Half a truth is no truth at all.

What is Truth?

I went to my second County Council meeting on Thursday.

At the beginning of these meetings there is generally a five minute talk from a representative of a Suffolk faith community.  This week the speaker was Reverend Kyle Paisley, who is the Pastor of the Oulton Broad Free Presbyterian Church, and who is also a son of the Reverend Ian Paisley. 

Reverend Paisley spoke on the subject of Jesus’s question to Pilate: ‘What is Truth?’ 

The question of 'truth' was actually at the forefront of my mind on Thursday because on that very day the EADT had run an article that, although purporting to be a true account, was in fact only true in part, and as such effectively not true at all.

The impression given by the article was that the Council has arbitrarily given staff a bonus of £250 at a cost of some £800,000. The EADT believes that this money could be better spent on public services. Critics, the paper said, have described the payment as 'bonkers'.  However, this spin on events only gives part of the story.   I set out the actual position below. 

Staff at SCC will receive a 1% pay increase this year – in line with the nationally-agreed level.  This will be the first such cost-of-living increase in over three years.  At the same time, staff on the standard pay scales (known as single status staff), which amounts to around 3,730 people, will receive a one-off amount of up to £250.  This is a gross, pro rata payment, so that what they receive depends on the hours they work.  As the majority of the affected staff work part-time, only a minority will receive the full amount. 

This one-off payment is part of a move to end the traditional increment system, whereby employees would see their pay increase each year by a set amount.  The last such incremental increases cost £1.3million, so, by ending this system, a significant amount of money is being saved for council tax payers. This one-off payment helps ease the way for this change to happen.

To sum up, staff are being asked to give up a system whereby their wages drift up automatically every year regardless of performance.  To encourage this change they are to receive a one off payment of £250 (pro rata).  The abandonment of automatic incremental increases by staff will save significant money in the future; money which can be spent on the public services that the EADT, and everyone else, hold so dear. I personally do not think that this is an unreasonable outcome.

It is a pity that the EADT would rather run a half true story in order to make a splash than produce an honest report that would actually give its readers a true picture.

The painting above, What is Truth? is by the well-known Russian history Painter,  Nikolai Ge (1831 – 94). Painted in 1890 the work hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.