If you owned a large organisation with a turnover of millions and employees in the thousands, who would you want to run it and how much would you pay them? And if that organisation had the potential to shape lives for good or for ill, would you look to recruit the best leadership possible, or cut corners to save a few quid?

These questions and their seemingly straightforward answers go to the root of the annual, relentlessly unsophisticated analysis of senior local government pay from the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA).