Chief executives' pay is an issue that probably gets us all a bit hot under the collar. Most people (including myself) do feel pretty hacked off when they find out some top council bod gets a salary in excess of £200,000.
But as Jake and Quiz rightly point out, this is just a smoke screen to distract those readers who struggle with a fog index greater than 12. The cuts being implemented by central Government are vast – they dwarf the top executives' salaries by an order of magnitude.
Take the above example. Manchester council needs to make £109 million in cuts. Take off the aforementioned 'top' salaries and we're left with approximately £100 million. Given that most council employees earn less than about £20k a year, in simple everyday jobs that's an equivalent loss of about 5,000 people. That's 5,000 people who are currently paying tax and national insurance and not claiming unemployment benefit, etc. Throwing tens of thousands of people out of work and expecting the private sector to scoop them up and give them gainful (and adequately remunerated) employment is an exercise in wishful thinking.
Highlighting the very high salaries of a relatively small number of public sector employees sells newspapers and gets people's dander up. But if you're mad about that, wait until tens of thousands of people suddenly find themselves without work and then you'll see real anger.
As the Chinese say, “May you live in interesting times”. I think that this coming summer may prove to be very 'interesting' indeed.