BETTER AND BETTER FOR SOME PEOPLE

One of Cameron's early boasts when he arrived in Downing Street was that he would deal with the "crazy" (his word, not mine) bonus culture in the Civil Service.

Needless to say, given a pledge from Cameron, last year the number of top Civil Servants receiving bonuses in the five-figure range... doubled. Clearly it wasn't crazy enough for Crazy Cameron.

Seriously, you can always predict that no matter what this man promises, it will be the opposite of what happens.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, there were 10 recipients of bonuses over £30,000 and one, apparently in the MoD, who managed to get himself paid almost £100,000 on top of his salary. Further investigations showed:

* Six staff at the Cabinet Office took home bonuses of between £10,000 and £20,000 during 2011/12 — three times as many as in the previous year. They included Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, and Sue Gray, the Cabinet’s Office’s head of propriety and ethics.

* Phil Wynn Owen, the Department of Energy and Climate Change official in charge of “greening” Britain’s economy, received a discretionary award of nearly £15,000.

* Three officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government received bonuses of up to £14,000.

* Two civil servants at the Department for International Development, the Whitehall agency charged with helping the world’s poorest people, received bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 last year.

* The chief executive of the Met Office, John Hirst, received a supplementary payment of more than £40,000. A fellow director accepted a bonus of £20,000.

* Three directors at the Training and Development Agency, responsible for improving teachers’ skills, were given performance-related pay of between £30,000 and £40,000.

* And five officials at the Ordnance Survey received bonuses of between £15,000 and £30,000.

OK, the numbers aren't huge, and the total amount spent isn't world changing, but with people from most walks of life being told that they are 'all in this together' and that they must all put their shoulders to the wheel, and particularly in view of Cameron's pledge to end this nonsense, it seems wrong that it not only goes on, but increases apace.

Better together for 'top' people! How's that for a slogan, Alistair?