DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Council fat cats don’t deserve rich rewards

As anyone who tried can attest, accessing council services during the pandemic was the devil’s own job.

Social-distancing rules meant local authorities (never fleet-footed at the best of times) slowed to a glacial crawl.

Work from home? For too many staff it was more like DON’T work from home.

But in the cloud-cuckoo world of Town Halls, this dilatory lifestyle wasn’t penalised. Just the opposite. For senior staff, milking the taxpayer continued unhindered.

The local government rich list, compiled by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, shows officials earning more than £100,000 rose by 119 last year to 2,921. Some 234 fat cats were paid more than the Prime Minister. And that’s before annual expenses and bonuses.

With local authorities preparing to hit householders with a sharp council tax rise, these stratospheric pay packages are a slap in the face for hardworking millions facing a brutal cost of living squeeze.

Of course, this culture of avarice in the public sector is a hangover from the economically reckless days of New Labour, when salaries rose dizzyingly.

But with cash so tight, isn’t it time these councils looked hard at their priorities?

Now ban Kremlin gas  

The United Nations sanctimoniously believes it is the planet’s premier peacekeeper. Yesterday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky powerfully disabused it of that outdated notion.

In a visceral address, he told the Security Council that Russia had ‘unleashed horror’ in his country and committed war crimes.

But because Moscow has a veto, the UN is shamefully impotent to stop the butchery. When Mr Zelensky scornfully suggested it ‘dissolve itself’, it was hard to disagree.

It would be easy for Boris Johnson – who issued a direct appeal to Russians to reject Putin’s war – and fellow Nato leaders to be swept up by emotion and give tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine.

But such an escalation could spiral out of control, pushing the world towards nuclear war. For now, the tactic of supplying Ukraine with defensive arms and targeting the Kremlin with brutal sanctions is right.

At long last, the EU has proposed a ban on coal imports. But Germany, reliant on Russian hydrocarbons, is scandalously blocking a full embargo on gas, even though it funds Putin’s bloodshed.

Berlin boasts of its moral leadership in Europe. But when push comes to shove, it has put its own energy needs before the lives of innocent Ukrainians.

Protecting children 

There is something disturbing about the way militant trans activists are up in arms over the Government sensibly ditching plans for a total ban on conversion therapy.

While coercing people to deny their sexuality will still rightly be outlawed, attempts to sensitively raise questions about someone’s desire to change gender will not.

Cue cries of ‘transphobia’, resignations and a mass boycott of an LGBT conference hosted by ministers. But Boris Johnson should stand firm. Changing gender can and frequently does involve life-altering hormones and surgery. 

Ministers are simply trying to protect children, often vulnerable, from making choices they may later bitterly regret, while not criminalising parents and doctors who question their reasoning.

If you felt a cold chill today, it wasn’t just the weather. The hated national insurance hike has finally blown in. While making hard-pressed families poorer, the £13billion raised will be shovelled at the NHS for, bitter experience suggests, little improvement. Yet bumper Treasury receipts due to price rises render it unnecessary. The Tories have made a specialism of U-turns. One more won’t harm.