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.
I
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?