11 December 2005

Old news

The Sunday Times re-cycles the article from last Monday's Scotsman:
"A group of 16 senior Scottish civil servants are to receive public payouts of nearly £2m on top of their already comfortable pensions. Each of the 16 — members and former members of the Scottish executive’s management group — stand to get “golden goodbyes” averaging more than £100,000 when they are 60.
The windfall will boost their handsome pension entitlements and enable them to plan for the kind of cushy retirement beyond the wildest dreams of the ordinary taxpayer...
Fat-cat officials, however, can continue to cream money from the public purse.
The inequality is stark and highlights a growing gap between the lifestyles of Scotland’s political classes and the rest of the population since devolution.
Among those who will benefit from taxpayer munificence is John Elvidge, permanent secretary at the Scottish executive and Scotland’s top mandarin. He will retire with a lump sum of about £160,000, plus a pension in the region of £50,000 a year. "

I have already commented on this here and do not propose to repeat myself.

The sad thing is that there are real questions to be asked about the competence of the Scottish Executive Management Group, their background and their (lack of) experience, and their failure to interact with both the real world and the administrative world of local authorities, government agencies and the people in the Executive who do the real work. Instead, journalists go for the low-hanging fruit, even if it has already been plucked.

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