Head of Communications

I know we live in more enlightened times and man's primary work in life is not necessarily to put meat in the family pot or ensure a good and plentiful supply of potable water but what in the name of all that's good does Andy Coulson, the Head of Communications do and in what way does he qualify to earn such an enormous, almost unbelievable salary?

I'm pretty sure that David Cameron wouldn't pay this sort of money-rumoured to be on a par with what the PM earns-out of his own pocket so I'm tempted to deduce that's it's only because it comes from the seemingly bottomless pit of the Public purse that it is paid. How can that salary be justified. What is he doing that a full time Civil Servant can't do, or even Cameron, himself? Does he put 'spin' on Governmental announcements, such as Campbell did for the last socialist administration. How can 'spin' ever be in the public interest?

These days there seems to be a lot of people doing what I think of as unnecessary jobs, earning huge six figure salaries and very few of them, apart from doctors and surgeons, are doing what I'd call front line work. The media is an obvious place to look for these jobs, the cost of news readers being a case in point. The government is finally tackling the over abundance of unnecessary Quangos, all of which come with high value price tags. Lobbyists are another group of people who I have difficulty fitting anywhere into the food chain.

It's time to reward the manufacturers, the farmers and others that contribute to the real world and sideline those that don't create real wealth. The Government should ask: Is this job really necessary in the public interest? If the answer is 'no', bin it! For the rest there should be a ceiling to the remuneration of those paid from the public purse. Arguing that this will result in a shortage of top quality applicants for jobs is plain eyewash. The country is full of competent and highly qualified people, reachable if jobs are advertised in newspapers other than the Guardian.