It emerged yesterday that Judge Goddard, who will be leading the inquiry into the Historic Child Sex Abuse scandal, will be taking home a salary of nearly £500,000. While there's no question that we need to have the best people in charge of the inquiry, there are questions to be asked about why the package is structured as it is - with a £360,000 salary, a rental allowance of £110,000, £12,000 a year to cover utilities and a number of flights home to New Zealand. It's a high, and oddly structured, salary: we sincerely hope she's worth it. Our comments were featured in The Sun, the Evening Standard, and the Daily Express.
Meanwhile, our criticism of the British Medical Association's call for a so-called 'Sugar Tax' featured in CityAM.
Not only would it be fundamentally regressive to introduce such a tax, it's also highly likely - judging from international evidence - that it wouldn't work. The Government should ignore the clarion calls of the High Priests of the Nanny State.
The North East is this time the home of a story we've heard all too often - cushy tax arrangements for highly paid Council officials. As we say in the Northern Echo, questions must be asked about the fact that a Council chief is being paid "off-payroll" despite the Government's promise to crack down on the practice.