The Gravy Train hits the buffers....

The Great March against Government spending cuts drove Libya off the front pages for a day or so. I am surprised that none of the commentators has analysed the real position of public servants facing the chop, so here’s a few observations of mine culled from experience.

It is unlikely that they will be forced, starving, onto the streets to sell the Big Issue. Many senior staff will be on fixed term contracts with ‘loss of office’ compensation clauses. In the case of local government, over-50s will be able to take early retirement. Pensions are calculated on 40/80ths (i.e. the pension accrues at one 80th of salary for each year of service) so after serving 40 years there is a full pension of 50% of final salary. This is index linked. There is an ‘added years’ provision so that the employer can add up to 10 years to the length of pensionable service. Thus a person age 50 with 30 years’ service could retire on a full pension. In most cases severance packages should provide a fairly comfortable exit. (The exception to this is MPs, whose pensions are 20/40ths – nice!).

My guess is that the public service will not get a great deal of sympathy. It seems to have lost a great deal of respect in recent years. I can think of two possible reasons.

The first is that there seems to be a widespread feeling that it is no longer the apolitical sector of tradition. Some senior appointments have gone to political activists. Recruitment is often through the public appointments pages of the Guardian which on Wednesdays groans under the load of advertisements. There is some suspicion that the public service was politicised during the Blair years – there are now reports that Cameron is having trouble with his Civil Servants bordering on defiance.

There is also criticism of salaries and benefits. Years ago working in the public service meant lower salaries than in the private sector in return for job security, a good pension at age 60 and generous leave and other provisions. Now one frequently hears ‘fat cats’ as the description of senior officials because of salaries that have outstripped the private sector with little of the risk. Local authorities have attracted particular attention from the media.

A particular example is the Chief Executive of a large local council who has had the unforgiving attentions of Private Eye for ages and who has recently featured in the national press – very unfavourably.

The essence of the criticism is that this official earns around £250,000 a year, substantially more than the PM, plus all the fringe benefits, of course. To get an idea of how top salaries have escalated, years ago the top salary in a local authority would be about 6 to 8 times the lowest. This one is about 12 times; the relative salary has thus more or less doubled in recent years.

Over the past few years the media satirists have had a great harvest of non-jobs in the public sector – outreach advisors and the rest – and I deny any sentient human being to be able to comprehend some of the job descriptions, which appear to be words chosen at random and without any meaning. Having said which the DT today had a headline reading ‘City boys’ e-mail goes viral’. What does that mean? ‘Viral’ means caused by a virus. So perhaps it is not only the public sector that mangles language.

Quote of the week

Rod Liddle in the Speccie:-

‘There are a few lessons to be learned from Japan, mind – the obvious ones, I suppose.

1) Never trust a thing told to you by a large corporation.

2) Never trust a thing told to you by your government.

3) Never, ever, trust anything told to you by an “expert” being interviewed on a rolling news channel’