"As for ‘bonus packages’. Never understood why people get a bonus for doing their job."

We can agree there, which is why my bins rarely get emptied in January as our binmen still believe in getting tips.

Bonuses are a bit of a misnomer and are often both contractual and performance related, so in theory a senior employee will sacrifice an element of fixed salary in exchange for a variable amount based on performance: which may end up greater, or lesser, than the sacrificed amount.

All too often the publicity focussed on the performance related pay as if it's on top of a market rate of pay, which leads to false conclusions.

Bonuses just for turning up are clearly wrong but performance incentivised pay based on hitting targets (often sales or cost savings) do make sense