NIGEL Cook’s letter (Bournemouth Echo Tue 26 Feb) should have had an enormous response or has the Echo just lost them?

I have been appalled at the level of pay among the local civil servants for a long time now and Nigel Cook’s direct comparisons highlight the appalling differences. I have never met anyone worth £100,000 per year and the fact that, as a council tax payer, I pay several people in Poole Borough Council much, much more than that disgusts me. There is nobody in Dorset that works in the County Hall or the Town Halls that is worth anything like that amount.

To make matters worse all of our councillors now are paid as well and they have recently awarded themselves an increase. However, the answer is in our hands when we vote soon for our new council. We need many councillors who will do the job as an unpaid volunteer as they always used to do and also make the salary base a five to one ratio.

We all know that the real work in the councils is done by those at the bottom of the salary scale and to pay their bosses at the top five times more would be more than generous.

When we have our councils on a five to one pay ratio then we can make all our contractors operate the same salary basis and it will then spread throughout the whole country. Even the trades unions now have their fat cats being paid far too much. They should be the first to operate a fixed ratio pay scale. No doubt our council fat cats are on union scales but that can be changed by our new councillors.

Hopefully if we all stick to these principles then we will have a complete change of faces in all our councils. The money saved by all of this would be more than enough to pay the extra teachers and policemen that we need and avoid tax increases for years.

DAVID BROWN, Lynwood Drive , Merley