which lost 658 employees, more than any other organisation including the New York Fire Department, in the World Trade Center. Last year's event brought in $6 million (£3.4 million). This year they hope to better that. Good luck to them.

Another nice earner for Allen

CHARLES Allen will doubtless enjoy his non-executive directorship of Virgin Media — the second sinecure the ex-ITV boss has landed this week after signing up with Goldman Sachs' private-equity team. Most of the Virgin board members are based on the East Coast of America, and the company is listed in New York, not London — a bizarre state of affairs given Virgin's main business is in the UK. No wonder one source, who has been closely involved with Virgin Media's management, described the situation as “absurd”.

One of the perks of being a board member is that one board meeting a year is held in sunnier climes such as the Caribbean. This has necessitated directors and their partners being flown at Virgin Media's expense for intensive financial discussions under the parasol. It's a hard life for Allen, who also has his own holiday home in South Africa...

* RIVALRY between headhunters. ITV has used Whitehead Mann to find its new finance director, Ian Griffiths, formerly of magazines group Emap. But in the recent past ITV employed another firm, Zygos, notably in the search for a successor to Allen in late 2006. That hunt dragged on for more than three-and-a-half months, with the suspicion that it was ITV board members themselves that did rather a lot to woo the eventual choice, Michael Grade. In any case, Whitehead Mann collects the fee this time...

* SO Lehman will “preserve the value of its real-estate portfolio for shareholders”. How? By spinning off a chunk of its commercial property into a new company, Real Estate Investments Global, and presumably just giving them the shares. Don't try this at home, even if you're in serious negative equity. Posting the keys back to your mortgage lender, with a note that the property now belongs to your fantasy friend, Brokebut Cheerful, seems unlikely to preserve your credit rating.

* HOW bad is it at Lehman? One mole claims that many staffers have virtually nothing to do, as work has dried up...