Complainer
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Hear, hear.
And back to the civil servants again:
4% increase in their expenses. Or was that a 4% increment? Either way, this isn't going to help us fight our way out of recession.
Good to see the Herald keeping up Independent Group's usual high standards for printing fiction masquerading as fact. The writer doesn't get it. Here's the truth about expenses. The mileage rate is pretty good, the subsistence rates are pretty crap. However, corporate policies insist on use of public transport where available. Anywhere on regular train routes means train journey.
What the writer omits to mention about the overnight rate is that it covers accomodation and food. Try getting a decent overnight room plus breakfast/lunch/dinner on €140 odd and you'll see how generous the expenses are. The only way to avoid being out of pocket on the overnight rate is stay at a B&B (€50-€60 a night) and not a hotel.
On a recent trip to Cork, I stayed in Jury's Inn to be with some contractor colleagues who were working with me. The overnight rate was €85 and breakfast was an additional €12. We ate in Isaac's for dinner (no dessert, 1/2 bottle house wine €50). So I went over my allowance before I got lunch.
The Herald's make-up numbers of somebody spending 30 nights away from home with zero outgoings (no breakfast/lunch/dinner/accomodation) is simply ludicrous. I'd take his claim that most staff claim 4,000 with a large pinch of salt unless there is come credible source for this.
The silly, unplanned decentralisation programme has resulted in a huge increase in T&S payments - just one of the many reasons why this programme should be promptly shelved until a rational, planned programme can be put in place.
To get back to the equality issue, have any of the other posters on this thread wondered why bad parenting seems to be more common in areas of low income, and why heroin addiction seems to be more common in areas of low income?