PUBLIC SECTOR PAY

While most of us are having to commit to a belt tightening exercise that extends far beyond what a strictest diet might achieve for our waistlines, the fat cats, particularly those in the higher echelons of public service are not suffering one jot. To the contrary most are seeing their wage packets increase at the expense of the rest of us.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalists in collaboration with the BBC's Panorama programme has revealed that more than 38,000 government workers are being paid more than £100,000 and 9,187 of them earn more than the Prime Minister. Of these 6,500 NHS employees are paid more than David Cameron. Even the Government are said to have been shocked by this because they had estimated that the number earning in the £100,00 bracket to be half this. Of these only one in five is a woman which knocks any suggestion of pay equality at a senior level. The shocking truth is that in schools and universities there are six men for every woman in the £100,000 pay sector and only one in eight women earns £200,000 or more. The Judiciary is even worse where pay equality at the highest level reduces to one women in eighteen.

When Labour came to power the number of public sector workers amounted to around 5.2 million people but this rose to 6.1 million over the last 13 years. This increase has also witnessed a sharp increase in the Government's wage bill to £157.7 billion with the highest paid three per cent of public sector workers seeing a 64 per cent rise in salary. Britain's highest paid public servants are costing the taxpayer £5bn a year.

The highest paid public worker is Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC who earns £838,000, but many GPs are earning more than the best surgeons and medical specialists.  Ten general practitioners earn more than £300,000 with 1,145 of them earning more than Cameron. The highest paid of these works at Hillingdon and earns £475,500. The NHS is extremely protective about revealing the identities of their highest paid GPs but as they are paid for out of the public purse shouldn't we have a right to know? The Heart of Birmingham Primary Care Trust accounts for four of those in the top ten with a combined wage bill of £1.5 million.  

In education, 385 teachers are paid more than £100,000 a year, 17 of them more than the Prime Minister and one (not named) is paid £232,500 by Essex County Council.  With salaries such as these the National Secretary for Public Services at the GMB Union is fully justified in saying: "The fact that a head teacher could be paid so much while other staff in the school are paid so little is causing our members working in schools to feel this is outrageous."

In the nation's town halls 2,000 top paid executives earn a combined salary of a quarter of a billion pounds and 1,500 council chiefs earn more than David Cameron. Wandsworth, hardly an affluent area of London, spends almost £5 million on just 36 employees and their chief executive, Gerald Jones is said to be the country's highest paid local government worker with a salary of £299,925 including £54,000 in bonuses.  Is it really any wonder that the country is in a state?

What really puts the higher public sector salaries into perspective is that the average UK salary is  £22,405 but tens of thousands of employees earn far less than this especially those that work in menial jobs for local authorities.

SELLING THE NATION’S GOLD

It has been said by his supporters that Gordon Brown was an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer. Although I am no economist, even I can appreciate that during his reign at 11 Downing Street he committed one of the most grotesque financial blunders of all time that cost the country around £2 billion at the time, but more than £12.5 billion when more recent gold prices are taken into consideration. By committing this single act, Brown blotted his copy book so badly that it greatly reduced his credibility in the eyes of the British public leaving many doubting his ability.

Brown’s cut price sale of 395 tonnes of gold, half the nation’s reserves, has to go down as one of the his most amazing gaffes and this happened before he went on to blow an unbelievable amount of taxpayers’ money. Britain had held 715 tons of gold since the 1970s and until Brown became Chancellor, no previous administration had ever considered parting with it. The crime of selling these precious reserves at the worst possible price might have been considered treasonable centuries ago, but an even bigger error in his judgement came when he announced his plans to the world prior to selling, thus causing a dramatic drop in the market price. Experts were stunned by Brown’s decision to sell it by auction instead of keeping his intention quiet and disposing of it gradually on the open market. When it was sold, the gold price was at a 20-year low and it fetched only an average price of $275 an ounce across seventeen auctions. In May 2007 gold prices had risen to $685 an ounce and by 11 January 2010 had reached $1152.70 and on 16 January 2011 it was at $1359.35 an ounce (according to www.goldprice.org). Did Brown merely have a mad moment by making a gross error of judgement; or was this some way of preparing us for the destruction of our economy that was to follow once he became Prime Minster? We may never know because Gordon Brown is never likely to admit to anything nor is he ever likely to apologise to British taxpayers for the mess he got this country into by overspending. In any event the debacle will forever be known as ‘Browns Bottom’ and that is putting it politely.