THE fat cats have been lying low for some years, no doubt digesting at their leisure the huge salaries and bonuses they made from taking over newly privatised industries.

So now is the time for the plump cats to pounce, hoping to put on some extra weight whilst they think no one is watching. And guess, dear reader, who is going to pick up the bill?

Much to the embarrassment of the Government, someone was watching after all and it has now been revealed that huge salary rises are being handed out to local government civil servants.

The guy in charge of East Riding County Council saw his salary jump by 34.5 percent, which has not gone down at all well with our fellow Tykes on the far side of the county of broad acres.

Now something has changed in these matters since I was a lad planning a career and couldn't make up my mind between hunting mammoths or carving a few runes on the likes of Stonehenge.

In those days long ago, the people who got the bigger pay cheques were the ones who went into private industry or the professions, who had to live or die, financially speaking, by the quality of their work.

The others became civil servants because, at the end of it all, they got a guaranteed pension.

It was, so they said, a "bobby's job" - well before a policeman became a soldier in what is now almost a civil war on many of our urban streets. It meant, quite frankly, a quiet life, with little responsibility, slow but steady promotion, and virtually zero chances of ever getting the sack.

For members of my generation, whose parents had endured the deprivations of the Great Slump, that was important. Sadly, many of the more adventurous who went into the private sector were to get it in the neck again in the recessions of the 1970s and 1990s.

Now I don't wish to be over critical of local government officers or hospital trust managers - I am sure that they work very hard and conscientiously - but I don't recall any of them being made redundant in their hundreds of thousands.

Nor do I recall many cases of their being sacked for incompetence: they live in a world where responsibility is so shared and diffused over so many different departments that no-one ever seems to take the blame for some of the almighty cock-ups which can blight our public services.

What they got was index-linked pensions. Now, they are getting paid more than people who invent things, invest in things, and actually make things - including jobs for others. And go bust if things go wrong.

Perhaps the odd council or hospital should go bust every now and then. But, having thought about it, that's not a good idea: that would mean an even bigger bill for we taxpayers to pick up.* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.