One of the more boring topics of debate amongst the national newspapers is the subject of the salaries of local authority chief executives.
The phrase “earns more than the Prime Minister” appears in pretty much every story.
Yes, they get paid a lot, but running a council is bloody hard.
Very few chief executives of companies (who often earn a lot more) face the prospect of going to prison but if a child dies in care, a council chief exec can face charges of corporate manslaughter.
So, if the salaries are reduced, the good people go elsewhere thus leading to a drop in quality of council services and probably more children dying in care.
It’s not a massively glamourous job either, you inevitably get what you want to do stopped because the councillors don’t feel it’s politically right, you get moaned at constantly by the public, you get ever changing government rules you have to follow and spend money on changing things you’ve already spent money on, you get told to build houses, spend a lot of money on identifying where to build houses and then people start protesting against it, you get told to look after children and then get less money to do it every year, you spend money on the roads, then it snows and they get full of potholes, so people moan.
I’m not saying all councils are brilliant, some waste huge amounts on bonkers projects, but the idea that people in charge of a hugely complex system involving hundreds of people doing hundreds of things, are overpaid is ridiculous.
These chief execs are an easy target to the rabid right wing tabloids, but if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
Then of course when no-one’s bins get collected, the schools start failing and children start dying, they might get some proper stories.
Global gossip network makes superinjnctions particularly un-super
In Comment, Multifarious, News, Politics on May 9, 2011 at 6:35 pmThere’s been a lot of talk recently about these super-injunctions got in court by celebrities to protect news organisations publishing scandalous details of their private lives.
The first question is one of public interest, is it right for newspapers to publish sordid details of a celeb having an affair?
Newspapers will say yes, they live their lives in public and shouldn’t be able to shut out something that people will be interested in.
The celebs, and seemingly the courts, think they should be able to do what they like in their private lives and not be hounded by the vultures of the press.
If we didn’t live in a shallow-celeb obsessed world then it probably wouldn’t matter, but we do and everyone (including me to a point) wants to know whether their favourite singer/actress/footballer is indulging in a bit of extra curricular activity behind their doting partner’s back.
The injunctions are super-secret, the papers often aren’t even allowed to publish they have been taken out.
The problem is in this day and age, social networks like Twitter are rife with gossip.
Just this week, an account was set up naming the celebs with injunctions.
How long it lasts is another story, but it’s out there.
Likewise, all the national papers know who they are, and they tell their friends, who put thinly disguised hints on Twitter.
Can you police Twitter?
I would assume it’s a civil matter, perhaps a hotshot lawyer could spend their days searching for people spilling the beans on Twitter, but it’s hardly a cast iron way of doing things.
The good thing is, MPs don’t like these superinjunctions any more than the public do and moves are in place to review whether they should be allowed at all.
The fact is, celebs know the way the national papers are and some, like Jordan/Katie Price, are fine operators who maximise the celebrity obsession to its full potential.
The short answer is, if you’re in the public eye, try to keep it in your trousers, as with technology the way it is, you’ll do bloody well to hide your dirty little secrets.
EDIT: As if to prove my point, this post got 174 views in about four hours when I put it up yesterday. I’ve got no doubt most of them would’ve been from people searching for the identities of the celebs involved.
Sadly, themultifarious.com does not have access to the finest lawyers in the land, so cannot reveal who they are.