• Job: Chief Executive, READING BC
• Employer: READING BC
• Contact: Terry McDougall
• Location: Reading
• Permanent Hours: Full Time
• Salary: up to £154k

Public service in the 21st century: it's hard to summarise, but you know it when you see it. Let us know when you find it.

For us, it includes the daily reward of frustrating the poplace, with a feckless and lazy group of elected members who'll do whatever we say, and a committed staff team keen to continue their impressive services to Reading Labour Party.

So the chance to deliver a once-in-a-generation chance of screwing up the physical and civic fabric of the town, not to mention getting nowhere trying to get South Oxfordshire to agree to a third bridge, is an added bonus.

In a role with so much to offer, we have ludicrously high expectations of our new Chief Executive: your ideas, an impressive list of mates in high places and a willingness to ride roughshod over others will set you apart. It's a significant public and community leadership position, so candidates need to be instinctively comfortable in knowing which side their bread is buttered on. And as we maintain our drive for continued improvement in services, we want someone who can sack staff without upsetting Unison.

The council's wider partnerships will continue to be as critical as we sell the town off to the developers leaving you free to concentrate on your task of raising revenue. Candidates need to have the brass kahunas to tell local residents to bugger off and thick skinned enough to go around pretending that a small town in Berkshire really is a city by shamelessly adding residents in neighbouring boroughs to the population to massage the figures.

• Closing date: 22 February 2008.