Cut vanity projects and up pay

For about seven years public sector wages have been capped at one per cent increases to ‘save’ the economy. No matter that police officers, nurses, teachers and the like have bills to pay like the rest of the population. They can’t have a bigger pay rise because the country can’t afford it.

MPs though don’t have this hardship thrust upon them. Curious that, anyone would have thought that they’d be setting an example to the public sector employees by not giving themselves many times more than 1 percent when the parliamentary salaries are being decided.

They didn’t. I can’t remember the actual percentage rises they’ve awarded themselves during this period of austerity but it’s been a lot more than the figure public service employees have been given. They can claim they were given the awards by independents; it still doesn’t look very supportive of their voters does it? And you can almost guarantee that not one of the 600-plus refused their increases.

Now let’s look at the other word – vanity. Two that may be regarded as ‘vanity projects’ are still, it seems, going ahead.

Firstly the London Garden Bridge. We were told, by the former Mayor of London – Boris Johnson – that it was to be privately funded and would cost about three pence.(yes I know it was a lot more than that). The current Mayor now admits that it’s going to cost many millions of pounds more than the original estimates (or should that have been guesstimates) and would have to be funded from the public purse. A huge sum of money has already been spent on planning without the actual cost of build it. And will it reduce vehicle traffic in London? Err, not really it’s a footbridge! It will be attractive, allegedly, if they can get the planned flowers and trees to grow on it! Definitely a vanity project.

HS2 – looking at it, it seems to be like a big boy’s train set. It’s going to cost hundreds of billions to build to save a few minutes of journey time from Birmingham to London. And ticket cost? Think of taking a second mortgage before using it. Premium fares though will keep plebs off it.

Ordinary people really won’t want to save a few minutes of journey time when it costs a fortune to use the thing. The only people who may be able to use it will be MPs or people with large expense accounts! And if the new line is close to your home or business? Hard luck. The route has been set! Again it’s another vanity project, that we can’t afford. I do wonder though if the people who came up with this grandiose scheme were deprived of a train set at Christmas so decided they’d have a full scale one to play with. If that’s the case, pay for it yourselves. Don’t ask the hard working tax payer to.

Vanity project three? Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. Only this week have the builders decided that the billions of pounds agreed to, not long ago, they now want even more! Who do they think they are? Oliver Twist? Never mind the billions it’s going to cost to build a nuclear power plant - from an unproven, possibly inherently dangerous design - when the electricity produced from there will cost at least twice produced by solar and wind power. But nuclear power is supposed to be cheap! Anyway a lot cheaper than solar or wind anyway but our ‘skilled negotiators’ promised a sum of twice the going rate in 2013 for solar or wind produced! And would of course increase at least in line with inflation! If anyone thinks I’m exaggerating it writing a work of fiction, I honestly wish I was.

I can’t really call Hinkley Point as a vanity project. We need the electricity too much. But can we have non-supine negotiations. That means, to me, discussions with give and take from both sides. Not just give from us and take from them. We’ve got to have hard headed negotiators, prepared to say ‘go whistle’ if need be. Surely we have people in government who can do that? If not we have businessmen and women in the private sector who can get the best deal for the UK who could. It’s not a testosterone thing. It’s just basic business sense. It’s not rocket science, just common sense from an ordinary Black Country bloke.

So message to HM Government; give public sector workers decent increases in their pay.

They have to eat, pay rent or mortgage and the other expenses of life and get rid of vanity projects that the country doesn’t need and can’t afford.

M Gough, Wombourne