Many ask where the millions for Highways England’s supposed motorway improvements is going, when essential safety aspects are still being compromised?
After all, we now know that the single stretch of Smart Motorway where Jason, Alexandru, Derek Jacobs and an unnamed woman were killed has become a “cash cow” raising more than £6 million in speeding fines since 2017.
Writing in the Telegraph, Steve Bird reported that a “total of 62,337 tickets were issued between junction 30 and 35a of the M1 in just two years and eight months, boosting government coffers by up to £6,233,700.” [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/07/smart-motorway-four-motorists-died-cash-cow-speeding-fines/]
Here’s one possible answer. According to the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Highways England executives are creaming it in.
A PCS press release in June [https://www.pcs.org.uk/news/union-slams-highways-england-over-pay-injustice] revealed that a Freedom of Information request showed “an increasing number of executives are being paid in excess of £100,000.”
The government-owned company reportedly pays 63 Highways England executives a total of £8,537,714.54. This is up from six people in receipt of such largesse at public expense in 2013.
The PCS reports [https://www.pcs.org.uk/news/highways-england-pay-ballot-opens-8-april] that Highways England Chief Executive Jim O’Sullivan is “now earning three times as much as his predecessor over £400,000 a year, or £1,103 a day, up from £366,868 last year; a rise of 9.7% and the pay bill for executive directors having almost doubled in four years….Chairman of the board Colin Matthews is paid £130,000 for attending 34 meetings a year; £3,823 per meeting.”
That’s some gravy train. But only for a few. In January, Highways England imposed a 1 percent pay offer on its staff, which was to be capped every year until 2025. This comes after a three-year pay freeze and a seven-year 1 percent pay cap.
Why the need for such huge remunerations? Could it be that their silence over the fact that Smart Motorways Kill is part of the deal?
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The fact that fat-cats at the top are getting huge wage rises while the workers at the bottom end up getting paid less when inflation is factored in, is no surprise, this is the way the world works now, the rich get richer and the poor get shafted – and in the case of this matter, killed. Absolutely disgusting.
it is disgusting, I’m ashamed to say i used to sometime consider thoughts and comments like that a little paranoid, but we are learning the hard way thats exactly how it is!