Wednesday 2 June 2010

Gunning (only) for the top is a mistake

I see the new government has published a list of top earners in the civil service, which has provoked squeals of outrage from a new set of troughers. One civil "servant" apparently defended his £280,000 salary as "modest". Well, you fucker, it's my fucking money you're being modest with. Cunt.

But the reality of the problem is exactly the same as the "soak the rich" policy of lefties. There are enough rich and they aren't collectively rich enough to make up the tax burden. In the same way, slashing the pay of the top 1% or 5% or even 10% of civil servants isn't going to do shit.

What needs to go is all the non-jobs -- and that's a lot more difficult. Each one of those diversity outreach co-ordinators is a unionised vote.

While I suppose anything is better than nothing, it's going to take a lot more "stones" to fix the problem than just cracking down on the most egregious bastards.

3 comments:

Onus Probandy said...

You're quite right of course; but I have often thought that in order to start the process of cutting you have to cut at the top.

It's for same reason that we should chase down expense-fiddling MPs -- it's not the money, the money makes (relative to the national budget) bugger all difference. The point is that you must lead from the top.

A bit of pain for those who decide how many new employees, and how much those employees should receive is no bad thing.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Agreed. But somehow I don't think that a former Head of Communications for the newly created Cairngorms National Park shares our views on what exactly constitutes a non-job.

Umbongo said...

MW

Well spotted. In fact he (and the prime minister) have only "worked" in PR . . and the deputy PM has only "worked" in the EU bureaucracy. They all probably consider that those wonderful diversity outreach workers and community organisers actually do have a "real" job.