Funny how those fat cats thrive in times of austerity

COUNCIL tax has started to rise and we are expected to swallow the fiction that local authorities have trimmed waste to the bone and are reluctantly lifting bills only to protect key frontline services.

They’re called frontline services because they’re in the front line when it comes to cuts. Executive pay, meanwhile, is safe ‘in the rear with the gear’.

You never see Cosla admitting: ‘Councils have no choice but to increase tax to protect the six-figure salaries of all those high heid yins…’

The TaxPayers’ Alliance issues an annual Town Hall Rich List and it would make your blood boil. As of April last year, it says North Lanarkshire alone had 22 employees paid in excess of £100,000 and one took home a phenomenal £486,206 package.

Central government taxation already provides the majority of council funding.

And then much of your top-up council tax goes straight into salaries and gold-plated public service pensions. No wonder councils are so tardy fixing potholed roads – fat wallets in their hip pockets cushion them from the bumps.

Do we need 32 councils with all their duplication? Why have 32 education chiefs, say, when standards are meant to be uniform across Scotland?

Let’s amalgamate and rationalise down to eight councils based on the old geographic police forces. And then we’ll talk about council tax rises.