Cllr Paul Oldham 🏴My councillor blog: Year 5, Week 5
Nairn Riverside, councillors’ expenses, road closures, school roll forecasts ...
https://open.substack.com/pub/pauloldham/p/year-5-week-5?r=1b1911&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@pauloldhamsnp "Secondly some councillors choose, for whatever reason, not to claim some or all of their expenses."
Typically stated to be "the council needs the money more than I do", with the real, unspoken, reason being "I can't be arsed with the paperwork to make the claim."
@TimWardCam There is that.
Some of them live within walking distance of the whole of their ward and HQ so fair enough. But some of them are just smug rich people.
I always claim everything I can as to my mind proudly not claiming implicitly games shames those who are trying to live solely on a councillor salary and who need to claim all their expenses.
@pauloldhamsnp Oh, I never had a "councillor salary". Being a councillor cost me a fortune, particularly whilst I was doing IT contract work.
@TimWardCam Ah, well, we do, although it's still a pittance compared to what you and I could earn elsewhere. It was £25,982 last year for ordinary members and a lot of the younger councillors do a second, part time, job alongside that.
@pauloldhamsnp I get that this has to be different when you can't cycle from one end of the district to the other in not-very-many minutes!