There is an old saying for organisations that are over managed, which is: 'Too many chiefs and not enough indians'. No doubt such a saying these days falls foul of the P.C., woke, right-on campaigners and mad leftie nutters, who will want anyone cancelled for saying such a thing. However, as I stay clear of all social media as I feel it is the internet for the brain dead, they can cancel me to their little woke hearts content and I will not have a care or a clue about it.
The reason I use this old saying is due to looking at how the UK is now being governed. Although you would hardly know it with civil servants, many MPs and others doing their devious worst to wreck Brexit, none the less we have escaped the EU and should be scrapping all its inherited laws and rules. Sadly, we have been lumbered with a massive and costly legacy from our overlong and lamentable involvement in that failing empire.
One of the legacies still blighting our lives from the days of Tony Blair's sycophantic compliance to all the EU wanted, was the breaking up of the UK into EU regions, that included imposing such things as Metro Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners. These political positions are still hanging around like a bad hangover from our overlong EU binge and costing us a fortune.
When looking at the now, many tiers of government, the UK is being massively over governed, we do not need so many elected officials. In the past we had the Government and Parliament with our elected MPs. Going down from that we had county councils, city councils, metropolitan councils, town councils and parish councils along with Mayors or Lord Mayors. Although councillors are now paid, in the not too distant past people who wanted to do their civic duty and stood for election in order to serve their local areas, were not paid and carried out their duties for free. But since Blair's compliance to the EU and the setting up of regions we now have a substantial number of people, in elevated positions, not only being paid very enviable salaries but also have office and staff costs that run into £millions.
I have been doing some quite basic research and even this shows how much these devolved regions, Metro Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners are costing the British taxpayers, it is eye watering. Starting with the man who is seen as the Devil incarnate by anyone who drives an old car, the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has a very nice annual income of: £154,963, by the end of his five years in office the taxpayers will have paid him near on three quarters of a million pounds - and what have they got for it? An ULEZ charge of £12.50 a day and much misery if you run a car on the breadline.
According to the RAC around 700,000 cars will be affected by our three quarter of a million mayors rip-off charge, This tax on the poorest, who cannot afford either ULEZ or a newer, compliant car, when multiplied by the £12.50 charge, will raise a vast amount of money but will not stop congestion with the enforcement of 20 MPH zones or low traffic neighbourhoods, which in turn create congestion and the pollution slow moving traffic creates. Many speculate this has nothing to do with the made up figure of 4000 deaths due to pollution, but the fact Khan has screwed up so badly it is a means of getting rid of some of the debt caused by the Mayors mismanagement. It is no wonder there is a petition on the Parliament web-site calling for getting shot of the office of the London Mayor and the closure of the London Assembly
When looking at how many Metro Mayors there are around the country, which according to Wikipedia, there are nine, all costing taxpayers substantial sums of money in their salaries, staff and office costs. Just taking Manchester as an example, Andy Burnham, the Mayor for Greater Manchester, although not in the same wage bracket as Sadiq Khan, he still earns an enviable £110,00 P.A. I presume this does not include many of his expenses which will add on to how much he costs taxpayers to rule over them. It seems the annual cost of running the Manchester Mayors office is £2 million P.A. Multiply this across the other eight Metro Mayors and their offices, add on the London Assembly and the cost of Khan, this takes the burden onto taxpayers into some very serious money which could be better spent on other, far more important things.
But it does not stop with these elevated, self important mayors and their highly paid minions, we have to add on the costs of that other, not needed, elected body and their offices and staff, the 35 Police and Crime Commissioners, which according to the Liberal Democrats is around £100 million a year. The irony is that those elected as PPC's do not have to have an ounce of knowledge about policing or handling crime, all they need to know is how to win an election then sit back and count the cash.
When added up the British taxpayers are paying out vast sums of money for a small group of people who, most probably do not have a clue about running offices that oversee the emptying of dustbins, filling potholes in roads, policing or anything else, other than being good at promoting themselves and telling the electorate how hard they are working and what an important job they are doing. If they all vanished overnight and the local and county councils took over, no one would notice any difference other than there would be more money for other things. Councils were carrying out many of the duties of these unwanted Mayors and PCCs before they were created to comply with the EU and could just as easily carry on if they were to go. Sadly, when you also add on the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, we not only have the substantial costs of these unwanted offices, but far too many chiefs.