In any walk of life, it’s possible to happen upon people promoted far, far beyond their ability. Consider your own workmates for a moment and you will immediately recognise this statement to be true.

So how did he or she get to where they are in the organisation? How did they move up the employment ladder (and, by implication, several salary grades) when they appear bereft of initiative? Such anomalies remain a constant cause of deep, gnawing resentment.

There are, undoubtedly, chief executives currently sitting at the helm of some of our biggest publicly-quoted companies who you wouldn’t trust to arrange an in-house departmental raffle, never mind run a FTSE-listed corporation.

However, they’re in a tiny minority. Most are bright, articulate and hard-working, not least because they recognise that making it to the top of the highest corporate tree ensures a salary and other benefits which, after a few years in the top job, effectively remove the need to ever work again.

On average, FTSE100 chief executives earn £5.3 million a year. That’s an enormous amount of money, although any CEO would justify it by arguing that he or she takes on a level of responsibility commensurate with their pay packet.

When one considers the facts, many have a point. For example, in 2010, Britain’s five best-paid chief executives headed up companies that employed more than 516,000 people and paid corporation tax of £8.5 billion.

Hard facts regarding individual worth are less evident when we read of Carlos Kickaball, the latest imported Premier League footballer reportedly collecting £100,000 a week ie, the same as the average FTSE100 CEO.

Carlos’s pay is justified because he has only a short playing career and the market determines that that is what he’s currently worth.

In other words, Carlos has made the most of his God-given talent to reach the pinnacle of football’s greasy pole and, though he may occasionally play poorly, miss open goals, or behave like a recalcitrant three year-old, his value to his employers justifies a level of pay which ultimately most of us accept as the football industry’s norm.

Furthermore, despite the massive variance in pay at Carlos’s football club between its top earners and apprentices cleaning the first teamer’s boots, it is clearly not the Government’s role to intervene and declare that his market-determined pay must be cut.

The club’s salaries are determined by its senior management, not Vince Cable.

So if City pay has rocketed (and it has), then consider the extent to which it has grown in the Premier League.

In 2004-05, the average weekly pay of a Premier League footballer was £12,122.

By 2010, it had almost doubled, to £22,353.

Bear in mind that annual earnings of £1,162,356 is now an average figure which comprises some colossal salaries.

Manchester City’s Yaya Toure remains the league’s highest-paid footballer after signing a five-year deal worth £55.6 million. His basic starting salary was £185,000 a week which leapt to a weekly £221,000 when the 50% tax rate was introduced.

In addition, he receives £1.65 million a year for his image rights plus bonuses for qualifying for the Champions League (823,000) or actually winning it (£412,000), as well as other payments for winning the league title or FA Cup.

In 2010, each of the Premier League’s ten best-paid footballers received basic weekly salaries in excess of £104,000, a minimum of £5.4 million a year, considerably more than most FTSE chief executives.

Granted, each of the FTSE100’s five best-paid chief executives earned more than even Yaya Toure, but then it’s difficult to say that someone with responsibility for 69,000 employees and generating annual turnover of £60.3 billion as Tom Albanese, head of Rio Tinto, had isn’t worth at least as much as the Manchester City midfielder.