Those Who Work Hard and Want to Get On

Although the Minister for Health and News Corporation has decreed that a one per cent pay rise is more than NHS staff deserve, the Government by no means wishes to imply that we're all in it together. Jeremy C Hunt, of course, is very much the man to know about the usefulness of special advisers, since he kept his last job by sacking one of his own. It seems that some of the rest have been claiming danger money: Britain's Head Boy's favourite fag, Ed Llewellyn, recently received a twelve per cent increase to his beggarly hundred and twenty-five thousand a year, while an adviser to the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith has graciously accepted a thirty-six per cent pay rise which Duncan Smith, with his famous mathematical genius, probably thinks is a cut. Several others have taken above-inflation pay increases in return for dealing with the likes of Theresa May on a regular basis. Still, before the politics of envy take complete hold, proles would do well to note that, according to a spokesbeing for the Cabinet Office, pay increases have to be approved by a special committee chaired by the Chancellor's spad Danny Alexander.