IT’S often difficult for lay people to understand the complexities of corporate practice and Better Capital’s (BC) cavalier abandonment of City Link is no exception.

On the one hand, BC founder Jon Moulton claims to have lost “a couple of million pounds” on City Link, although this setback doesn’t appear to have inconvenienced him enough to prevent his acquisition of a further £3.8m of BC shares.

On the other hand, the Stock Exchange has confirmed that Moulton locked his £20m investment into secured loans and will expect to get it all back once liquidators Ernst & Young have picked the City Link carcass clean.

To the surprise of no-one, the assets of City Link, which BC bought for £1 last year, will be distributed to priority claimants which will include Moulton’s baby and the liquidators.

While their minds can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that their Christmas and new year has not been ruined by financial disaster, such security is denied to City Link staff and customers.

People who ordered presents for family and friends, with guaranteed but unmet delivery dates, have been left in the lurch, told to go to City Link depots to pick them up.

As disgusting as such corporate disregard for Christmas is, it fades into insignificance alongside the disrespectful manner in which thousands of City Link workers have been treated.

Moulton and company have been consulting insolvency advisers since last month to pull the plug on City Link in a way that maximises benefit to BC shareholders, irrespective of its effect on anyone else.

Over 2,500 directly employed City Link workers will find themselves jobless tomorrow.

It is unlikely that the proceeds from the liquidation of the company will extend to statutory redundancy payments for them after BC and Ernst & Young have wet their beaks.

So that responsibility will fall on the public purse, effectively as a state subsidy to a rich private equity firm.

Moulton claims that City Link has “paid a fortune into the government” through PAYE and VAT, but he doesn’t disclose how BC shareholders have benefited.

City Link subcontractors — mainly self-employed drivers — will find themselves without work immediately and are also owed substantial sums for deliveries undertaken already on behalf of City Link.

And you can bet your life savings that these debts will not be in the form of secured loans.

Business Secretary Vince Cable was told of the impending demise of City Link “some days,” according to Moulton, before December 24 when it went into administration.

Cable has expressed his willingness to meet RMT leader Mick Cash in the new year, but he did precisely nothing after being informed of BC’s plans, which indicates that his offer of talks is more about form than content.

Nevertheless, Cable must be shamed into altering his laissez-faire attitude towards this criminal butchery of jobs.

He must be compelled to convene a meeting without delay between the principal players in this tragedy.

Workers should be more than simply ciphers on a balance sheet to be taken on and ditched without ceremony.

The current vogue for “labour flexibility,” espoused by all major parliamentary parties, underpins this disregard for workers’ rights, especially security of employment.

Not only must everything possible be done to rescue City Link workers’ jobs but the casualised labour market that facilitates such contemptuous treatment of working people must be ended and employment rights guaranteed.