PASS THE PORT...

Something caught my eye today that took me back half a century.   It concerned, of all things, the huge amount of money doled out to councillors in local authorities up and down the land.  Figures just released show that the sum paid out to local councillors topped £200million in the last year.

The reason it struck a chord with me is that, in the formative years of a former life, I worked for local councils in the era before  expenses on that scale were even thought of.   In those days, there were other differences too, for example, elected councillors were addressed as `Mr` `Miss` or `Mrs` and today they are `Councillor....` which gives them a title, a sense of status, almost of entitlement.  

 Expenses were first made available to local politicians in the 1970s – and in the 1990s, allowances, or pay, for councillors were introduced to reimburse local councillors for their time. But the effect has been to produce a generation of professional town hall politicians.  There seems to be a basic allowance running into thousands of pounds, just for turning up at meetings and `special responsibility allowances` for councillors who chair committees, lead councils, have cabinet responsibilites and the rest.   Then there are travelling and subsistence allowances and the bill keeps ratcheting up and up and all these payments combined mean that it is not unusual for some `leading` councillors to take home £40,000, £50,000 a year and upwards.  

The age of the professional politician indeed.   But they don`t have to do it.  They volunteer for election.  And whilst the age of the amateur local councillor may be long gone, they at least had the merit of either doing it for the kudos or out of a spirit of community - maybe they were the days of the big society after all.  So one is left to question the real motives behind the huge number of present day councillors in county and district councils - not forgetting parish councils who themselves have been muttering about paying themselves allowances in their Dibley-esque fiefdoms.

My suspicion and fear is that, rather than any spirit of public service being the guiding light, if over £200million a year is there to be shelled out, then it`s a nice little earner.   Just at the very time when council staff are losing their jobs and services are being reduced and I just wonder whether our elected representatives are able to maintain any grasp of reality all the time they are allowed to treat themselves so generously with other people`s money.

Reminds me of Ipswich Town Football Club in the old days when the Cobbolds ran it from their boardroom and when, for them, they were not too concerned with what was going on on the pitch but got very exercised when their supply of vintage port was running low.