You work hard all week, or maybe you’re living on a pension, or perhaps unfortunate enough to be unemployed. Whatever it is your weekly or monthly income is limited and sometimes seems to be far too little all too often to pay your bills. Sometimes you look in your pocket and wonder if you can last until next pension or pay-day. One of those increasingly expensive bills of course is the Rates (Council Tax), and it’s a big part of the money flowing out of your pocket.
Let’s just say though that you’re lucky enough to have a job. And let’s say you’re a Home Carer for the Elderly and Disabled. Hard, and sometimes difficult work but it’s a job and it’s also essential work in the community. Then one morning you wake up to a 90 day notice on your doorstep telling you that unless you take a cut in pay and working conditions, perhaps even up to 40% then you’re out of that job. Shocked would be an understatement. Maybe even feeling sick? How are you going to pay your bills now? Your Rates? Rates that are far higher than in neighbouring Authorities. Hundreds of pounds more actually. Ever wondered why? Well read on.
But then you find out slowly and bit by bit that the Managing Director of the company earns more than £100,000 a year; that he is completely protected from any cuts and those managers below him who are faithful followers and favoured by him are also paid huge sums and again are immune from any cuts to their income. They take anything between £43,000 plus and £23,500 plus a year. Something wrong here isn’t there? Shouldn’t everyone suffer?
In fact not only does his income exceed £100,000 a year but every penny of that comes out of public funds, as does the incomes of his faithful nodding followers. Public funds that originated out of your pay packet and bank balance in the first place. So you are taking a huge knock and having to tighten your belt time and again but they are just fine thanks and as ironic as it is it’s actually you who are paying for their privileged existence! Is it me or is there just a touch of mockery and injustice here? Well that’s exactly what happened and is happening in RCT for those workers such as in the example given above and us - the Rates payer.
We have a Council Leader with (so far) 5 jobs, all paid out of our pockets, and his underlings below him again all paid for out of those increasingly empty pockets of ours. The song lyric, “You got to pick a pocket or two boys – you got to pick a pocket or two!” always comes to mind when I look at these huge sums being paid to people who keep banging on about “serving” the public. Well I question who comes first in the queue. Sounds more like self-service to me. Sounds more like a Gravy Train; and it's Gravy for the few but never for you!
For instance ‘Extra Responsibility Payments’ to the Chair of the Environmental Services Scrutiny Committee, (2010/11 - Cllr. Tina Leyshon) amounting to £9,700 and that committee having met only 7 times. That is in effect £1,386 that she received per meeting and that’s just one example. There are far more. Nice work if you can get it eh? No wonder they want to hang on to their jobs.
We are being mugged and that mugging is by Direct Debit every month. Another 5 years of this and more? What will they do next? Company cars for Councillors? Now that sounds silly doesn't it? An outrageous thing to say. Well did you know that this actually happens right now and regularly with at least the Mayor and the Leader of RCT? Not only that but it's a chauffer driven company car may I add. And of course there's a choice. Now shall we take the Volkswagen Phaeton purchased in June 2008 at a price of £19,570 or shall we take the Jaguar XF which was purchased in August 2008 at a price of £23,329? It must be so hard to choose. My heart bleeds. When I was Chair of the Authority in 1999/2000 I used my old Toyota Corolla and drove myself around.
Well 4 years ago I didn't think that we would have a Council Leader with 5 jobs on more than £100,000. I never suspected that they would be paying themselves so richly for being so ordinary. It was beyond me that they would cost us more than £1,300,000 a year to 'employ' as Councillors. And it never entered my head that they would make those least able to pay for cuts actually pay for them whilst completely protecting themselves. Company cars? Doesn't sound so crazy now does it?
Graeme Beard.
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