Under the Labour Government (1997-2010) 13 of the worst years in decades, public sector non-jobs have multiplied by a ridiculous amount with equally outrageous pay and perks to go with it. It was reported on the news today that around 800 ‘top’ civil servants are earning over £150k, which is more than the rather modest £142k claimed by the PM. David Cameron is Prime Minister and love him or loathe him, he is charged with the very difficult and arduous task of running the country and cleaning up the mess left by 13 years of Labour incompetence. So it is only fair he receives a fair wage for doing so.
So why do we have 800 lesser mortals earning so much more than him and their massive salaries coming out of OUR money? There is a Council Chief Executive in Kent earning £240k, what in the name of god justifies such a salary for running one paltry local authority? And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
I was delighted to hear today new Communities Secretary Eric Pickles vetoed a £240k pay package for a new head of The Audit Commission. I sincerely hope this will just be the first of many such instances. The Chief Executive of Royal Mail gets £1.3m and the Network Rail boss gets £947k. This is absolutely insane, even if we were not coming out of the worst recession for decades, there is no justification for these ludicrous salaries. I think the PM should be the top public sector earner without question, there is no logical reason for justification for any public sector worker to earn more than the PM.
In the private sector I don’t care how much they pay people, its their money and they decide how to spend it. But in the PUBLIC sector, it is OUR money and we should have a say in how it is being spent and cut out such unnecessary wastage. I would love to challenge a Labour supporter to try and justify these stupid salaries and perks because I would love to watch them squirm offering no sensible answer because they will never admit when Labour is wrong.
I sincerely hope the new coalition Government gets to the bottom of these ridiculous salaries and puts a stop to this once and for all. I hope the publication of salaries is just the beginning.
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Here Here! and thats coming form a public sector worker on 20k!
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I agree no boss of any national public sector organisation should be paid more than the Prime Minister. Also no boss of any local public sector organisation (Council/NHS trust) should be paid more than a backbench MP.
No ifs or buts the new Coalition Government should force that through ASAP.
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They always rebuke this with the age old argument that they could earn more in the private sector and that if you want the best people you have to be prepared to pay for them.
Personally I think it’s slightly unfair to pick on these people because it’s not their fault in most cases that they are paid an obscene amount. What is unveiling their salaries going to achieve, other than to make people angry about it and blame the previous government? Perhaps that’s the methodology behind it.
Just goes to show that once you’re part of that inner circle of cronies, the sky’s the limit.
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I see where you’re coming from but why should the Chief Executive of one single local council like useless Steve Weaver get paid on the same pay scale as the man who runs the whole country. If revealing their obscene salaries will have people blaming Liebour then good, its about time they got a taste of their own medicine for once. Because in a lot of cases we are paying sky high amounts for jobsworths like Steve Broomhead who are useless at their jobs when I a public-sector worker on £21k would happily do his job for £50k, then again I would rather scrap the pointless NWDA altogether. Its like the greedy and selfish BA cabin crew instead of whining how ‘hard’ they have it they should be grateful to have such well-paid cushy jobs. I say the same for these people.
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Depends what Steve Weaver’s job entails I guess.
In itself, I’m not bothered about his job paying £150k + monster pension. The problem I have is that he’s not very good at it.
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I agree to an extent he is totally useless at his job whatever he is even supposed to do. But even if he was good at it I don’t feel it is worth £150k and all those perks, a town hall/county hall chief executive should not outearn the PM, I think this is totally wrong.
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I believe Blackpool council would be better without a chief executive,period.
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If they could earn more in the private sector most of these people would be doing so. Those who are capable are working as MPs and in civil service posts to get influence prior to going back to earn millions more as a result. Those that aren’t stay there and leach the system for life.
Are you suggesting that Phil Woodward (other useless council chief execs are available) would be able to get a £20k job in the private sector? From the evidence I have severe doubts yet he’s on 5 times that.
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Hey hang on a sec, I wasn’t suggesting that these people are worth the money they are paid!
What I was suggesting, though, is that they are just people that applied for a job that was paying a monster salary and were lucky enough to get the job.
It’s not their fault that someone in the government, when publishing the job, decided that it was worth X hundreds of thousands of pounds per year plus pension and perks.
None of them will be getting a pay cut, nor will they be made redundant, so I am wondering what the point in exposing top earners in this way is.
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Maybe it will motivate them to try to deserve their salaries? Or face public wrath if they don’t. We all know how much the MPs are getting – so why not other top jobs paid entirely out of taxpayer money?
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I’m not against the unveiling of these figures, I’m just wondering whether it’s more intended to expose Tony and Gordon’s spendathon than anything constructive.
Not that I have anything against exposing Labour’s malpractice, but when all is said and done, these buffoons will still be sat there on their big numbers.
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All those with salaries greater than the PM should all be made to account for their salaries;at public enquiries.
Whats happened to Howard Bernstein, what has he done? and how much was he on?
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£25k a year for Blackpool’s thingy and that was for 1 day a week. The Manchester regeneration thing that he did netted him six figures I believe.
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thats 480 quid a day!!!!!
at that rate, thats over 175 grand a year,now what has he done for Blackpool?
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Yes, we paid him an awful lot of money and yet he never really seemed to achieve anything. I would say why could we have poached him off MCC but then that would contradict what I said before because he would be demanding a six-figure package. If I had my way I would ditch Weaver and Cavill and replace them with people who actually believe in Blackpool and would accept a paycut.
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Ultimately it is the the people who decide to pay these people these sums of money who MUST be brought to account…not the recipients.
Its worth pointing out, the recession was caused by people who get more in a single bonus than these idiots get in a year, for simply gambling with hedge funds etc.
In addition, what about the complaints about FOOTBALLERS? People are quite happy to pay for tickets to matches to pay footballers(I have opened a can of worms here, lol)
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Good point Harold, I can complain about the obscene earnings of greedy nancyboy footballers because I don’t pay to watch football, I am not really a fan of it. I am glad BFC are in the premiership but it doesn’t really change my views on the game itself.
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People rightly complain about Weaver et al,but I hear none about footballers, some of whom are on money that belongs in fairytale books.
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It certainly does belong in fairytales, £100k a week for kicking a ball around and they are living in massive country mansions showing off their Aston Martins and Bentleys. I don’t feel they deserve a penny of it. Football should not be called the ‘beautiful game’ it should be known more aptly as the ‘greedy game’. Most modern premiership footballers are not proper sportsmen, just money grabbers. It really gets on my nerves in the World Cup when people call them ‘patriots’, I mean Wayne Rooney is such a ‘patriot’ he never even sings the national anthem. Football has been corrupted by money and greed.
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here here!
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Footballers aren’t public servants though, they’re sportsmen.
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Football is self sufficient. People will pay their Sky subscription and pay their massive ticket prices and so the best players can still be paid monster money.
Yes the amounts are massive, but what about the likes of tennis players like Andy Murray, golfers, Formula 1 drivers, etc. They all rake in millions and millions per year.
Is this a problem in itself? No.
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I mean how far do you want to go with it, next we could pick up on pop stars, authors, you name it.
Even cheap manufactured slapper Cheryl Cole has £14m quid according to the papers. That’s not far off what Steven Gerrard’s got, and he’s older.
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Interesting points Phil, society has a tendency to decry those that serve it, but adores those who serve themselves.
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I don’t care what footballers and pop stars earn – because they are paid out of what people voluntarily pay. It’s an entirely different scenario to make people pay taxes and then waste that money on useless people who aren’t worth it. If you directly employ someone they have to be up to the job to keep it. When you pay taxes, you have no power to do anything about useless people because it’s very hard as an individual (no matter how well organised etc.) to join together with enough others to do something about it even if you all think the same thing.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10202016.stm
The office of fair trading guy is on double the PM, what an ironic job title, lol.
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