So, Jane Scott decided not to accept the 36.5 per cent increase in her allowance. This, after spending a couple of months telling us all that she was perfectly entitled to the new rate of £52,227 a year. Since November, Mrs Scott’s attitude seems to have been “stuff you – it’s what I’m worth and what I’m going to get”. Then Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has a quiet word in her ear and she’s suddenly claiming that, over the Christmas break, she’d decided not to take the increase. Some cynical people have claimed that Mrs Scott, OBE, was told by the Conservative Party to decline the extra dosh but I for one believe her Christmas story. After all, it’s only an extra fifteen grand that she was turning down and that sort of thing can easily slip your mind.

Perhaps we should be paying our elected representatives more. Maybe that would encourage people of the right calibre to put themselves forward. Most councillors will soon be getting an allowance of £12,289 a year – a modest increase of one per cent.

If we consider it a salary, as some do, then that’s a paltry amount. If, as the council’s website states, the “basic allowance is intended to recognise the time commitment of all councillors, including such inevitable calls on their time as meeting with officers and constituents and attendance at political group meetings [and] incidental costs such as the use of their homes” then it seems very generous. Town and parish councillors who make the effort to do their job properly probably commit the same amount of time and money as their more powerful brethren yet few of them get financial compensation.

The question of if and how much we should be rewarding – or compensating – those we return to make the big decisions for us is a complex one. The consensus seems to be that the town and parish councillors should do it for free, even though this does give us many councillors whom Richard Curtis would not have dared put into Dibley Council for fear of being accused of exaggeration. On the other hand, people seem accepting of the basic £66,396 that MPs are paid. This whole allowances thing has been a fiasco from the start and Mrs Scott’s volte face didn’t do her any favours. Jane Scott is in a powerful and relatively secure position. She’s got a healthy majority in her own ward and although some independent will probably stand against her at the next election, I’m sure she’ll still romp home, just as I believe that the Conservatives will still have overall control of the council. The damage was done as soon as the increases for ‘senior’ councillors were announced. So Mrs Scott should have continued to front it out and waited for people to forget. The relatively small number of signatories to the online petition calling for the resignation of the leader and her cabinet suggest that the majority of us aren’t that bothered. Most people aren’t that concerned about the amount of money involved, what we want to see is value and good service. I’m not alone in being concerned about the number of council staff being made redundant and the consequent degradation of services. Now we hear that the council’s youth services could go. This paper quoted Alan Tomala of Unite as saying “We face the real possibility that… we will have no youth workers, empty youth centres boarded up and young people hanging around outside them with nothing to do.” Alex Carder, of Pewsey Parish Council, says “It shows a disregard for our youth.” Hear, hear! Mrs Scott, stop getting rid of jobs, sort out our appalling roads and call the attack dogs off the youth services. Demonstrate that ‘everybody matters’ then you’ll get my vote and I’ll be happy if you pay yourself £100,000 a year. If you don’t then I’ll be joining the increasing clamour for change.