Dear Proteus,
I believe salaries differ county by county, and there doesn't seem to be any laid down rule? Length or service (rank in any Dept.), does make a difference, and there is always promotion obviously.
As to Local & gnrl. Govt. pensions I am told they are equivalent to apx. 25% in addition to whatever salary might be being earned since they are 'solid gold' Govt. backed (my second cousin worked in the Treasury). This calc. is assumed as any of us other mere mortals must take our chance on the open market... and we all know what that means! The Govt. previously encouraging the whole populace to take out pension schemes was a touch irresponsible with the current situation - no Govt. parachute protection for this. Thankfully I ditched private pensions and shares before the last glitch, and never considered going back into them - very partic. this last two years where it was quite obvious it was going to end in tears at some stage (especially with the ridiculous state the property mkt. got itself into).
Whilst no bank can be said to be absolutely safe at the moment, I choose very carefully and have stuck with mine for many years now. I keep a very close watch on what they are up to via my Bank Mgr.. They bought the best bit's of Leemans when this crashed a few weeks ago, and no-one spends £700M in a recession unless they have a pretty good idea of what's what. My bank (and I am not going to mention any name), satisfies me with it's wide diversity and non dependence on narrow activities like quite a few others; thankfully it's exposure was minimal to the USA Sub Prime nonsense, and profits were only down by a third.
As to shares and the like, it's actually quite a good time to think of buying - after some very careful watching. Many significant companies are worth considerably more than their low share price, and it won't be too long before things improve. It is surprising how some in the financial world seem to be panicing like amateur investors, but one wonders whether there is a motive here... a low market offers good future profits. As to property, well, it's not quite bottomed yet, and there will be opportunity for some to buy well even at this stage - a buyers mkt. now as we all know.
The reason I mention all this, is that one would have thought that Finance Depts. of Councils could have weighed all this up at least five + years ago? - since lot's of councils have been caught out by this, they must have been following what the Association of County Councils were suggesting - and some people in this body should obviously be shot! The first warning signs that things were starting to get unstable was in 1999, and when the property mkt. went silly a year or so ago this was a very significant red light. Nothing new in what's happened... it's happened before, it's happened now, and it will happen again - though I suspect there will be strong Govt. regulation to help it not happen again (partic. with councils who should definitely not be permitted to freely invest in the same way as private individuals - and very very particularly not overseas!). If councils hadn't invested so unwisely, now would be a good time to have invested in increasing their housing stock - I was always against the selling off of council houses - unless they were replaced.
Regards, Bernard