This is a report on the impact of introducing quotas for women as board members for companies in Norway.

Some of the impact includes:

Companies leaving the enforcing countries jurisdiction.
Companies de-listing
Companies operating performance reducing and costs increasing.
Companies increasing their amount of debt and risk/aquicsitions

Correlation does not equal causation, and the relative inexperience of new board members rather than their sex could be a significant factor.

Scandinavia may be ‘leading the way’ as Cameron/Osbourne have stated, but could be leading to reduced overall company performance. Norway has significant oil reserves and maybe can afford to carry out social experiments on their companies in this manner, the UK with its debt, not so much.

Lets look at more data before we implement anything here in the UK ,no matter how intially attractive it sounds to the average women voter.

Meanwhile on your forthcoming 5% vote you can get back to worrying about bus stops and cracked paving stones.

It is the smaller and medium sized funds who tend not to take voting seriously. Largely this is because the Trustees do not see it as a major priority. It is up to the members of these schemes to challenge the Trustees regarding their policy towards socially responsible investment. At the same time the Trustees have a duty to be transparent in providing detailed information on this issue to their members. Unfortunately shareholders are a disparate bunch of people so pressure needs to come from pension scheme members,life policy holders and unit trust investors etc. in order to achieve a concerted effort Investment managers have to do what their clients tell them otherwise they will lose the business.

I don't believe fund managers 'come from the same tribe as company directors'. The only objectives of fund managers is to make their funds perform well and to achieve their clients' objectives (although they are woefully bad at this). So don't blame the fund managers. There is no need to restructure anything – just get pension fund trustees to take their existing responsibilities seriously.

Getting back to Lynne's original point, it is certainly worth while having staff and pensioners represented on pension fund boards

What is to be done?

In my opinion, investment carries a moral responsibility, and the small investors (us) should be exerting more control. My middle class friends are very ready to criticise pharmaceutical, tobacco, defence etc. companies but in fact most of them are content to let others control their pensions.

Is their some way we could restructure things so the pension funds would pass the voting rights through to their investors?

Bonuses and high salaries for above average performance are fine but there should also be a downside and there should never be rewards for failure. Also, bonuses based on share price rises such as that just announced for the new CEO of RBS are inappropriate since share prices are not only subject to external influences such as the general performance of the stock market but share prices and earnings per share can easily be manipulated.

Now such an approach will not suit every plc immediately but the benefits are immense: involvement "empowers", it strengthens the bond between the boardroom and the workfoce and implementation of change would meet less resistance simply because everyone was involved.

Face it: what you're demanding is the power to appoint favoured groups to private and salaried positions against the will of those who run them. That is more or less the definition of tyranny. Let those who want to be directors, start their own companies.

We need an end to all this system of discrimination, for that is what this "diversity" word now means; discrimination in favour of some (favoured) groups against others; those in power abusing their power to interfere with others for ideological reasons.

I note that the Orwellian "Equality and Human Rights Commission" today threatens the BNP unless it allows immigrants as members. No sane immigrant and honest immigrant would *want* to be a member; so this is merely malicious interference with an elected political party for reasons of hate. Do you endorse this abuse? Or is your principle merely "if it feels good, do it", in the belief that you won't get treated the same way yourself?

We need an end to all this evil interference in the lives of ordinary people.

Being a director of a plc requires a very specific skill set. I would no more trust an "ordinary" member of BT plc's workforce, for example, to be able to contribute at Board level than I would trust BT's CEO to install my broadband properly.

I think that you are onto something with your diagnosis: there is an overly comfortable remuneration system, particularly in the banks. However, I don't think much of the treatment prescribed.