Someone please tell me this is a joke?

[Raj]

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Public-fury-100K-mayor/story-13874371-detail/story.html

Im not much for politics and all that shite but this HAS to be a fcuking joke surely???

How can ANYONE justify it when the country is in the shit

[jonthefox]

In my opinion , all politicians and businessmen alike bleet on about how we live in 'austere' times.

In theory , thier only interested in lining thier own pockets. I ve just had to book the 30th of this month off because my sons school is striking.

Apparently 35k a year, 14 weeks holiday and a final salary scheme isnt enough.

[pSinatra]

Sir Peter's deputy, Rory Palmer, was due to see his pay increase by £41,000 – from £34,000 to £75,000 – while the six assistant mayors could have seen their annual income rise from £26,000 to £40,000.

Shocking!!

As if £100k isn't bad enough, more than 100% pay rise for his deputy & what the hell are 'assistant mayors'??

I'm a council worker & I have had my pay frozen for a number of years now. There is talk of redundancies & if I was to get a pay rise in the not to distant future, I would be lucky to get 1% the way things are.

I don't suppose it's just a council problem, but the whole structure is far too top heavy. Too many managers earning stupid amounts of money, with little productivity, with made-up job titles that have little meaning. When it comes to saving money............it's the plebs at the bottom of the chain that ultimately pay the price

[General Smuts]

It's funny that his surname is Soulsby because he clearly doesn't have one.

[Guest MattP]

If the people of Leicester were stupid enough to keep on voting for idiots like this they deserve what they get. There were a couple of cracking independent candidates that would of been wonderful mayors.

The old guard must piss themselves behind closed doors.

[davieG]

This was my view when I saw who was on the panel also makes me question who's on all the other so called 'independent panels'.

Mayoral pay review panel's independence questioned

A Leicester city councillor has questioned the independence of a panel that has recommended a £44,000-a-year pay rise for the city's mayor.

Conservative Ross Grant said some panel members had vested interests as they worked closely with Sir Peter Soulsby.

The remuneration panel says the Labour mayor should earn £100,000 a year.

Panel chairman Martin Traynor, of the Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce, said the members were not political and "very much independent".

Decision delayed

Sir Peter, who is Leicester's first directly-elected mayor, said the issue would be decided by the council after a period of public debate - probably in January.

He currently earns £56,000 a year and, under the recommendations, that would increase to £100,000.

Deputy mayor Rory Palmer would see his salary rise from £34,000 to £75,000 and assistant mayors would also get a pay increase.

The panel recommendations had originally been placed on the council agenda for next week.

"It was very clear to me that there was no way councillors should be bounced into taking a decision on this in barely a week," Sir Peter said.

"It is something the public needs to have access to and we can have a debate about and for that reason I've taken it off the agenda."

The panel also includes Dominic Shellard, vice chancellor of De Montfort University; businessman Mike Kapur and Pat Zadora, who works in the charity sector in Derbyshire.

'Very conscious'

Mr Grant said: "I don't want to malign the members of the committee but all of them, in the back of their mind, will have it in place that they have to work with the city mayor.

"If you're the head person of the chamber of commerce or De Montfort University there is so much that you cannot do in this city now without his assistance."

But Mr Traynor said: "We wanted somebody on the panel from the voluntary sector but we were very conscious that a lot of the voluntary sector are directly funded by the city council… so that is why we picked our colleague Pat Zadora from Derbyshire."

He said the panel had looked at the 10 mayoral systems in the UK and others outside the country.

Sir Peter campaigned on a platform to review the role of the city's chief executive and the post was scrapped in August, resulting in savings of £175,000 a year.

[Finnegan]

Whilst I'm not for one moment defending Soulsby's wages, I'd always assumed they were much, much higher than fifty odd grand. When you consider what Sheila Lock was on (174k) it's pretty damn low. I imagine even Andy Keeling earns more than £56k. Hell, I bet our service managers are paid in the fourties and the directors of service must be hitting round about that.

When you consider he's come in to be the top brass, it's actually a little disproportionate.

I should qualify all of that, however, by saying I think it's all crazy money and nobody should be earning hundreds of thousands to do anything - but especially not in a public sector where some of the front line staff are criminally underpaid by comparison.

Edit: According to the BBC in May, Keeling is acting up on £140k p/a. Heh.

[Saxondale]

In fairness to Soulsby, he's saved several times that amount in ousting overpaid unnecessary management in the City Council.

The difference is that he's elected, they are not.

Large salaries in the public sector (particularly councils) is a MASSIVE bug bear of mine - but I'm actually with Soulsby on this one.

Plus, he hasn't accepted it yet - it was the result of an independent review.

[Finnegan]

In fairness to Soulsby, he's saved several times that amount in ousting overpaid unnecessary management in the City Council.

The difference is that he's elected, they are not.

Yes, but it's a little bit counter-productive if you save all that money from over-paid executives only to then give it back to, er, overpaid executives.

[Saxondale]

Yes, but it's a little bit counter-productive if you save all that money from over-paid executives only to then give it back to, er, overpaid executives.

I do agree in principle.

But he's the top dog. I and bet there's people in far less important jobs earning similar amounts.

The job has to be well paid and, when the next election comes around, the public will decide whether he's doing a good enough job to keep it or not.

They should publish a list of all the large salaries in the council - would make interesting reading!

[Raj]

I may have to back track as was it right that even the PM earns less than some BBC execs for tyring to run the country(some may say badly but i aint going there!0

In comparison to some of these fcukwits,for kicking aball around a park

http://www.paywizard.co.uk/main/vip-celebrity-salary/football-players-salary

Soulsbys wages seem peanuts!

perhaps it was just the % increase i found staggering!(or perhaps i read it at 6am ish and was gobsmacked!)

[davieG]

The panel recommending pay rises for the mayor and his team looked as far afield as Germany when deciding how big the wage increases should be.

The four-strong team looked at the salaries of elected mayors around the UK, comparing the sizes of the population in areas and the cash turnover of their councils.

• ​Martin Traynor

[/url]

• •
• •

But because so few towns and cities in the UK are controlled by elected mayors, they had to look to Europe during their study, including Leicester's twin city of Krefeld in Germany.

The panel has recommended boosting Sir Peter Soulsby's pay from £56,000 to £100,000, while his deputy, Rory Palmer, would go from £34,000 up to £75,000.

The six assistant mayors would be paid £40,000, up from £26,000.

The pay report was due to go to the council next week for approval, but has now been delayed, following strong public reaction to the Mercury's story earlier this week.

Chairman of the independent pay panel Martin Traynor said: "There aren't many elected mayors in the UK, so we had to look at examples of elected mayors abroad.

"This was a very in-depth study and I stand by the evidence and reasoning we've put forward.

"We looked at how much an MP earns, how much mayors are paid elsewhere, and the responsibilities of the job before coming up with the recommendations."

Politicians including Sir Peter and Councillor Palmer were called in to meet the panel in September and give their views.

A table of elected mayors was also included in their report (see above).

It shows that the mayor of Doncaster oversees an area with more people than Leicester but takes home £30,000 – less than a third of what the panel has proposed to pay Sir Peter Soulsby.

The London Borough of Newham has slightly fewer people than Leicester, although its council's turnover is significantly higher. Their mayor earns £80,000.

Members of the public are now to be given the chance to view the panel's report and send their views directly to the city mayor.

Sir Peter said he wasn't surprised that the proposals have generated a lot of debate and urged people to send in their views.

"It is vitally important that before councillors take a decision on this, they have a chance to hear what the public have to say about it," he said.

"People can e-mail me or post a letter to me and I'll read every one of them, and I'll be making sure that councillors are fully informed of the views of the people."

City council Unison chief Gary Garner – who backed Sir Peter's mayoral bid in a personal capacity – yesterday spoke out against the proposed rises.

He said: "It's clearly wrong and I'm against it at a time of significant cuts. The scale of the proposed rises isn't acceptable."

To view the report and to find out how to comment, visit:

http://citymayor.leicester.gov.uk/allowances/

Mayor's salaries: Comparison with other areas

Table shows the authority, the population and the leader's salary*

London(Greater London Authority) 7,500,000, £145,350

Doncaster (Metropolitan Borough)286,866, £30,000

Leicester (City Council)279,921, ?

Lewisham (London Borough of ... )248,922, £77,712

Newham (London Borough of ... ) 243,891, £80,695

Tower Hamlets (London Borough of ... )242,000, £75,065

Hackney (London Borough of ... )216,000, £75,846

North Tyneside (Metropolitan Borough of ...)191,659 £61,734

Bedford (Borough of ...) 147,911, £60,000

Middlesbrough (Borough Council)142,400, £67,429

Torbay (Borough Council)129,706, £62,091

Mansfield (District Council)98,700, £53,150

Hartlepool (Borough of ...)88,611, £64,161

Watford (Borough Council) 79,726, £65,738

* Total received – includes any basic allowance but minus subsistence.

[Finnegan]

They should publish a list of all the large salaries in the council - would make interesting reading!

I think you'll find it'd actually make very boring reading. There's an enormous drop off after the chief execs, you get down to the directors who probably are on healthy money but I would imagine you're talking smaller sums than Soulsby's current wage. Their private sector equivalents are likely to be on higher wages.

Then down from the directors you've got service managers, departmental managers below them, all on just normal wages.

There was a list in the mercury, though, of six figure salaries in Leicestershire and some of them were appalling. You had (at the time) Sheila Lock on there and her fellow executives from Leicester Uni, the Royal Infirmary, Leics County Council, etc - all on horrendously high, six-figure wages whilst front line workers were being released left, right and centre under "cost cutting" reviews.

Sickening.

[Babylon]

Did he know what the wages were when he went for the job. Of course he did, so tuff shit.

I wish the independent panel could come and look at my wages.

[Saxondale]

Here's my manifesto for local authority reform:

* Create a uniform system across the country of single tier administration ie. unitary authorities (as in Leicester City Council). This would mean either devolving the power to borough / district councils from the county councils or vice versa - I'm yet to decide!

* All councils must be overseen by a directly elected mayor-type figure.

* A cap on salaries at £50k.

* Do away with the absolutely absurd 'use it or lose it' system of budget allocation and financially reward departmental managers for achieving KPIs UNDER budget.

* Reduce the number of wards / councillors.

* Outsource as many functions as is practical to the private sector, all must be put to CCT every year.

[Finnegan]

Hello David Cameron.

[Saxondale]

Hello David Cameron.

My cuts would be far deeper!

I think much of the public sector has forgotten that it is their duty to serve the public as efficiently and effectively as possible. Anything else is just Marxism.

[Finnegan]

My cuts would be far deeper!

I think much of the public sector has forgotten that it is their duty to serve the public as efficiently and effectively as possible. Anything else is just Marxism.

It is the duty of the government to serve the public as efficiently and effectively as possible.

It's the duty of the public sector to give back to local communities as much as they possibly can within the limits of the budgets they're set.

[Saxondale]

It is the duty of the government to serve the public as efficiently and effectively as possible.

It's the duty of the public sector to give back to local communities as much as they possibly can within the limits of the budgets they're set.

The problem is the way the budgets are set.

I've heard stories (which, admittedly, I can't substantiate but I believe them to be true) of councils doing things like hiring a fleet of vans and sitting them in a yard for several months towards the end of the financial year just to use up the budget and ensure they get a bigger alllocation the next year.

That isn't giving anything back to the local community - that is effectively stealing money from the local community.

[Zingari]

boris gets about £140,000 for being mayor of london , so it's probably a bit high for leicester

[Head Honcho]

The proposed wages aren't actually that high if you compare them to other jobs.

My gaffer is responsible for an annual turnover of £8 million and gets around £50k his gaffer is responsible for a regional turnover of around a £100 million and is on about £80k.

Don't know the financials involved here but I'd like to think that The City of Leicester has more than £100 million a year to play with.

[Finnegan]

The problem is the way the budgets are set.

I've heard stories (which, admittedly, I can't substantiate but I believe them to be true) of councils doing things like hiring a fleet of vans and sitting them in a yard for several months towards the end of the financial year just to use up the budget and ensure they get a bigger alllocation the next year.

That isn't giving anything back to the local community - that is effectively stealing money from the local community.

I can't really envisage that being likely, given Leicester City Council is desperately short of labour, equipment and materials enough as it is. I would imagine that, further afield, the situation is much the same.

Local councils make very, very easy targets but I'd welcome anyone to offer themselves out for some voluntary work in the public sector and actually witness what most front-line staff have to work with on a daily basis.

Our department's recently had new management come in who are ex-British Gas and they're absolutely blown away by how absurdly poor our infrastructure is by comparison but, with the budgets set, our hands are just completely tied by our means.

[Zingari]

I wonder how his salary compares to that of the newly installed manager of the local football team ?

[Saxondale]

I can't really envisage that being likely, given Leicester City Council is desperately short of labour, equipment and materials enough as it is. I would imagine that, further afield, the situation is much the same.

This was several years ago.

Anyway, this is getting heavy. Back to the Poo thread!

[Rincewind]

Thought this was it.