JEP columnist Paula Thelwell looks at how times have changed with regard to care for the elderly.

‘I find it curiously ironic that those who govern this Island think it is perfectly acceptable to pay so-called outside experts hundreds of pounds a day and, moreover, to house them in luxury accommodation and reward them with expense accounts, when they are being employed to come up with the cuts that will hurt the poor and socially disadvantaged.

An elderly lady told me last weekend that the rent relief she receives is to be cut. It isn’t a lot, not even £175 a month, yet it is too much for this Island to afford.

No doubt the civil servant who advised her is handsomely paid, while those who have made the decision to deprive the elderly existing on limited means fall into the salary bracket above £60,000 a year. Those we pay handsomely yet without being allowed to know who they are.

Instead of hacking away at the most vulnerable to make false savings in the window-dressing exercise masquerading as efficient cost-cutting, why not reduce the wages of the members of the 60K Club by at least ten per cent and use that money to cushion the effect of the recession on those who really need help?

The justification for ridiculously high salaries paid to this Island’s civil servants and experts is that we need incentives to attract the high-flyers. So why, when we don’t serve peanuts, do we get so many monkeys?’

• Read the full column in today’s Jersey Evening Post