“modest, sensible and fair" says Paul Carter as Kent Tories take your money!

Kent Conservative politicians are tonight justifying the whopping big increase of 8% they voted themselves, claiming that the last time there “allowances” were increased was four years ago.

And of course Paul Carter's right to make that suggestion, since he lives in a world of public sector excess and of course he himself has been a prime suspect in squeezing the taxpayer, by condoning massive pay for senior council officers, frequently stepping up to justify fat cat salaries in Kent's local authority, recently going as far to justify bonuses paid to senior officers for just doing their job.

You'll note that Paul Carter as leader of the Conservatives, didn't insist that his superior highly efficient senior officers take a pay cut when they lost £50,000,000 of our money in some shaky Icelandic banks.

Paul Carter is probably blissfully unaware, that many in the private sector have seen pay levels remained fairly static in the last few years, in my industry, most are receiving about the same money or less than they did five years ago and in the construction industry wages have been cut dramatically.

It's no surprise that greedy Tory County councillors, were in no mood to welcome the suggestion from liberal democrat leader, Trudy Dean to allow the public to be consulted. Paul Carter apparently said "That would be a total waste of time and effort" so clearly Paul Carter's not stupid, since we all know what the public reaction is.

I used to believe that politics was about the service, when in reality it's about serving yourself with a few notable exceptions such as Trudy Dean and her colleagues.

One aspect perhaps even more disturbing than Tory councillors taking a stonking big pay rise, is this, when I rang BBC Kent this afternoon they were blissfully unaware.

I later rang again, when theire was still no mention of this and it was suggested, that the fact, that KM Paul Francis had a full report, was just a question of the competitive nature of journalism, still it makes you think, Kent’s full council meetings, only occur every once every few months, surely as KCC is the lead authority for Kent, that they (BBC Kent) would actually cover their meetings or at least look the agenda available on the internet.

Not surprisingly if you watched BBC South East today and had blinked you would have missed mention of this, it must be the new journalistic approach to news since some women trying to cycle underwater was more interesting to dumbed down BBC reporters.

BBC Kent obviously don’t consider politicians, voting themselves big increases as anything out of the ordinary and clearly its not, but how sad they can’t at least report it.

Still as the bloke at the BBC said Paul Francis is a good journalist which is why I have a link to his political commentary in my sidebar, also I suggest you click here for his report and video which is superior to anything on the BBC website.