LETTER: All big-earners should contribute
A reader calls for all big earners to take pay cuts to help those in need during the coronavirus outbreak.
Like most ordinary folks, I am enraged by the insane amounts of money being paid to professional footballers (note that I do not use the word "earn") but I do think Gary Neville and Wayne Rooney maybe have a point behind their predictable complaints of victimisation by Dominic Raab.
As Premiership footballers, they obviously have the highest profile of all the mega-earners in this country and will therefore naturally be among the first to be criticised, but there must be many thousands of others picking up sums we plebs can only dream of. So why not introduce a sliding scale of contributions (call them pay-cuts if you like) in the present crisis whereby anyone earning in excess of £300K per annum contributes the 30 per cent suggested by Mr Raab, over £200K, 20 per cent and over £100K, 10 per cent? This seems fair enough to me when we have the outrageous situation where football clubs are placing non-playing staff on furlough to be paid, in effect, by you and me whilst continuing to pay the players mega bucks.
These contributions from the players could be used to pay the non-players, thus easing the pressure on the furlough fund and the other high earners' contributions could fund the overtime of the depleted NHS workers and other emergency services until the end of the crisis when any unspent balance should be divided between them as a bonus for their magnificent efforts.
B Williams, Wordsley
