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News and Comment January 2013

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28 January (Part 3) - Million pound fat cats and the lies told to protect them

A little over a year ago 2,219 Bexley residents signed the Bexley Council Monitoring Group’s petition against Bexley council’s astronomically high salary packages - sixth highest in the country according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance. My involvement was almost exactly zero, all I remember doing is advising the BCMG to take salary figures straight off Bexley’s website or they would argue that the BCMG made them up.
Example salary packagesI was wrong. BCMG took the council’s figures but Bexley council, liars that they are, still argued that they were wrong and a principal reason for refusing to consider the petition. They even went so far as to issue a press release under the dishonest title of ‘Setting the record straight’ about it and put up a page on their website to perpetuate their lie. It is still there.
So much time was spent publicising the fact council leader Teresa O’Neill, her liar in chief Kevin Fox and councillor Don Massey were ready, willing and able to ignore the wishes of 2,219 residents the actual figures weren’t subject to further scrutiny. The 2011/12 Accounts weren’t available and by the time they were the council’s calumny was half forgotten. How very remiss of me! So I asked Nicholas Dowling if he could stick his nose into the appropriate document, he likes doing that sort of thing - it takes all sorts.

Nicholas reports…


The council’s Accounts for April 2011 to March 2012 (Pages 64-65) record that their senior executives received the following:

 

Will Tuckley
Chief Executive
£195,779
Peter Ellershaw
Dir. of Environment and Wellbeing
£172,590
Mark Charters
Dir. of Education and Social Care
£154,208
Paul Moore
Dir. of Customer and Corporate Services
£129,444
Mike Ellsmore
Dir. of Finance and Resources
£126,217


On top of that was the exceedingly generous 20% pension contribution. To get an idea of how very generous that is, the Coalition’s latest wheeze to help workers save for their own retirement by forcing them to contribute to a pension scheme requires employers to contribute a minimum of 3%. Bexley council is a mere 6·67 times more generous to their top staff than your employer may be.

The pension contributions were:

 

Will Tuckley
£38,728
Peter Ellershaw
£33,482
Mark Charters
£29,933
Paul Moore
£24,853
Mike Ellsmore
£24,166


Which adds up to a salary package of:

 

Will Tuckley
£234,507
Peter Ellershaw
£206,072
Mark Charters
£184,141
Paul Moore
£154,297
Mike Ellsmore
£150,383


Now compare with the BCMG petition against excessive salary packages (uppermost graphic) signed by 2,219 concerned residents only for Bexley council to chuck it on one side?

Wow, didn’t they get that wrong? The lesson must be; never take anything Bexley council puts in the public domain at face value. Learn that lesson well. If their audited Accounts are right then their latest public statement on the subject must be wrong.

Unless you are willing to sift through 129 pages of Accounts, Bexley’s website is nothing but misinformation and misdirection employing every trick possible to avoid giving the actual total. That is Bexley council’s idea of being open and transparent!

The Accounts are in reality just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much Bexley’s executives are costing each and every one of us but will be hard pressed to find the following mentioned directly. Most employers must pay National Insurance contributions. Without wanting to get too far into the intricacies, it means that everything earned over £7,073 costs the council a further 13·8% which gives the following:

 

Will Tuckley
£26,041
Peter Ellershaw
£22,841
Mark Charters
£20,304
Paul Moore
£16,887
Mike Ellsmore
£16,441


Which means that the real total cost to hard pressed residents - as we hear yet more depressing economic news - of a mere five employees at Bexley council are as follows:

 

Will Tuckley
£269,548
Peter Ellershaw
£228,913
Mark Charters
£204,445
Paul Moore
£171,184
Mike Ellsmore
£166,824


A staggering £1,040,914. Do they feel no shame? I doubt it – parasites rarely do. They produce nothing and live off of increasing charges and fees wherever they can whilst moving around money granted to them by central government or extorted from local residents via council tax. We should get rid of them, the sooner the better.


Nicholas works in the field of payroll accounting. Click upper graphics for expanded view. I think this is worth restoring the salaries carousel to the blog for a while, don’t you?

 

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