Salary

I think few of those who are politically and socially savvy missed the Panorama show a couple of days ago. Lets consider some of the main findings.

• 9,000 public sector employees earn more than the PM (who gets £142,500).
• 100,000 public sector employees earn more than £100,000.

Russia is today planning to slash over 100,000 public sector workers over the coming three years. I do not propose we mimic them exactly, we should fire more. What more importantly should be considered is using the PM's pay as the benchmark to which all other salaries are levied. If we do the maths on the above numbers we will reach a final which is a massive understatement of the true cost of public sector pay. Remember these are not private sector figures these are public which means that you and I pay for them. Remember further all the rhetoric and hot-air the bankers have been getting from populist-politicians for paying their employees too much, even though the taxes generated from that sector alone pretty much pay for the Armed Forces budget in itself.

• 9,000 x £142,500 = £1,282,500,000
• 100,000 x £100,000 = 10,000,000,000

Again this is an understatement of the true cost, for the true cost is much larger, but it would appear that we are paying salaries to a tiny proportion of the public sector in the excess of £11,3bn. Naturally some of the employees do qualify for such a salary for some of them do a mighty fine job even though they rarely get credit for it (as you probably know the MSM only highlights failure). But does it really make financial sense to pay two GPs 475,500 a year each?

Nobody denies that many senior public sector jobs, especially in medicine, are difficult and require skills that need to be properly remunerated. But the same is not true for managers; and a system that generously rewards failure can never be justified.