I have a lomgtime friend in the motor business who is great company, has a sometimes quirky sense of humour, and is a rock of sense about business matters.
This week he came up with what I think is a great idea.
We’re all too familiar with the political and business ’spokespersons’ trotted out on our visual and audial airwaves to explain stuff. Whether a Government department civil servant, a political head of a committee, a university ’expert’ providing an opinion on our national financial policy, or whatever.
Most of the time they’re telling us what they think we at the listening end, the frontliners, should be doing. It can be Big Phil swingeing around with his big stick threats on the Household Charge, or Euro MP Joe Higgins articulately flailing his oar at everybody who isn’t a Socialist. It could be the Consumer Agency’s Ann Fitzgerald urging us to shop around as prices rise and incomes fall but mobile phone costs here are still three times what they are in the UK. Or representative men and women from industry and business lobby groups and unions.
Whoever. They’re all talking heads. Mostly they’re all saying the same things over and over. And pretty well all of that on the gloom end of the emotion spectrum.
Also, most are very well paid for their main jobs of telling us that we must tighten our belts even further.
So here’s my friend’s idea. The simplicity gets it a top score. He suggests that every time a public or semi-public servant is captioned while talking on a TV screen, their salary as paid by the citizen taxpayer should also be displayed. On radio, the ID out should also provide the information.
Similarly for Members of the Dail and Seanad, industry spokespersons, trade union leaders, bankers, judges, and anyone else speaking about the economy and other public matters on behalf of a large state or public company who is paid a salary for their position. And there might even be a case for the same relating to journalistic pundits, though not to reporters.
Academics who are regularly trotted out to pontificate on one side or the other would also come under the rule. After all, their salaries in their institutions are paid for out of the public purse.
To be fair, perhaps there should be a ceiling under which such information need not be provided. Say €60,000 a year, which also happens to be the salary which I believe ought to be the top payment to a TD, and then only if he or she manages to be elected to a second term. But that’s another story.
Y’know, if the idea was taken on board, we might well find that there are far less economic and political theatrics and talking heads preaching at us to tighten our belts any further. That would be a result.
If you have any thoughts on it, send them along (with a note of your annual salary if over the limit above).
