Those of us who have to travel by Tube every morning are wearingly familiar with the announcement that lists the bits of the tube that aren’t working—this morning, it was that the Circle Line was suspended because of a signal failure at South Ken—and ends with the self-congratulatory announcement that ‘a good service is operating on all other lines’, some days one is left wondering what other lines are there. What makes the poor state of the Tube all the more galling is the crazy sums that the bureaucrats of Transport for London are paid. As Andrew Gilligan writes in the Standard today:
“One hundred and twenty-three top TfL managers, we report, earned more than £100,000 last year. Their average pay was £140,000 — £2,500 higher than the Mayor’s. Fifteen earn more than the Prime Minister. The top earner made £540,000”
As Gilligan points out, this means that Transport for London has six times more managers on a £100,000 plus than the UK Treasury.
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