Taxpayers' money wasted by local councils and Transport for London

While the government are determined to cut public services and the welfare budget, they seem very relaxed about limiting the salaries of those at the top of the public sector.

Tale Peter Hendy, an aide to Transport for London. He's on £332,000 a year. Even a tenth of that would be more than most Londoners earn.

Yet the right don't call for that to be cut. They say "There is no money left" when discussing cutting benefits for the sick, but not when a man earns an obscene amount of public money.

Tory councils, meant to be run on Conservative values, also pay people large amount of public money.

Andrew Gillian reveals in the Daily Telegraph that:

*Cotswold district council paid £19,000 of taxpayers' money to Shay McConnon, for giving a morale-boosting talks to staff as the authority pushed through £1.5 million cuts.

*West Oxfordshire district council sent 300 staff, including binmen and street cleaners, on £30,000 worth of compulsory "happiness courses" to "share their feelings" about each other.

*The chief executive of Essex County Council, Joanna Killian, is on £237,000, plus pension contributions of £47,000.

*Kent County Council's Peter Gilroy, is on a salary and bonus of £225,000, plus a pension of £56,000.

*Suffolk County Council's Andrea Hill is on £218,000, plus £49,000 pension. You can read more about Andrea Hill, who has been suspended, at Suffolk Wordblog.

*Mike Whitby, the Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council, who took a £750-a-night suite at the Hyatt hotel, three miles from his house, during the 2008 Conservative Party conference, which was in Birmingham.

If you support the cuts but do not oppose these obscene salaries, you are a hypocrite.