IT was nice of the Citizen to enlighten readers about the huge salaries of our council fat cats, namely the chief executive of Preston, Jim Carr, and his equivalent in South Ribble, Jean Hunter.

Although it appears Mrs Hunter has not received much of a rise, going from the £80,000-£89,000 bracket in March 2003 to the £90,000-£99,999 in March 2004, according to your article, Mr Carr's pay rise gives some indication of how much of a leap between pay brackets a chief executive can expect to cream off.

He handles a lot of money and makes major decisions but surely Mr Carr does not need a whopping £12,500 pay rise! Paid for by us, the council taxpayers! It is greed that goes from top to bottom.

Speak to a council official and they will justify their hefty salaries with that old excuse about people leaving to go to the private sector if they don't get paid well.

I have worked in the private sector for many years and think someone should wake up to the fact that there are plenty of equivalent jobs which are not comparable in pay, even if the duties are the same.

It's a well known fact that the civil service is a cushy number. A decent pension, various working patterns for all such as flexi' time, part-time, and job sharing, childcare assistance and sometimes free parking and cheap rates at council-owned leisure centres, for instance, are just some of the perks people can expect when they work for a local authority.

In the 'real' world private sector workers can expect a host of different rules from firm to firm. Low wages and pay rises in many jobs, no parking, no help with childcare, no flexi-time or anything else, and a pension that goes pear-shaped in the company's hands, with no help from the Government to retrieve it.

Now the Government has put pressure on companies to guarantee their pensions and many firms, including where I work, have closed their pension schemes to new recruits, leaving people out in the cold with no pension, unless they do it privately which many, I fear, will not.

Life in the private sector isn't always rosy. Oh, and one last thing, in the private sector the retirement age is 65!

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