Clarification....

I've had a few people contact me about yesterday's blog and I just wanted to clarify something.

I wasn't suggesting that Politicians should get paid more, or that the imbalance between Civil Servants and Politicians is wrong. (although it might be....I'm not trying to cover that here).

The only point that I was trying to make was that it's not right to compare salaries of the two as if they were the same.*

Apologies to anyone who was mislead.

**********************************************************************************

* And more specifically, be negative about the individuals because of it. In my view democracy in this country doesn't function as well as it could. This could be because of the way the Parties operate, it could be because of the way first past the post operates. But one reason I am sure of is that it seems to be fine for people to be rude and abusive about Politicians and Council officers.

This constant knocking has the awful effect of removing a positive feedback loop for these people. They have no way of judging if their viewpoints or actions are being well received because any constructive criticism is drowned out by the noise. Invariably, the kind of people we would like to see as our elective representatives can't work in these conditions and we end up with a high proportion of people who would rather keep their heads down than fully engage with the electorate.

And is that what we set out to do?