Thought your MP was bad?
A typical council pay review meeting
Council chiefs in England and Wales have refused to disclose the salaries of thousands of senior staff, claiming it would lead to a public outcry.
The Government had ordered local authorities to disclose the earnings of all executives after concerns were raised about the size of pay increases granted to council officers.
But local authorities claimed that the pay disclosures would leave their staff vulnerable to reprisals from taxpayers. They argued that officers would be subjected to “personalised attacks and mischief making”.
They said family members might be threatened and officials’ children bullied at school. One local authority even said the proposals represented “a gross invasion of privacy”.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, which uncovered the exchange after a Freedom of Information request, accused council chiefs of resorting to “emotional blackmail” and “scare-mongering”.
Council bosses were expected to list the names and salaries, as well as pensions, perks and pay-offs, of everyone paid more than £50,000 a year. They have since persuaded ministers that they should only have to disclose the full details of staff earning in excess of £150,000 a year. They will list the number of staff and the job titles of those employees earning more than £50,000, but no further details.
I see. Well, no, actually, I don’t.
The first thing I want to ask is: why is any council employee anywhere earning £150,000? What happened to the idea of public service? Has every part of the political system become populated with people are there only for what they can get out of it? They already have incredible job security compared to the private sector, which has been haemorrhaging people for months, while the public sector has been joyfully increasing its count of diversity co-ordinators and equality evaluators and inclusion outreach officers, all on pretty comfortable pay grades. Indeed, we need look no further than the recently announced Troughing Inspection Team for an exemplar of this kind of thing. That hoary old chestnut about having to “compete with the private sector for the best people” is patently a load of old cobblers: I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of this, either in the form of businesses struggling to attract good people or councils and government delivering anything like a better service!
But it’s quite clear to me what’s going on here: the people above £150,000 have all got their kids in a private school and live in a nice secure home in a nice village far away from those oiky proles. Name and shame? Don’t be silly, dear boy. We’ll have a good laugh about it at the next dinner party! Those above £50,000 on the other hand, may not quite be able to get the children out of harm’s way and they probably live among those oiky proles. Oiky proles who will have lost their jobs or will know people who have lost their jobs and will be wondering just how it’s possible that their taxes are keeping their council-employee friends’ mortgages paid when they can’t afford to pay their own. They may well look at their Tesco Value shopping bags in their own recycling bin and the Waitrose bags in their neighbour’s.
And they may get very, very angry indeed.
Just to make things even worse, there are 646 MPs. There are something like 10,000 councillors. And those won’t be the only candidates for earnings above £50,000. As an example, it took me 30 seconds to find a council job for £100,000 – a school headteacher. So, there are going to be thousands of people, all comfortably ensconced in the top 1% of earners in this country … on your “dime”!
But then you have to consider one more issue: if these people are worth the money, if they’re delivering the service levels that justify the money, then no reasonable person will begrudge you that money. It’s only if these people are being egregiously overpaid that they would have any cause to worry. So I say to local and central government employees: open your books! Show us who is highly paid! The quality of your services should mean that there would be no qualms about how much these people are paid.
IF YOU’VE NOTHING TO HIDE, YOU’VE NOTHING TO FEAR
-
1
February 18, 2010 at 08:44 -
“Has every part of the political system become populated with people who are there only for what they can get out of it?”
Rhetorical question, right?
-
2
February 18, 2010 at 08:51 -
These people are everywhere, in government:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7031402.ece
in councils, in organisations and in our locales ….. I may tell of a local, rich, tax evading landowner ….. they are everywhere … at the same time a local hospital is closing several hundred more beds but the PCT remains intact – soon they’ll have no services to manage!!
-
3
February 18, 2010 at 09:19 -
Actually, they do have something to fear: the public wondering what they do all day.
-
4
February 18, 2010 at 09:23 -
I suppose you’ll go on to say you have worked with many public servants and none of them do a job anything nearly worth
-
5
February 18, 2010 at 09:26 -
That report points out that the salaries of Andrea Hill and John Foster were disclosed last year.
Are they still alive and healthy? Their children unbullied?
If so, no excuses!
-
6
February 18, 2010 at 09:28 -
couldn’t agree more Thaddeus.
i put the demise of my native land (not UK obviously) to the moment they started paying politicians. before this we were run by individuals who had been successful, retired and wanted to serve the community (obviously the odd power-hungry individual). they were used to running businesses, working to deadlines and dealing with staff and laws.
once it became a paid job it became “a job” and many who stood for election saw it as the best, highest paying job they could get. from then on there was a complete disconnect between the state and reality as “professional” politicians and the like went down the typical path of bringing in laws for the sake of doing things and in order to justify the ir existence.
this seems much the same with council officials in the uk – there seems to be a horrible creeping addiction to european style official bureaucracy that is directly linked to the end of “public service” and the advent of “political career”.
-
7
February 18, 2010 at 09:29 -
Also, the Tory mouthpiece, Caroline Spelman, has a bit of a cheek raising this when one of the councils squealing loudest is Tory-controlled Wandsworth…
They really do think we are all too stupid to see through them, don’t they?
-
8
February 18, 2010 at 09:51 -
just in from the bread shop
whilst there the woman serving told me of how a man walked in her shop the other day, without making any request for bread asked ‘ do you know who I am?’ – puzzled she said no – his response was ‘ I’m your local councillor’ and he walked out – arrogance and position (especially with no talent) do not make good bedfellows
-
9
February 18, 2010 at 10:08 -
These people work for us we pay their wages we have every right to know how our money is wasted.
-
10
February 18, 2010 at 10:23 -
Just the thin edge of the wedge I fear. I recently moved from a Council that has a lovely building (HQ) surrounded by well kept gardens.
They decided that it was time to move to a better building located alongside the Thames.
When asked by a local rag, “Why the move?”, one of the head honchos let slip that “it wanted somewhere nice for the staff to look out of the windows”.Local outcry, plan dropped.
-
11
February 18, 2010 at 10:53 -
I love the ‘have to compete with the private sector for the best’.
Whilst unemployed last year I applied for many ‘government’ jobs. Every single one that deigned to reply rejected my application stating stating ‘no direct government experience’.
Hmm.
-
12
February 18, 2010 at 11:22 -
Big round of applause for highlighting this issue.
Councils always cry that the penalties for parking, dropped litter and license fees for all manner of activities etc isn’t about raising money… except it is and now we know where vast quantities of it is spent too. Disgraceful!
-
13
February 18, 2010 at 11:28 -
the scary thing is Cameron’s suggestion of giving councils even more power.
I’m not keen on this idea and would rather suggest they be stripped of all bar about 6 staff to answer the telephones and deal speedily and efficiently and COURTEOUSLY with our calls.
otherwise they can fuck off
-
14
February 18, 2010 at 12:10 -
To an extent, we are all to blame. We voted for Assemblies/Parliaments for Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland. Did that mean fewer politicians and their attendant staff, civil servants etc, at Westminster? Yes, I am being silly; as usual, it was more jobs for the boys, with no noticeable improvement in the lives of the rest of us. Who thinks we ought to have a separate Assembly for England, to complete the set? Think carefully – once these people establish themselves, they are, like HIV, very difficult to get rid of, and they are very costly to the host body. And once you’re asked to vote on whether you want your own Assembly, you tend to keep getting more opportunities to vote until you give the “right” answer. You’ll never be asked to vote on whether you want to get rid of them!
-
15
February 18, 2010 at 14:49 -
Visit http://www.NoCouncilTax.com and learn how to stop paying LAWFULLY
-
16
February 18, 2010 at 15:55 -
What ever happened to public service ethos ?
What indeed. Perhaps after 20 or so years of constant slagging off by people like you, it has died.
-
17
February 18, 2010 at 16:04
-
-
18
February 18, 2010 at 17:32 -
Plain Jane
I don’t see you answering your question in any sort of rational or valid way – sounds like the usual bureaucratic response – what’s new – it’s always somebody else’s fault isn’t it???
-
19
February 18, 2010 at 17:50 -
Plain Jane,
I joined the RAF to serve Queen and Country – I was young and naive, but always believed, as all those in the Armed Forces do, of the service first.
Did you?
-
20
February 18, 2010 at 22:13 -
Time for a Council Tax revolt I feel, cut these troughers off at the source.
-
21
February 18, 2010 at 23:16 -
Congrats to Plain Jane on one of the worst responses I have seen on this blog.
A Brigadier in the army is liable to of spend a good 15 years with his life literally at the disposal of others. Pay?
-
22
February 21, 2010 at 03:59 -
“20 years of being slagged off”?
Huh? Perhaps if you’d spent the last 20 years doing a better f***ing job, funded by my s****ing hard earned money, you wouldn’t have had to spend the time BEING slagged off.
I tell you what has died. My f***ing patience. But then died 20 or so years ago…… what a stupid comment.
I’m pretty narked Can you tell?
{ 22 comments }