have done a but more digging and discovered that because a lot of local government staff have long tenure this can cost more but even then I'm not sure exactly what their point would have been. 2) The article constantly referred to 'Channel 4 investigations', 'our investigations', 'we have discovered' as if the whole piece was the product of some amazing investigative journalism. In contrast, they later admitted that much of the information was garnered using the 'powers in the Freedom of Information Act', or a FoI request to you and I. Basically, the geniuses of Channel 4 seem to have sent out a long stream of FoI requests and then put them into a report. These are expensive and waste a lot of council's time. 3) The sickness issue. Ok, if I'm honest here Channel 4 had a point. Local authorities often suffer from real problems with sickness absence. However, it is actually quite a complex issue. Much of the sickness in the authorities I've worked for is accounted for by a small amount of staff on the long-term sick. As local government has very generous policies around sickness pay this means local authorities continue to pay staff for much longer than the private sector would. None of this really came out in the piece which basically described local government staff as the opposite of the 'hard Aberdeen man'. The issue I had with the piece was what then followed as Channel 4 pivoted from criticising local authorities from