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And how do you start negotiations about the pay review? Fire 4,000 people.

Now don’t get me wrong – I am all for equal pay, I have always advocated it. I think it is one of the most simple things to do – but to others it is just a way of making life hard. And, as always, bringing in equal pay will mean that the higher earner will lose out so that the lower earner gets more. Is that such a bad thing? Well, when it costs you seven grand a year it seems so.

If anyone reads this blog regularly then you will know I have a real problem with local councils in the UK, especially in England. This, as well as a multitude of reasons, is because of chief executive pay. The pay of these executives is well, disgusting, when you think about what employees of these councils get paid – and they do reasonably well in the pay stakes. Even more when you compare what, say, a nurse gets paid or a police officer, £22,000, £20,000 respectfully.

Now, this council – a relatively small one feels it should pay the man who is sacking 4,000 people a princely sum of £124,200 per year. Quite!

This is, in another comparison, a lot! What does a Cabinet Minister and the PM get? £188,000 for the PM and £138,000 for the Minister.

While I can see the vague need for that kind of pay for the PM and cabinet Ministers – why do local council CEOs get paid so much? Local councils are there to provide local services – some are just to bulk out the budget and should be nationally run and not a part of local councils, but that is another story all together.

This, and the next government of the UK should do something about this excessive pay – but we all know that they won’t – even getting the pay rates for these CEOs is hard work and some councils won’t even tell you what they are.

As these salaries come out of the local taxes then they should be open to the public and looking them up should be on the local councils website – but no, The Manchester Evening News had to utilise figures collected by the TaxPayers Alliance who in turn had to use Freedom of Information laws to get them. That is complete madness!

The figures, obtained using Freedom of Information laws, show Sir Howard’s deputy Steve Mycio earns £116,800, as does his other deputy, Eamonn Boylan.

City treasurer Richard Paver makes £133,000, director of children’s services Pauline Newman £116,600, and capital programme director John Lorimer £100,200.

Capital programme director!? WTF does he do? A job, undoubtedly, that could be done by a few people who are called secretaries who are on 15 grand a year saving the council 60 grand!

Local councils in England are, in my eyes, just making jobs up for people and then employing someone for the fun of it – just to see what they can get away with. All of them should be audited and closed down and brought under the umbrella of regional, elected, assemblies – then, maybe, you can justify that kind of pay.

When this shower of shite that is in power now say council reform, they mean giving more money to CEOs and that those who are needed on the ground are fired.

There is a simple solution as I have indicated above – regional assemblies and town councils – That would mean a sweeping away of all the top tiers in all the councils and more employment for bin men, recycling jobs – well I could go on but will it happen?

I doubt it – far too many fingers in the pie of ripping off the council tax payer. And that is just the beginning of the story.