Politics of envy, pure and simple. This and the trashing of public sector pensions is little more than the race to the bottom to pacify 'Outraged of Tunbidge Wells' who is finding himself maxed out with debt and his home failing to rise in value to prop his over-extended lifestyle up.
When times were good and the private sector was coining it in, bonuses were being paid and people were generally doing rather well for themselves, I didn't hear much in the way of complaning. And I suspect that once we have all hit the bottom and market forces then start to raise public sector renumeration once again, the complaints will stop and it will be business as usual with the public sector lagging.
Many of the better companies whilst offering a weighting or allowance if based somewhere expensive like London, don't base renumeration on how much Joe Bloggs and his mates down the road from the Head Office earn, but on the what they think they need to pay based on the demands of the job and the need to attract the best candidates. If Osborne's plan to equalise out salaries were applied across the board, then either people in Tower Hamlets would be very happy about an imminent pay rise, or people in the City were would be rather annoyed at an imminent pay cut.
To apply an overly-simplistic blanket political solution to a geographical and socio-economic problem which is influenced by a multitude of factors will as PN suggested have huge unintended consequences - migration of talent away from the the north being but one - and is simply designed to hit the easiest targets. Next they'll be coming up with hairbrained schemes to tax old ladies out of the family home. I'm a Conservative by instinct, and certainly no fan of the Unions who I think who are as dangerous as the Lib Dems and Danny Alexander in particular, but this shower really have to stop going after the 'easy targets' and actually think about extracting some cash from those at the very very top who can afford to pay accountants to come up with the weasley schemes. Otherwise, I would suggest that they don't get too comfortable in Downing Street.
Last edited by Melchett01; 17th Mar 2012 at 13:03.