Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The looting continues


Diverse sources, including the BBC tell the story of Katherine Kerswell, former Chief Executive of Northamptonshire County Council and currently – but for a short time only – "managing director" of Kent County Council.

Grossly overpaid at £197,000 per annum (plus pension and benefits) this little madam is walking away with a sum estimated at £750,000 for less than two years' work after joining the authority in March 2010.

Some mystery attends her current fate, as to whether she has been kicked out or has resigned, but the local Kent Messenger is reporting that she is in line for a £450,000 golden handshake on her departure, this bringing her pay to near the three-quarter-million mark.

Unison branch secretary David Lloyd – speaking on behalf of his council employee members - says: "It is demoralising for our members to see this at a time when they are struggling to save their own jobs and would never get anywhere near this kind of payout even if they had worked for 20 years or more. It really is a smack in the face".

But who speaks for the hard-pressed taxpayer? Some 450 (give or take) households will be forcibly required to hand over their hard-earned pay, on pain of being sent to prison, to line the pockets of this parasite when she leaves her employ.

And should some desperate taxpayer walk into the council offices and put a bullet in the skull of this women, they would be rightly condemned and the full force of the law would apply. But one does wonder what happened to the equality of law, and the protection ordinary taxpayers deserve from these looters.

There is the growing cause of resentment. We are expected to obey the law, and cough up our money on demand, but the law is a one-way system. No longer does it confer protection to ordinary people. That is a lesson we are slow in learning, but the inference is obvious. If we want to see the law applied – our law – we are going to have to do it ourselves.

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