This letter appears in today’s Guardian:
Feel free to ask me to justify that Nottingham city council pays our chief executive £160,000. She voluntarily took a £20,000-a-year pay cut when she took up the job three years ago. Ask any council leader to justify what their chief executive is paid, but please stop comparing them to the prime minister. The prime minister, in addition to his £142,000 salary, enjoys free housing, free transport and a range of other living-cost benefits. Then there’s his pension. Now that he’s been in office for more than just three months, he’s entitled to half his salary, index-linked, every year for the rest of his life. It’s all part of the package, even though, like Gordon Brown before him, David Cameron has decided to turn it down. Of course, he can afford that kind of grand gesture, since, like 17 of the 22 others in his cabinet, he’s already a millionaire.
Cllr Jon Collins
Leader, Nottingham city council
I’d like to see an estimation of the real salary of the Prime Minister because the anger and hatred being demonstrated by the government on this matter is getting out of hand!
Comments on: "Time to confront the lies being peddled" (4)
Very good points!
To compare wages for different job roles, however similar or not as the case may be, is irrelevant. If someone is deemed capable and able and the wage structure is such then there is no point in comparing. The PM gets a wage and perks, the fact he does not or does take up those perks is irrelevant. The same as chief executives or bankers for that matter. The role and responsibility embedded in that wage is not necessarily fair to our liking.
So for instance, I think bankers get too much for doing too little and chief executives have a far more stressful job, but that’s me. Do they or the bankers get more or less money than the PM? Matters not.The PM has a wage according to the situation as do the other MPs. It is futile to compare jobs and wages this way.
And it matters not who is richer before getting a job. That’s life. If I had saved all my money and then took on a job I would be richer, most likely than a dude coming off of the dole. Should he get more because he is less well off than me? It is how good a job they do that counts. They could be useless and get the high wage or brilliant. Like most things the organisation can sack or higher an incompetent.
The media is blowing things out of hand. Shame on them. But hey look who’s in charge of them
Irrelevant maybe but all too frequent and all too nasty. They start on those with the highest pay and move down. Soon we will all have to defend ourselves if we seek a decent wage yet work in the public sector. Yet they need us to pay tax and to buy things. This sadly is just the start!
Sadly that is the case, to some degree, as I have found they do not ‘start at the top, those with the highest pay’, but sometimes a quater or half way down