If you were a top barrister offered a senior judicial appointment, you might be in a position to take a 50% pay drop for pension rights which kick in at age 70 giving 1/2 final salary pension for 20 years' service. Is that what you had in mind?
All you need to do is study law and get a First, get called as a barrister and find a seat in chambers, build up a practice and reputation as counsel, get awarded silk, build up a practice and reputation as a leader, apply for a judicial appointment, be in the top quarter of applicants, and get offered a job as a High Court Judge by age 50. QED.
The issue I raised was hypocrisy. The Telegraph (or any other entity) can indeed pay salaries and expenses to its owners, directors and editors etc on as lavish a scale as it chooses; and public services can and do pay salaries and expenses on a much lower scale, if they so decide. No problem with either of those things, as far as they go. But the real point is that the lavishly-paid Telegraph chaps pretend to take the moral high ground; they virulently criticise payments made to others at a far lower scale than the payments they themselves claim. There lies the hypocrisy, and it stinks in the nostrils. At any rate, it stinks in mine - perhaps yours are less sensitive.
I very much doubt that the "Telegraph Scottish Political Correspondent" who wrote the article is paid anything like as much as Mr Salmond, and whilst I assume that journalists continue to run up substantial expenses when in bars, the Telegraph would be a most unusual organisation if it allowed anyone other than very senior staff to stay in the best hotel rooms. As others have pointed out, we can choose whether to pay the Telegraph or not, and therefore whether to contribute to "the lavishly-paid Telegraph chaps". In contrast, I have no choice as to whether to pay towards Scottish Parliiament expenses, and I live in England!
Maybe it would stink to me if I was paid by the public purse. I'm not so it doesn't. Commercial entities have always and still have to live within a budget. Public servants, whether national or local, have never had to in reality. Until now! Welcome to the real world.
You seem to be saying that rank hypocrisy in the media does not trouble you. Fine. All I have said is that it does trouble me.
There is no hypocrisy. It is apples and pears. This is starting to be as comical as the good old days of "bernie the bolt please" -the Golden Shot , shoot off random bolts, blindfold. Pity. But funny, nevertheless.
Meanwhile back in the real real world, it is public bodies which are desperately underfunded, typically struggling with cuts and trying to do more with less. Anything done by the public sector has to be done on half a shoe-string, as a matter of course. Anyone who decides to work in the public sector has to accept that they will be paid far less than their equivalents in the private sector, and will be subject to much more severe restraints. That's just the way it is. No-one can complain about that, of course, but it is really hilarious to see somebody having a go at spinning it round into the exact opposite of the truth. Nice try!
Whoosh, more bernie the bolts, flying around randomly. Will leave you to your "real" civil service world. Good luck with that.
Thanks for that Pete, was feeling down today and needed a real laugh. Most I know who work in the public sector work far less than those who get less overall pay (salary, pension, time off, health benefits) than those i know in the private sector. But if the dreamworld you decsribe is close at heart, enjoy And the world is flat too
The people that I know who "work less" seem to fall in two camps - those in the public sector and those in the private sector. Oddly enough, the reverse is also true - the hardest workers that I know fall in those same two categories. Amazing. What could it mean?
You keep your public sector head up your public sector arse if you like but it is the public sector that have got themselves into this mess with overspending on stupid ideas and schemes over the years. That is fact. My wife works in the public sector. I hear a lot of stuff that goes on wasting my tax money. And it still goes. on.
How predictable this tread has become.Lots of "facts" being quoted again.I'm so glad that I've worked in both the private sector and the public sector so that I can make my own mind up about both.
