http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7268827/Local-authorities-are-fat-cat-fiefdoms.html
Local authorities are fat-cat fiefdoms
Councils have declined in power but more and more of their officers earn gold-plated salaries that they are desperate to keep secret. Andrew Gilligan reports.
By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 7:05AM GMT 19 Feb 2010
Comments 78
If anyone doubted that Britain’s senior local government managers are the new Bourbons, let me tell you that Peter Hendy, the head of Transport for London, has recently got himself a personal coat of arms.
The College of Arms, which drew it up, wouldn’t say what.
Sir Peter’s crest of state consists of – perhaps his best-loved contribution to society, the “bendy bus rampant” with “faredodger cluster” (to adopt the language of the heraldry trade). Nor would it disclose his personal motto. (What is the Latin for “we regret the disruption to your service?&rdquo😉
But it is surely right that the country’s chief bus baron should join the ranks of the aristocracy – on earnings grounds, at least. Last year, Mr Hendy collected a base salary and bonus of £494,884, or £9,500 a week. That was more than twice as much as the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair. Some may feel this unfair – but how can such trivial matters as protecting Britain from terrorist attack compare with the life-and-death responsibilities of maintaining the Oyster Card?
As The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday, council bosses are refusing to disclose the salaries of thousands of their senior staff because they fear “mischief making” by the press. They fear right.
Local government, with Mr Hendy as a prime example, shows how, in the public sector, perhaps even more than in the private, senior rewards seem to have lost all relationship with the service performed and the value obtained.
TfL is no more than a municipal transport organisation, albeit a large and important one – yet its latest accounts show that 231 of its staff were paid more than £100,000 last year. The Treasury, which is responsible for the entire British economy, had 21.
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