Few of the many who moan about the remuneration levels of our commissioners’ clerks, MHKs and government ministers would be capable of doing their work and even fewer consider applying for a vacant commissioners’ clerk position or stand for election as an MHK.

Clearly it is very much easier to moan about what many perceive as salary levels which are higher than they think they should be than to pluck up enough courage to have a go at applying for a vacant commissioners’ clerk position or make the effort to try to be elected as an MHK.

Trevor Cowin seems to have found out that the total salaries of most commissioners’ clerks is in the region of £70 to £80,000 per year.

They have to endure a lot of hassle when serving their sometimes ill-informed and inexperienced elected commissioners.

They have to control expenditure and social housing plus assist in calculating the always-controversial increases in rates using the government’s hopelessly out-of-date and unfair assessment of the rateable property values in addition to having to deal with some civil servants who too frequently seem to be trying to rule and obstruct rather than serve those whose taxes pay their salaries.

Taking all this into account, plus the need to be fully acquainted with all aspects of the island’s legislation, if most commissioners’ clerk’s earnings are in the region of £70-80,000 a year this does not seem to be unreasonable although it is rumoured that the odd one earns less while some believe Port Erin’s Commissioners’ clerk earns about the same as the Chief Minister !

What does seem to be unreasonable is that MHKs earn about £80,000 a year but that government ministers who have much greater responsibilities than MHKs seem to get only about £10,000 a year more for all of their additional responsibilities.

Who on earth would want to accept the position of Infrastructure Minister who it seems only earns about £80,000 a year whist employing 700 people and dealing with so many complicated, different and difficult situations, many of which result in the minister and his department being unfairly bombarded with frequently ill-informed criticism ?

Surely the low salary levels of our government ministers results in our not getting people whose greater capabilities would better match the complexity and difficulties of their responsibilities .

If the government ministers were to be significantly better paid the island would be more likely to be served by people who are more capable of reducing the government’s poor control of its expenditure, which results in the huge amounts of our money being wasted in comparison with the infinitely smaller amounts that would be incurred by paying a handful of government ministers higher salaries?

Our government ministers are definitely not monkeys but there is some truth in the statement that ‘if you pay peanuts you get monkeys’.

Name and address supplied

This letter was first published in the Manx Independent of February 2.

A reply will be printed in tomorrow's Isle of Man Examiner.

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