It's the same the whole world over ...

Nice piece by Shipton of the Mail who outs Welsh establishment fixture Lord Rolling-in-it Beddoe for ‘earning’ an annual salary of £35,000 for four days’ work a month as one of two deputy chairmen of the Newport-based UK Statistics Authority.

As the paper mentions, the Monaco-based businessman and Conservative Party fundraiser was appointed chairman of the Welsh Development Agency in 1993. His appointment was renewed after Labour came to power in 1997 and he subsequently became chairman of the Wales Millennium Centre among other non-executive incumbencies.

He is one of a generation of double-barrelled cracach who have displayed a consistent ability to slurp up the publicly-funded gravy ever since the Welsh Office and its offspring came into being. They still occupy dozens of positions in various advisory bodies & steering groups and permeate the Welsh quangosphere like nobody's business.

The really sad part is that in these days of stark social inequality, far too many politicians still fail to grasp that all this so-called “greater transparency” about incomes is merely rubbing peoples’ noses in it. Redressing the imbalance is what counts.