"The amounts that some people working for 'charities' get paid are frankly outrageous"

says £50,000 pa for 2 days per week Charity Commisssioner, William Shawcross adding "if I only had more time to do so I'd probably discover a really significant proportion of the 'charities' I regulate are actually businesses taking the p .... taking advantage of the tax benefits of being a 'charity'" .... and continued "trustees should consider whether very high salaries are really appropriate, and fair to both the donors and the taxpayers who fund charities.  Disproportionate salaries risk bringing organisations and the wider charitable world into disrepute."

What about Quangocrats?

Responding with the sort of outrage that suggested that they were being unjustly compared to 'bankers' Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mr Shawcross's remarks were "deeply unhelpful" and "wrong".

Entirely justified, demanding jobs, highly competitive

He said the average salary for a charity chief executive was £58,000 and the higher salaries were "entirely justified".  "The big national and international charities are very demanding jobs and we need to attract the best talent to those jobs," he said. "I know some of the people who are on these so-called excessive salaries who have taken pay cuts to run a charity."

Who cares what ordinary donors think, they don't contribute much anyway ..

Sir Stephen denied the high salaries could put off donors.  "This simply isn't an issue for donors. Donors are more concerned about the outcomes, the performance and the efficiency of these organisations," he added.

Update : 8 August - If you pay charity bosses peanuts you're going to get monkeys

Duncan Green, Oxfam GB's senior strategic adviser, is keen to point out, amongst other things, that "For every £1 donated to Oxfam, 84p goes directly to emergency, development and campaigning work. Just 9p is spent on running costs," and he also informs us that Oxfam consists of "a 700-shop retail chain, with 5,000 employees and 20,000 volunteers and a £360m budget."