Edinburgh Sucks! | Children & Families rises the same as Ministerial ones

Children & Families

Children & Families rises the same as Ministerial ones

By The Basa ⋅ July 27, 2006 ⋅

It C&FUpdate.gif was interesting to see The Scotsman, The Evening News, Radio Forth and Talk107 (sometimes called CouncilFM) all covering the story we broke about the massive pay rises in the Children and Families department. What was most interesting about the coverage is that UNISON were wheeled out to back them.

On looking closer at the figures to put them into perspective one finds that the rises by some departmental seniors are similar to the rises in UK and Scottish Parliaments where a member (MP or MEP) is promoted to a minister. In the UK parliament appointment to a minister will see the pay rise by £39,243 and in the Scottish Parliament that same figure is £35,358. In Children & Families where rises of £31,632 are now known to exist, how can the Council honestly expect us to believe that this is justified?

Some obvious questions were not asked nor answered by the blanket coverage of the story yesterday:

Who wrote the Job Descriptions for the new posts? (The reason we ask this is that we believe that the authors of the job descriptions actually got the jobs)
Why, when there is seemingly such vast differences in the jobs requiring the almost obscene raises, were the jobs not externally advertised to ensure the highest quality of the candidates for the job?
With 64% salary rises, was the official concerned underworked in his previous job, if not, how the hell is he going to find the time to carry out all these new responsibilities?
What qualications are required for the position of Service Manager (£48,883) and Neighbourhood Manager (£80,464).
How many applicants were there for each of the new posts?
How as a council, when you were arguing at the same time with the bus drivers over a 6.21% pay rise and causing massive problems with businesses in Edinburgh and causing extreme problems with every bus traveller in the city, did you not think that it was obscene to use stealth to push these rates through?

These are questions that must fall squarely on the shoulders of Messrs. Aitchison, Gabbitas, Jobson, Anderson, Rosendale, Thomas, Aitken. It is diabolical!