Two stories form today’s Evening Standard.
Stuart Rose, the new boss of troubled British retail institution Marks & Spencer, has been lured to the embattled high street giant with a "golden hello" of £1.25 million, together with an annual salary of £850,000.
The Standard says that on top of this he could receive as much as four times his salary in share options.
The ousted M&S chief executive, Roger Holmes, is is in line for a pay-off of £600,000 while departing chairman Luc Vendevelde is set to receive around £450,000.
Meanwhile, a hundred miles or so to the north of London, a tribunal in Leicester heard that a man with learning difficulties was paid 29p-an-hour for stacking shelves in a cash-and-carry, later increased to 96p an hour.
That equates to about £2,000 a year.
He was awarded £5,000 in compensation which his former employer at least had the grace to pay up without a fuss.
M&S chief's £1m golden hello
That really sucks! I am aware of this gap in salary since I am a returning to the workforce after almost 2 years of self-imposed hiatus. The salary is apalling and you read in the papers ALMOST EVERYDAY about these outrageous salary of others....