IS there any wonder that Diane Whittingham, chief executive of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, has a smile from ear to ear?
With a salary rise of £10,000 to top up her salary of £180,000, I too would be like the Cheshire cat. People on the NHS front line such as doctors and nursing staff are now subject to a two-year salary freeze?
Diane Whittingham is not the sole beneficiary of a bumper salary rise.
Looking at the Examiner figures it appears that those on salaries upwards of £100,000 have all benefited.
It does make you wonder what the collective sum is being paid out to people in these positions throughout the UK.
Closer to home, I would love to know who justifies paying out these vast sums of public money, especially when NHS front line staff are subject to redundancies and an annual budget cut of 4%.
Once again it is a case of one rule for chiefs and another for Indians. You can’t imagine any of the £100,000 salary brigade treating the sick.
Paul Cooney, Unison branch secretary at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, calls for our trust bosses to show restraint this year.
And if the trust does not show restraint then what? Should we say ‘please’?
There can be no justification in our present financial climate for these salaries, let alone these salary increases.
Again, we can see the contempt that is shown to the front line workers and the public.
Do these people ever feel embarrassment or guilt when they see people losing their jobs or struggling with their household bills who are employed by the same trust?
R J Bray
Shelley
All right at the top
I AM really sorry that Diane Whittingham, chief executive of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust – along with other top executives – are finding it so difficult to manage on salaries in excess of £100,000.
How these people can look their colleagues in the eye without shame or guilt shows us the kind of people running the Trust.
All in it together? Yes, if you are a top executive at the NHS Trust.
Mrs Angela Round
Shepley
Pigs might fly
IN the Examiner’s lead article on Saturday, May 14 I was very angry to read about the pay rises of our local executives – Whittingham, Thompson and Hill.
I worked as a psychiatric nurse in Huddersfield and Dewsbury for 25 years until early retirement nearly three years ago on health grounds.
I wanted to be a nurse to make a positive difference to peoples’ lives and try to be of help to them and, hopefully for most of the time, I managed to do that.
I am interested in the motivation of our executives. Did they become nurses simply to earn obscene amounts of money? They should have the grace and decency to freeze their pay just as nurses, social workers and doctors are having to here and across the country and show an example to their colleagues. Nothing less will do.
But I just looked through my window, and think I just saw I pig fly past.
Mark Hinchliffe
Cowcliffe
Cost of an education
THE Universities Minister’s suggestion that colleges implement last-minute tuition fee ‘sales’ to fill courses comes several weeks after we mooted this idea in the pub, albeit tongue-in-cheek.
We mused that he next stage will be buy-one-year-get-one-free, then ultimately a guarantee that if you fail your degree you get all your money back.
Inevitably, the vice chancellors are waxing indignant at this apparent commercialisation of their trade – which is a bit rich given that they have been complicit all along, most of them charging the maximum fees as soon as they could.
Huddersfield University waited until the death before announcing its fees would undercut other local establishments and came up with £7,950 per year.
The only surprise was it wasn’t £7,999.99. Presumably they’ve become a bit more savvy since the disastrous foray into property development at Storthes Hall a few years ago.
With luck, these free-market practices will rub off on potential students and the joke courses will wither on the vine, then we might have a university system once again worthy of the name.
Richard Huddleston
West Slaithwaite
National vs local issues
EXAMINER columnist Barry Gibson feels it was a harsh blow for Bob Iredale, ‘a fundamentally decent man’ to be given his ‘marching orders from the voters’, following the local elections (Examiner, May 11).
He goes on to make the point that he wishes people voted on local issues in local elections.
Now I have no idea as to whether Mr Iredale is or is not a decent man, but what I do know is that the Lib Dems have never shown any reluctance to use national issues to gain local advantage when it has suited them.
Whether it be the war in Iraq or, until a year ago, Gordon Brown’s unpopularity, they have never baulked at exploiting national issues for their own local advantage.
They are known and widely admired/reviled (depending on your viewpoint) in equal measure.
Mr Iredale might have refused all such tactics in his own campaigns and, if so, he can speak for himself. However he doesn’t seem to be complaining. He’s been around long enough to know how it works and that ‘what goes around comes around’. He’ll get over it.
Barry Gibson would have done better to point out this general fact of political life and the involvement of all the major parties in it.
He could have pleaded for all of them, in future, to fight elections purely on local issues then his piece would have seemed less of a eulogy and more of a dispassionate reflection upon the vagaries of a political practice to which the Lib Dems are no strangers.
Gary Dimmock
Gledholt
After the elections
ONCE again we have a raft of thank you letters from councillors for being elected or re-elected. It’s a pity they don’t put as much effort into their work on the council.
May I also ask local Labour and Lib Dem parties to get out on the streets and remove those hideous ‘Vote for Me’ boards which are fastened on every lamp-post around the town – or will the council taxpayers of Huddersfield be funding that as well as private political party meetings?
Hard Up and Fed Up
Huddersfield
Those empty seats
I SHARE Clr Woodhead’s view regarding empty seats. (Weekend Examiner, May 14).
It was indeed disappointing that none of the newly elected councillors were present at the Meltham town meeting on May 11. I trust this is not a sign of things to come.
As a Meltham resident I would expect greater commitment to attendance at town council meetings and public events.
G A Mellor
Meltham
‘Stealing’ their pensions
‘HARD Working Teachers’ letter on teachers’ pensions (Mailbag, May 13) reminds me of my old school reports. The words were apposite: ‘tries hard, could do better’.
Another word is ‘theft’. You don’t have to be Einstein to calculate that if you sign up to an agreement where you pay in a certain amount of money, work for a certain number of years, retire and then claim your benefits, only to be told that you can’t have them, this is theft.
Doubtless Hard Working Teacher will be sitting sanctimoniously at home on strike days – as schools will be closed because of lack of staff – but be prepared to take the pension if the action has the desired affect.
Brian Horton
Berry Brow
Bad end of year report
IN AN assessment of the first year of the coalition Government, as reported by Barry Gibson (Examiner, May 12), it’s no surprise that Barry Sheerman considers it to have been “a disaster all round’’ or that Jason McCartney is in “buoyant mood’’ although his enthusiasm seems to have caused him to loseŠ touch with reality in his claim to have “taken 10 million people out of income tax.’’
More difficult to understandŠ are the views expressed by University of Huddersfield politics lecturer Dr Pete Woodcock, particularly in relation toŠthe NHS and education.
Published on the same day that thousands of the most vulnerable members of society were marching in London against the government’s assault on the disabled, when the NHS reforms are being questioned by all relevant parties amid fears of creeping privatisation and increasedŠ confusionŠ and where the most significant impact of the CoalitionŠon education to date Šwould include the abandonment of the Building Schools for the Future programme, the massive cuts to Sure Start, to youth work, careers advice, the educational maintenance allowance to poorer 16-19 year olds and the massive increase in university tuition fees, it seems perverse for him to reach the conclusion that the coalition Government has done “remarkably well’’ in its first year.
Lewis Rich
Fixby
