“Sorry - I meant to say council. Got carried away and in front of myself.”

“ex councillor worker, my house - very very cute indeed!”

“A company discovered they were losing 235k worth of stock so they employ a night watchman on 15k a year. Obviously the night watchman needs a supervisor, so one is hired at 30k a year. The supervisor needs a manager to make sure he is looking after the watchman, so one is hired at 45k a year. As there are now 3 workers a human resources manager has to be hired at 60k a year, to make sure that the manager is managing the supervisor. Then a CEO is hired to make sure the HR manager is doing his job properly at 100k a year. However it is then realised that its now costing 250k to save 235k so the night watchman is fired!!!

Sound familiar??”

“Steve,

Having worked in the private sector, in manufacturing, for the last 44 years, I cannot agree with your facile analysis. In both the public and the private sectors there has been a remorseless rise in overheads and a decline in productivity, coupled to an exponential increase in remuneration at the top, with no measurable improvement in outcome. From your figures on turnover and staff levels, I calculate that you have £200k turnover per employee. This means that business is either in the retail sector, with very high gross margins, or a law firm!
You might care to consider how that gross margin is generated - either by low prices paid to your suppliers, or excessive prices paid by your customers. The private sector is full of companies pushing junk products at vastly inflated prices, now I cannot call that efficient! Neither is it capitalism, except in terms of the perverted form exported from America, for which we have all just been presented the bill for £8000 per head. I see little or no difference between management in the public and private business sectors - both have behaved in a monumentaly greedy and selfish way since the 1980s, with a complete disregard for the fortunes of their employees. And as for transparency and shareholder power in the private sector - have you ever been to a shareholders meeting and seen the total disregard of the directors with respect to critisism from the floor? I have in the case of the lamented Marconi company, where the board had turned a £4.5bn cash mountain into £6.5bn of debt!
Before the private sector criticises the public sector performance too closely, it needs to deal with the stench from its own Aegean stables - now that is a Herculean task!”

“""my company has a turn over of £12bn and employs over 60k staff. "

Clearly not too busy if has time to rubbish comments from a concerned former elected member who gave up his free time for 10 years and an employee for 33 years.

Methinks its is the non-domiciled Lord A pouring millions into Cameron's coffers to help his takeover bid from Belize to run UK ltd.”

“The argument of pay comparisons with the private sector cannot be made. Within the private sector, where you are responsible to your shareholders to return the best profit margin, you would not be in your job long if you ran your company with the excesses and waste that are prevelant in local government. Whilst it is arguable that the private sector pays a great deal of money to top executives, where they fail to deliver or mismanage the company, they are not in post for long. Also, the private sector argument is flawed, in that those employed on higher salaries in the private sector are able to enjoy those salaries only through the revenue they have created for the company (with the exception of the banking sector of course). As local government is not a revenue generating body and funded through taxation, the salaries should be capped at a reasonable rate. Whilst I appreciate the majority of salaries are much lower than the executives, there must be a sensible pay structure that rewards ability, responsibility and accountability. Therefore, someone working in a call centre - whilst they should be paid a good living wage - shouldn't earn nearly as much as those responsible for multi-million pound budgets and hundreds, if not thousands of members of staff.

Robin Renshaw's argument that this is the provenance of a Tory council and labour would fight these salaries is absolutely ridiculous. That's just the political ranting of someone who didn't get into office in this area; this problem is echoed in all councils around the country, labour, lib dim, tory and independant.

The problem lies with the lack of accountability of local and central government. I work in the private sector; where we must operate an open book accounting system with our customers, who can see our revenue, profit and expenses. If we were to pay excessively high salaries, or waste money on failed projects, we would be directly accountable and could lose a lot of business.

I'm not in a position to scrutinise government expenditure and fully understand it, although I am employed in a very responsible position, including holding a budget; therefore don't feel qualified to be overly critical of expenditure. I do, however, feel that local government budgets and accounts should be more transparent so that bodies, such as the Taxpayer's alliance and suitably qualified proffesionals, such as accounting firms, can review them and identify wastage and areas for savings. It's easy for the person in the street to criticise, but without information on the larger picture such as required accruals for long running projects and appropriate comparisons within the private sector, this is all hot air.

And it must be appropriate! For example, the top boss of a local firm may take home £65k a year and feel the council pays too much, but the local firm may only have a turn over of £700k a year and employ 50 staff; whereas my company has a turn over of £12bn and employs over 60k staff. It's all about finding the appropriate comparison and being able to understand the argument.”

“Thanks for that nugget of wisdom Colin Mair - as prospective English Democrat MP I'm sure you've got the best interests of the working man (front line or not) at heart - especially as you are such an ardent follower of Maggie Thatcher, that well known lover of working people. But then you were a member of the Young Socialists as well? What's it to be Colin? Scooby Doo is less confused than you.”

“I think that the term "officials" means that the Echo doesn't have a quote at all.”

“It's interesting how "officials" are defending this outrageously high salary.

Not "Leader of the Council", not "leading Councillors", but "officials".”

“I¿m sorry but if people are annoyed at the features and benefits associated with their job in comparison to that of another's, then they themselves have to do something about it if they want more from life; it doesn¿t land at your feet. All too often people want it all their own way but are not willing to do something about it. I know people don¿t like it, but it¿s not a fair day's wages for a fair day's work anymore, it¿s dog-eat-dog and people have to up their game.”