Some context

There are lots of complaints about the large salaries paid to local council minions but it’s not a new problem. The roots go very deep.
    A correspondent who used to work with a bloke who was a borough councillor in Cheshire in the 1990s and 2000s told me the councillor was in a constant battle with others, including fellow Tories, who thought that the more their Town Clerk (or whatever the currently fashionable title was) got paid, the more prestige the councillors had.
    That’s a “our town clerk gets twice what you pay yours, and that makes us twice as good as you” attitude.
    Paid with other people’s money, of course. And to the neglect of filling potholes and other essentials.