Everyone seems to be retired on a full pension, is there no one riding the gravy train? - Sarah Todd
Just recently everybody we meet seems to be retired on a full final salary pension; smugness and financial stability oozing out of every pore. Perhaps this observation is just a sign of getting to a certain age.
All these retired teachers, doctors, public service administration workers and so-on have no doubt been going on weekend breaks and cruises for years, yet are only just affluently striding across this correspondent’s radar.
Now they appear to be everywhere, on a gravy train that will doubtless be picking up even more passengers now Labour is in the driving seat.
The fire was lit with the local newspaper that kindly informed us that more than 30 North Yorkshire Council officers receive an annual salary of more than £100,000.
Yes, the council's annual pay policy for senior officers for 2025/26 shows 32 officers currently earn a six-figure sum, with the chief executive on £211,044 a year.
Five directors all receive £159,178, with the salaries of the senior officers rising by 2.5 per cent from the previous financial year due to nationally agreed pay increases, with no agreement yet reached for 2025/26.
The article that went up in flames also revealed that ten headteachers working in local authority-controlled schools in the county also receive at least £100,000 a year. What fun they must have deciding where to spend those long school holidays.
In mitigation, number crunchers at the council describe the authority’s pay structure as “very lean”, highlighting data that shows just over 0.1 per cent of staff at the council receive more than £100,000 a year, ranking it as the second trimmest wages wise of comparable councils in the country.
As an aside, the newspaper that went up the chimney, also had the story that North Yorkshire residents will be getting extra wheelie bins as “part of £8m overhaul of waste collections”.
Rather than using boxes and bags for recycling the plans will mean the whole county will follow a system, currently in use in Selby, of two wheelie bins for alternate fortnightly collections for recycling - one for paper and card and another for glass, cans and other recyclable materials.
Is it just this misery who thinks the £8m cost of implementing such a scheme seems an awful lot at a time when our roads are peppered with potholes? Also, another question, has this correspondent been doing it wrong, separating her recycling for all these years?
Where we live, it has to be carted down to the end of the lane. It’s always washed out and separated. What a waste of time that has been if it can all go in together.
Perhaps a great big fat pension pot could have been accumulated if all that time hadn’t been spent faffing around separating plastic, cans, bottles and cardboard. Goodness, we could have bought a motorhome and be touring Europe along with those legions of prosperous early retirees.
Yes, what a waste of effort that has been if they could all have been chucked in a bin.
Of course, along with stopping those recycling boxes blowing away, ‘carbon reduction’ comes into this story. Is there any decision taken these days that doesn’t have this tagged on?
Now, one chap who appears to be earning his wages (basic annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses) is Welsh Labour MP Steve Witherden.
Credit where it’s due. He is standing up against his leader Sir Keir Starmer (who has been away cosying up to the European Union) in speaking out against the family farm tax.
Mr Witherden has met many elderly farmers in his constituency who are “too late in life” to plan for the controversial changes to Inheritance Tax.
Why on earth isn’t this man Labour’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs instead of Steve Reed, who has so far shown no understanding - or interest for that matter - in the traditional farming community?
Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr MP Witherden said the changes "risk having a deeply detrimental effect on working family farms", with one elderly farmer and his wife telling him "'if only I could die now" to avoid the charge. He has called on ministers to rethink the move by raising the threshold for paying the tax and exempting older farmers from the change, due to apply from April 2026.
From the Senedd, a shout out also to Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan. She has said she is concerned about the impact on farmers' mental health. Good for her. This is what politicians are supposed to do; speak up for the people they represent. Never mind all this bullying rubbish about towing the party line. No salary or pension pot should be worth that.