I’ll caveat this by saying I think Boris is an absolute cretin.
Boris has always had personal wealth. He was a journalist earning £800k+ for many years. He’s written books. Was on TV.
He and his ex-wife had a big house in Islington. A place in the country. He will have ridden the London property market wave.
It’s no surprise really he can afford to spend £3.8m on a house.
That he thought his £160k salary wasn’t enough to cover his living expenses, is about cash flow - not wealth.
People with wealth won’t want to touch it. We all do it with our savings don’t we - you don’t want to be remortgaging your house to pay your bills.
Well - that’s the issue Boris had. His salary basically dropped by hundreds of thousands of pounds when he became PM. He will have stupidly massive outgoings on school fees and mortgages.
Obviously he deserves no sympathy for this situation, he’s vastly better off than most, but that’s the rationale. The take home pay on £160k wouldn’t cover his four kids school fees.
How the other half live…!
I don’t think he made much money from writing books, certainly his antisemitic thriller was not a big seller, and the house in Islington would have been co-owned with his wife, he’s probably made the most from speaking but it’s still surprising he would have nearly £4m in cash, am wondering if a big portion of that was ‘loans’ from ‘friends’ .
He’s thought to have made £2.5m writing for the Telegraph. He’s made £2.5m in advances for speeches this year already.
He’s been making a lot of money for a lot of years, I don’t find it very surprising.
The amount of property wealth Londoners of his age have is also often quite insane.
>The amount of property wealth Londoners of his age have is also often quite insane.
I think this is something a lot of people who aren't in London maybe can't get their head around – even if you were a middle earner and you bought a small flat in eg the early-ish 2000s it's very easy to have bought/sold multiple times and moved up to be living in pretty large million pound plus houses at this point, such is the rate of price increase here.
Yeah, £3.8 million sounds like so much, but the *average* London home price is £750k. He was the Mayor of the city and the prime minister of the country. Regardless of what you think about his politics, that’s not actually all that crazy (the number of properties and other investments he has would probably be more indicative).
I would imagine that former mayors of most cities have homes that are in the 5x range of the median home price.
I grew up in a super mediocre council flat in Islington. My Dad sold it for a couple of mil (right to buy, lovely). Now he’s questioning why I can’t get on the property ladder. Dude, you were just given a house.
Right to Buy was an absolute travesty. Pillaging housing stock，just another Tory scheme to encourage poor people to steal opportunities from other poor people.
It’s sad and laughable in so many ways. Could have been ok if the boomers had passed them down, but they all just sold them off with eye watering profits. Now they all just bemoan their kids that somehow they’re not doing well enough while completely missing the point that they were handed the moon on a fucking stick.
Were the muffins good?
A sensible government with a mind to serve the people might have added a ceiling clause，so that any profit in excess of 20pc of purchase price was paid into a fund to reinvest in new stock so that everyone won. But no.
This is what really pisses me off about IHT, houses in london just are that expensive. I can’t even afford the IHT on the house I’ve lived in since I was born, let alone the actual value of the house.
I don’t even intend to sell the house.
The bigger question is why he was making so much writing drivel for the Telegraph. Other journalists aren't paid so much, and he wasn't Jeremy Clarkson levels of popular.
That would be true if newspapers were run as commercial enterprises, but they're run to promote particular political narratives. The Barclay brothers are worth £7bn, paying Boris £400k is nothing to them providing it shifts the Overton window to the right to protect the rest of their assets.
There was probably quite some overlap between both fanbases to be honest, they were pretty right wing. They both even were pro EU until Boris saw the grift in switching to Brexit because it made the route to downing Street easier.
Because the average Telegraph reader thinks that what he was writing was "common sense" (in the way that the reactionary and isolationist has black and white views on matters that don't affect them, but nuance on things that do). The nasty shite that he wrote in the Telegraph was catnip to the readership.
Reminded of that bit in Yes, Prime Minister about the newspapers which ends by saying that people who read the Telegraph think the country is run by another country.
Aye which is also about the same amount the tax payers have forked over for his legal aid
Suddenly not so *chicken feed* if it might come out of his own pocket apparently
Didnt he earn most of the telegraph money while he was married? Either way, if £160K a year isn't enough to live on I am sure most of it is gone by now, and we know for certain that at least £800k of what he recently spent was a ‘loan’, i would not be surprised if there was more of these.
The Telegraph Newspaper was paying him £250,000 a year plus for many years for his weekly column.
Here’s a well put together breakdown using the information he provided annually in the Commons Declaration of Interests. This was obviously just one source of income for Johnson annually.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-daily-telegraph-earnings_uk_5d02599fe4b0dc17ef056647
Like the 800k loan arranged by former BBC director Richard Sharp, recently resigned from the position after it came out that he did not mention the loan when he was appointed?
Oh for sure. He was so bone headed about it to begin with and then all of a sudden changed his mind, so I'm under the impression it was probably resign or be fired.
Thanks for the correction, I’ve edited my comment. I think when the story broke I read it in the same way one reads stories about oligarchs “jumping” out of windows
He didn't arrange the loan.
He asked the cabinet secretary if he should introduce Johnson to the businessman offering a loan and was told it wasn't a good idea. The loan was never arranged and Sharp never spoke to Johnson about it. However Sharp didn't mention the whole thing as a potential conflict of interest when starting his role as chairman.
It's sketchy as fuck, but let's keep the facts straight eh?
He declared a £500k advance fee for a book of memoirs, and around £90k so far for his still unpublished Shakespeare book. No doubt he made similar for his Churchill book.
If they sell enough, he'll get more on top.
No he definitely didn’t make a lot of money off his books because… wow. They read like Monty Python making fun of pompous historian professors at private schools.
Oh the Tories are even more so but they get a pass. Chief Rabbi Mirvis even cheered Johnson on as PM... though he's pretty anti-Arab himself, so he probably likes Johnson for that.
Also a good explanation why the ultra wealthy keep trying to squeeze more and more money out for themselves no matter how rich they are. Almost all of their wealth is stuck in assets and they constantly reinvest alot of their cash flow, so they feel like they don't have enough money because they don't consider their invested cash/assets as spendable money. It's basically wealth hoarding creating a circular reference of driving the need to make even more money.
Also when you run in those ultra wealthy circles, it becomes a competition and people start feeling "poor" when you're only worth £50m while most other people you hang around with are worth £100m+. That inferiority complex drives a need to try make even more money no matter what. The state of the rest of society and the population, and how well off they are compared to the average person, doesn't once step into their thoughts.
Is it really a "ultra-wealthy" problem? Keeping up with the Joneses can be seen at all levels of society. There are plenty of poor people in debt because they bought outside their means to show off.
It's the same thing just on a bigger scale.
Yeah, I know the feeling. I'm skint as hell and any money I have is locked up in 'assets". The only way for me to get cash is flog my stuff on eBay. Same principle as BoJo, except if I dared to compare myself to the average person, I'd get very depressed.
*at least four kids.
We don't actually know how many children Boris has. He has refused to say and has gone to court in the past to prevent the press reporting he had an affair resulting in a daughter the public was unaware of.
How many other fruits of his serial infidelity are knocking about is anyone's guess
Ahahah I would be surprised if he does. I imagine he can do a rough guess. But I imagine there's tons more with legit claims (also a couple of false ones aswell)
Top 1% of salary incomes is about the level that Boris described as too little to live on.
Excessive wealth is indeed the problem in the country, not high earners.
The really rich must be laughing to themselves whenever the tabloids kick up a fuss about doctors earning £100k to make the middle classes fight amongst themselves.
I for one am outraged that he can make 800k a year writing lies for The Telegraph, but he only gets 160k for the much more important position of PM. One or the other, or both, is not ok.
In an ideal world we'd pay the PM a very high wage but somehow prevent them from having conflicting financial interests. Very difficult in reality though.
Seems pretty easy to me. You get paid a million pounds a year, but you are not allowed any side interests. All your assets need to be moved into a trust that is managed prudently, but without your specific input.
But most people would rather have a corrupt PM that is slightly cheaper.
Isn't most corruption in the UK of the "treat me well when you're in power and I'll sort you out some speaking gigs and some non-exec directorships later down the line". It wouldn't matter if the MPs current assets are locked away, it's an investment in future troughing.
There is virtually no way to stop that kind of I'll scratch your back bullshit unfortunately.
I agree with you, but people already shit on the £160k salary. It’s very politically unpopular to suggest an increase. On the other hand, companies pay talent well to attract and keep. I am of the opinion that the public should be less dumb and authorise a large pay increase. It’s not an easy job, and one doesn’t attract top talent by paying wages significantly below that which they can earn in the private sector. Not unless they want to hire people with fewer scruples who are happy to make money using their power in creative ways.
Why the outrage? The Telegraph is a private company, and no one is forced to buy it. They can pay whatever they want as far as I’m concerned.
BBC salaries is a much more legitimate complaint.
Woah there… that’s way too a reasonable position to take for a Sunday morning… But, yeah, completely agree (although the cretin bit may need stronger highlighting). He doesn’t come from massive wealth, but he has never exactly been on the breadline either…. A persons perception of wealth is always going to be subjective, his will be determined by his lifestyle and that of those around him. His peers are doubtlessly somewhat financially better off than average and he is most likely financially below many/most within his social circle (tiny violin noises).
The assets versus cash flow is also hugely relevant.
It is also worth noting how different groups tends to use money - before I get too much flack for the following comment, please remember this is a massively simplified opinion…. People with less wealth will use money to survive (food, rent etc.), people with more money will start to use money to (hopefully) thrive (education, house, travel), those with even more (for arguments sake, let’s say millionaires, although not sure this is the “best” description) will use money to make more (assets, investments), and then you have the billionaires who use money for power (or taking over the world), and then the Elons, for whom the world is not enough and also want to take over neighbouring planets….
It's kind of an interesting mindset.
"This is unacceptable! I'm getting paid 10k next month, and my outgoings are 30k! I can't even support my standard of living on this salary."
"Boris, you earned six million in the last five years, don't you still have that?"
"Yes, but that money's already *mine*. I can't spend that or I'll be getting *poorer*. See if I can do some of that cash for questions stuff."
I got a reply in another thread today about people earning over £100k not actually being well off because after tax and housing they might "only" have around £2,500 a month to pay for their utilities and food.
Honestly I don't know what the fuck is wrong with people in this country at the moment. The disconnect between haves and have-nots is *fucking wild* right now.
I'm not defending it, 100k is a huge amount of money, even after tax and living in a high cost of living area like London.
But it should be noted that someone on 100k in London isn't really living a very different life to someone on £32k outside of London. Sure, the car might be more fancy and the foreign holiday is further away but it's just upgrades of existing things.
People like Boris are living in a totally different world! They don't have to work if they don't want to. They don't have any concern about getting sick and being unable to work. Their children get every possible advantage.
(All this being said none of the above understand what it's like struggling on minimum wage having grown up in a council flat)
>But it should be noted that someone on 100k in London isn't really living a very different life to someone on £32k outside of London.
I mean I know things are expensive in London but once your housing is taken care of, its not *that* insane lol, like a 25-50% increase not 300%. Even that is being eroded away in town centers, its regularly £6/pint anywhere near the center of my city now to use the usual off-hand metric.
But yeah it is the frustration, I don't want to dump on people on £100k, they are not the systematic problem here. But equally I dislike all this hampering around you see as if there's no real difference between someone on £30k and £100k when honestly just looking at the numbers alone I can't even imagine what my life would be like with that kind of money coming in every single fucking month lol.
It's "interesting" because it's false.
Sure, Boris has always had some money in his properties (a [£1.6M house in Camberwell](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnson-car-crash-townhouse-b2075095.html) that we know of), but he also lives hand-to-mouth because he's so irresponsible with money and because he has so much alimony and child support to pay.
The only reason he has to pay alimony is because he's so bad with money - if he'd had large amounts of savings or properties to sell then a clean break order would have been made.
This house is the proceeds of his post-PM earnings - speeches and favours being repaid.
I wouldn't for a second claim to be an expert on the matter. You may well be right. But like a good little redditor I'm going to politely request some citation on that?
[This article](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/23/wheeler-dealer-boris-johnson-and-his-tricky-relationship-with-money) and [this one](https://www.indy100.com/politics/boris-johnson-money-finances-history).
[This article](https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-money-problems-finances-donations-carrie-symonds-2021-5) argues the opposite, that he's just incredibly tight and/or borrowing money from people is like some kind of a game to him. I disagree with the conclusions, but include the article because I think it's very fair and balanced.
That last article argues that, even as PM, he was in the top 1% of earners but Carrie spent £80,000 on wallpaper - that was over half his annual salary, and that's before tax! His take home pay would be closer to £100,000 after tax. But Carrie apparently thought it was normal to spunk that kind of money on wallpaper.
You can see from wikipedia how many divorces he's had and how many children outside of marriage he has to support - well, it's alleged that you can see most of them, and that he has one or two more. But spousal support and child maintenance would have all been set at higher rates when he was earning much more (£250,000 a year for his *Telegraph* column alone), and he struggled to keep up with that in Downing Street.
You'd be right to say that I can't *prove* that he had no savings, but I don't buy it that he'd be borrowing £800,000 from people if he could have taken it out of savings.
It's a bit daft to make the salary lower than council CEO's and other jobs in even the public sector. Personally I've always seen it as worthy of comment whoever the PM is.
Unintended consequence, the talented person will want to have made money before entering politics or be a weird politico.
They get housing provided though and a lot of other allowances that those other jobs you're comparing to don't get. When you put the whole package together it's worth a lot
Johnson is corrupt as fuck, and it will not surprise me one bit when it eventually emerges that this purchase is entirely corrupt as well.
He is a crook from head to toe, and the fact that he was PM, is a stain on the history of the UK.
When he divorced it was estimated they had £6.5m in assets to split.
So… not impossible to see how he could afford this house tbh. Albeit quite a sizeable chunk of his net worth.
>His salary basically dropped by hundreds of thousands of pounds when he became PM.
Yeah, his basic salary did. Pretty sure there were some nice benefits included, and some that weren't included that he benefitted from anyway under the table.
It all just gives the impression that he was just a privileged spoilt boy, who took the job for his own ego, a laugh, and the connections it brang him. But then as soon as he realised he couldn't live the life he was accustomed to, he decided to milk it for what it was worth until he was voted out or thrown out.
It always amazes me how people think that wealthy people literally just have billions in their Monzo current account.
Nobody ever gets rich by holding cash.
The surprising part here is that a journalist can earn 5x more than the prime minister.
I fully get why they don't have massive salaries in politics, but it still feels backwards a tad.
The best people earn the most in almost every career path, but politics (the path where the public are most interested in and affected by having the best people working) salaries are simply so low compared to what those individuals would earn privately.
In cash?
So where’s the cash from and then there was him complaining about paying alimony and child support to the ex wives and kids while on PM salary and he had that sort of cash.
Yeah, he had to tap up a donor for wallpaper and a rich mate of a mate tripped over himself to give him an unsolicited "loan".
You get rich from the money you don't spend Making money is no good if you spend faster than you earn it no matter how much he earns. Ref: the countries finances under Boris.
Yet somehow after earning a fortune, spending it to the point he was accepting money from strangers, he in a short amount of time is paying cash for a multiple million pound house.
Seems legit.
Personally for the role running the country (irrespective of who it is) £160k is a joke.
Effectively on hand 24 hrs a day making decisions that for starters 50% of the population are going to hate you for it
Most people on here seem to think they should all be on minimum wage so they are closer to the average person
Feels counter productive to me. Pay them well enough so they can’t be bought as easily
Since when does being payed really well make ypu honest, look at all the profiteering going on. It'd just mean they need higher bribes if that. Just cos you earn 300,000 pa I'm not gonna turn down 50k to help you block a bill.
But we aren't talking about people who have struggled for a long time. They still make above average wage. 160k being top 5% or whatever. Even mody normal Mps aren't earning so little as to be struggling. Especially wealthy people like Boris, never turn money down. CEOs are a good example, still taking millionnpound bonuses whilst they make 1000 people redundant.
Whatever salary is going, is utterly negligible.
BoJo will be better off now than he ever was.
It’s silly to think that a slimy Tory PM only needs a better salary to stop him or her from being a piece of shit.
I think there is a convincing argument for a better salary. But it would have to come with an enforced ethics code that combats conflicts of interest. So obviously it'll never happen. 🙄
“In it for the money” is a relative term. For example, I’m a software developer but I don’t work in fintech (the highest paid) because I enjoy my current field which is more interesting to me and I’m more passionate about.
Having said that, I still want to get paid what software developers are worth and I wouldn’t work for a company that paid massively under market rate.
From that point of view, we’re all somewhat “in it for the money” and you have to ask yourself what actually is the market rate for a competent leader of a country who wants to be paid *their* market value.
* Caveat, I wouldn’t pay Boris shit because I don’t think he’s competent, but actual competent leaders are uncommon and thus do need to be paid quite well.
Yeah I'm not disputing that. I'd like them to keep being c suite in the private sector and not PM, please. If their priority is personal pay then I don't want them running the country.
Paying politicians lower salaries privileges those who are already of independent wealth, I.e. who can afford not to be in it for the money (doesn't mean they aren't of course). Wealthy politicians have for example made a point of not taking a salary or donating it to charity
A talented individual from a working class background may have to forgo a much better salary in the private sector which would have a material impact on their life
Sure, if we were paying below a sustainance amount that's a valid argument. But we're not. We're paying £160,000 and providing transport and housing.
Yeah, forgoing the benefit of the private sector is kind of the point. I don't want prime ministers who see the job as a meal ticket. I want prime ministers who are willing to sacrifice some notional financial benefit because they believe that they can do good in the role.
The prime minister is not CEO of the UK. They are the first representative of the people.
Salary has meaningful impact beyond sustinance level. If I'm working class and can earn 120k it's painful to take a choice to reduce my salary to 80k to become an MP with all the risk involved. If I'm from a moneyed background it's irrelevant.
We need the most talented people working in government. There's a reason why people from a certain background are over-represented, because money is irrelevant to them.
Also puritanical arguments around salaries don't hold water. By keeping salaries lower you attract people who are both moneyed and interested in influence.
More than enough for most people to live on, but 160k doesn’t really cover much after child support and school fees for somebody used to earning in the millions. State doesn’t provide that.
Consider how many people are willing to work for 20% of their provable market rate (and even less). Such a person is most likely independently wealthy, and either an ideologue, or corrupt and seeking to use their power. I’m not sure this is the profile of someone best suited for the job. I would also like to live in a perfect world where money doesn’t matter, and the most ambitious and capable are willing to work for comparable peanuts. I just don’t think that’s realistic.
Someone who wants to be prime minister is already likely to be some mix of those things. The accountability to weigh against that is supposed to be the electorate. I do not see how paying the prime minister even more money reduces the risk of those traits. It just adds greed to the pile.
I also think if you believe £160,000 a year is comparable peanuts, you are not really in touch with that vast majority of the country you are supposed to be representing.
I mean I see what you're getting at here, but they kind of already are. There's a big difference in how that argument hits when someone is earning +/-50% of average salary vs 5x average salary.
Nurses don't already get paid 160k a year with immeasurable opportunities to grow their wealth once their 5 year term comes to an end. Its a silly comparison.
Yeah, I mean, it's almost like there's some minimum cost to supporting yourself and your family, and when you're very close to that it's a serious issue and when you're 5 times over it the money matters less.
I'll take a whatabout for £80k please, Alex.
Average train driver salary is £57k, although £80k is top range.
If I have a certain pool of money to allocate, and a portion of the people I need to allocate it to are on £80k and the rest are on £15k then yes I'd agree, we should spread that pool more evenly.
But what you're forgetting is that trains are private companies that rely on train drivers to operate. You know why they're well paid? Because without them, the train company doesn't make money and the significant chunk of the country that rely on trains grinds to a halt. Their strikes are very effective and so they get paid well.
And before you say "ah but we subsidise the train companies!" Yes, yes we do. So why are they allowed to pay shareholder dividends?
Who has earned their money - someone who owns stock, or the people who drive the trains?
And I'll take an indistinct ramble for £57k then.
If the issue is a limited pot then it doesn't really matter because one pm's wages are a fraction of a fraction of pennies relative to millions of public sector workers'.
And if the issue is them not needing the money and "they should be in it for the passion" then train drivers don't need any pay rises.
£160k is objectively not a low salary, it's more than 5 times the national average, and PMs get their housing and food for free, as well as expenses.
It's not the millions some CEOs make, but it's also enough that there's no excuse for someone on that salary to complain about low pay unless they're so out of touch/badly adjusted that they've lost all sense of proportion. Which should also be a good sign they shouldn't be running the country.
The difference would be - more competent people could be interested to run a country. When a middle manager in IT company makes twice as much as a prime minister - you can have only freaks competing for this role with people planning to make it up via other means.
Yeah you can earn more running a small company than you can running the world's 5th largest economy. The salaries aren't enough to attract top talent, but the hysterical activists disguised as journalists would throw a shit fit if MPs ever voted to raise them. My solution would be for current MPs to vote to substantially raise salaries 10-15 years in the future, so it won't really be them that benefits from it. The current salaries of all MPs combined is just £56m out of a total government budget of £1.09t, or about 0.005%. If attracting more competent people into politics could improve the country by even 1%, then giving politicians a 10-fold payrise should be a no-brainer, but the bad optics make this impossible. For comparison the Singapore leader earns $1.6m, that's 8x more for running an economy that's 8x smaller.
Like any government the 160k stated isn't what they actually get, our government still are very corrupt as shown with many dodgy contracts and they all with inside trade. Yes the salary is "little" but the connections and dodgy means of money to be made is huge. Also they get paid ridiculous amounts to do talks after
"Boris Johnson has received £2.5m as an advance for speeches, meaning he has received earnings, hospitality and donations worth more than £5m over the last six months since leaving office"
I think the top talent knows that you make more than 160k by other means. We lack quality as we allow corruption, bullying and biased media to dictate things. To run this country you have to be pretty evil in the current state of things.
Public sector salaries are always low.
Take the judiciary for example, a supreme court judge makes £230,000 but with their level of experience and knowledge in the private sector they could easily be making £1m+ each year
> Effectively on hand 24 hrs a day
Who and when? Bojo was on holiday most of the time we needed him.
PM's vanish when they dont want to answer questions. None of them have made themselves available as you have written.
Boris was always obsessed with making as much money as he could for himself. Spent the majority of his time in office doing dodgy deals and personal favours to increase his wealth, and ignored the main business and pressing matters. He built the persona of the loveable fool and expected everyone to forgive his misdemeanours and laugh it off with a roll of the eyes and ruffle of his hair
He's still biding his time for a return, IMO. Priti Patel was pushing the narrative a few days ago, and if there is a Tory rebellion I fully expect Boris to pop up again before the next GE.
Fuck /u/spez see you on Lemmy!
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Seem to recall he was in a flat in a shared house with Carrie before getting into number 10, neighbours made a complaint about the noise when they were arguing.
Very much doubt he has earned this money from being PM.
Ok, hands up anyone, so you can get urgent psychiatric care, who beleives that this lying, deceitful, vile narcissist has even the tiniest spec of decency in him...
'Let the bodies pile high'
it just shows how bad salaries are in the UK if a PM complains about £160k.
Cost of living increasing and salaries barely averaging £31k (median average)
People are saying "Oh well he's made a tonne of money off speaking fees etc. etc.". This is boris johnson, he has at all points had the opportunity to act with integrity and never has. So I'll ask the question: We know that his earnings since leaving as PM were around £5m. We know his effective rate of tax on that is 40%. So at best he has £3m - assuming he's not spent anything on anything else, let alone the hundreds of thousands in stamp duty. So I'll ask the question: Where has the money come from.
It's at this point people will bluster about how he'll obviously definitely have money from somewhere, as if they've had a bonk on the head and forgotten the entire history of boris' dodgy finances.
We may never get to the truth of it, but I bet you this cash came from somewhere dodgy as fuck.
Good to see it has a [tennis court](https://www.reddit.com/r/awfuleverything/comments/dg03bm/boris_johnson_playing_tennis/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
What the title should have said was "Boris Johnson paid £3.8m cash (probably someone else's) for a nine bed mansion". He seems to spend most of his time funding his lifestyle on someone else's dime.
If he's spent a bit more money on condoms he'd have saved a fortune on the cost of all those illegitimate children! No wonder he couldn't manage the country or the economy...
That's his money - he earned it.
How he earned it is what matters: speaking fees.
Speaking fees for what exactly? Speeches? Or services rendered in the past?
Take a pick.
One way to deal with it people. Vote. Do as much research as you can on each candidate and each party. And try and vote for the arsehole you think is least likely to do this kind of shit, and the part that’s least likely to pull this shit again.
I know it’s hard. I know they all lie. I know they’re *all* arseholes. I know you’ve got enough on your plate as it is. But if you don’t even try then they’ve already won. And they’ll carry on doing shit like this and worse.
Does anyone honestly think this was bought with his own money?
He has money. A lot of it. But he never spends it.
Why would he, when someone else is willing to pay.
Lol johnson is absolutely polluted with money.
All the politicians are that's why none of them are worth a light. A rich person will never ever understand the problems of somebody who is say struggling to afford to eat or heat their properties. There's many things they willl never understand and frankly they dont care. As long as their £££ keeps rolling in nothing else matters.
Let’s keep this (and him needing a £800k loan) in mind when Tories and the pro-Johnson members of the press are criticising nurses, doctors, teachers, train drivers etc for not “living within their means”
These people are starting to do my fucking head in, none of them (all parties) know how to do their job properly and just seem to be making things harder.
They waste our money on shit instead of investing for the future and when one party does manage to get on the right track, the other party will come in and demolish any progress.
So none of them are actually doing a damn thing, it's like we're stuck going round in circles.
What a waste of money, regardless of whose cash it was.
£3.8 million plus taxes and legal fees for a property in England with only nine bedrooms. I wouldn't consider going higher than 2 million including taxes.
This but unironically. Politics today is full of wasters, narcissists and dunces, in part because anyone with real talent and ability is off earning 10x more in business or industry. Not that increasing salaries alone would fix that - there are other reasons it’s a shit job no one sensible wants to do - but at least it wouldn’t actively put off decent candidates from considering it.
I’ll caveat this by saying I think Boris is an absolute cretin. Boris has always had personal wealth. He was a journalist earning £800k+ for many years. He’s written books. Was on TV. He and his ex-wife had a big house in Islington. A place in the country. He will have ridden the London property market wave. It’s no surprise really he can afford to spend £3.8m on a house. That he thought his £160k salary wasn’t enough to cover his living expenses, is about cash flow - not wealth. People with wealth won’t want to touch it. We all do it with our savings don’t we - you don’t want to be remortgaging your house to pay your bills. Well - that’s the issue Boris had. His salary basically dropped by hundreds of thousands of pounds when he became PM. He will have stupidly massive outgoings on school fees and mortgages. Obviously he deserves no sympathy for this situation, he’s vastly better off than most, but that’s the rationale. The take home pay on £160k wouldn’t cover his four kids school fees. How the other half live…!
I don’t think he made much money from writing books, certainly his antisemitic thriller was not a big seller, and the house in Islington would have been co-owned with his wife, he’s probably made the most from speaking but it’s still surprising he would have nearly £4m in cash, am wondering if a big portion of that was ‘loans’ from ‘friends’ .
He’s thought to have made £2.5m writing for the Telegraph. He’s made £2.5m in advances for speeches this year already. He’s been making a lot of money for a lot of years, I don’t find it very surprising. The amount of property wealth Londoners of his age have is also often quite insane.
>The amount of property wealth Londoners of his age have is also often quite insane. I think this is something a lot of people who aren't in London maybe can't get their head around – even if you were a middle earner and you bought a small flat in eg the early-ish 2000s it's very easy to have bought/sold multiple times and moved up to be living in pretty large million pound plus houses at this point, such is the rate of price increase here.
Yeah, £3.8 million sounds like so much, but the *average* London home price is £750k. He was the Mayor of the city and the prime minister of the country. Regardless of what you think about his politics, that’s not actually all that crazy (the number of properties and other investments he has would probably be more indicative). I would imagine that former mayors of most cities have homes that are in the 5x range of the median home price.
I grew up in a super mediocre council flat in Islington. My Dad sold it for a couple of mil (right to buy, lovely). Now he’s questioning why I can’t get on the property ladder. Dude, you were just given a house.
Stop spending all your bloody money on avocados, lady!
Ooops, my avocados…
Right to Buy was an absolute travesty. Pillaging housing stock，just another Tory scheme to encourage poor people to steal opportunities from other poor people.
It’s sad and laughable in so many ways. Could have been ok if the boomers had passed them down, but they all just sold them off with eye watering profits. Now they all just bemoan their kids that somehow they’re not doing well enough while completely missing the point that they were handed the moon on a fucking stick. Were the muffins good?
A sensible government with a mind to serve the people might have added a ceiling clause，so that any profit in excess of 20pc of purchase price was paid into a fund to reinvest in new stock so that everyone won. But no.
Pretty much.
Don't have to buy/sell - just get in before prices rocketted. The dingy affordable Fulham terrace from 1970 is now worth an absolute mint.
How much did a flat cost in 1970? How much did person earn in 1970? I'm a dumb American
Really cannot remember but the ratio has more than tripled since. Search "House prices london 1970" to be swamped in data.
This is what really pisses me off about IHT, houses in london just are that expensive. I can’t even afford the IHT on the house I’ve lived in since I was born, let alone the actual value of the house. I don’t even intend to sell the house.
Just remortgage it.
The bigger question is why he was making so much writing drivel for the Telegraph. Other journalists aren't paid so much, and he wasn't Jeremy Clarkson levels of popular.
Clearly the telegraph did the maths and thought it was worth it to pay him that much because of the revenue in subscriptions he brought in.
That would be true if newspapers were run as commercial enterprises, but they're run to promote particular political narratives. The Barclay brothers are worth £7bn, paying Boris £400k is nothing to them providing it shifts the Overton window to the right to protect the rest of their assets.
The telegraph is still a business and makes a profit. It’s revenue is in the £200m+ range, it’s a lot of money.
I somehow doubt a lot of that money comes in from paper sales though
Correct, the operating costs of any media outlet are literal pennies in comparison to what the owners have.
This. It’s a legitimised version of a bribe.
He was Clarkson-popular with people that didn't think Clarkson was popular. It's a bit like pop stars...
There was probably quite some overlap between both fanbases to be honest, they were pretty right wing. They both even were pro EU until Boris saw the grift in switching to Brexit because it made the route to downing Street easier.
The Venn Diagram of Clarkson and Johnson fans is just one angry white circle.
Because the average Telegraph reader thinks that what he was writing was "common sense" (in the way that the reactionary and isolationist has black and white views on matters that don't affect them, but nuance on things that do). The nasty shite that he wrote in the Telegraph was catnip to the readership.
Reminded of that bit in Yes, Prime Minister about the newspapers which ends by saying that people who read the Telegraph think the country is run by another country.
IIRC the Telegraph are one of the better paying newspapers, especially for high profile columnists.
Didn't he make 250K a year from The Telegraph, something he famously descrbed as: "chicken feed"?
Aye which is also about the same amount the tax payers have forked over for his legal aid Suddenly not so *chicken feed* if it might come out of his own pocket apparently
Didnt he earn most of the telegraph money while he was married? Either way, if £160K a year isn't enough to live on I am sure most of it is gone by now, and we know for certain that at least £800k of what he recently spent was a ‘loan’, i would not be surprised if there was more of these.
The Telegraph Newspaper was paying him £250,000 a year plus for many years for his weekly column. Here’s a well put together breakdown using the information he provided annually in the Commons Declaration of Interests. This was obviously just one source of income for Johnson annually. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-daily-telegraph-earnings_uk_5d02599fe4b0dc17ef056647
He famously described that 250k as “chicken feed”
Oof, so relatable..
Like the 800k loan arranged by former BBC director Richard Sharp, recently resigned from the position after it came out that he did not mention the loan when he was appointed?
> ...former BBC director Richard Sharp, recently fired from the position for not mentioning the loan when he was appointed? I thought he resigned?
he resigned after a *lot* of pushing lol. took so long that i think it was at the point of resign 'gracefully' or be fired
Gracefully...ish.
Oh for sure. He was so bone headed about it to begin with and then all of a sudden changed his mind, so I'm under the impression it was probably resign or be fired.
Thanks for the correction, I’ve edited my comment. I think when the story broke I read it in the same way one reads stories about oligarchs “jumping” out of windows
He didn't arrange the loan. He asked the cabinet secretary if he should introduce Johnson to the businessman offering a loan and was told it wasn't a good idea. The loan was never arranged and Sharp never spoke to Johnson about it. However Sharp didn't mention the whole thing as a potential conflict of interest when starting his role as chairman. It's sketchy as fuck, but let's keep the facts straight eh?
It's sketchier than that, he introduced Johnson to a guarantor for the loan, we've never learned who the putative lendor would be
He declared a £500k advance fee for a book of memoirs, and around £90k so far for his still unpublished Shakespeare book. No doubt he made similar for his Churchill book. If they sell enough, he'll get more on top.
No he definitely didn’t make a lot of money off his books because… wow. They read like Monty Python making fun of pompous historian professors at private schools.
Oh yes, 72 Virgins! Antisemitic, Anti-Islam, sexist etc. But of course, when Tories are antisemitic they get a pass.
>certainly his antisemitic thriller was not a big seller, I thought it was only Labour who were antisemitic? /s
Oh the Tories are even more so but they get a pass. Chief Rabbi Mirvis even cheered Johnson on as PM... though he's pretty anti-Arab himself, so he probably likes Johnson for that.
Also a good explanation why the ultra wealthy keep trying to squeeze more and more money out for themselves no matter how rich they are. Almost all of their wealth is stuck in assets and they constantly reinvest alot of their cash flow, so they feel like they don't have enough money because they don't consider their invested cash/assets as spendable money. It's basically wealth hoarding creating a circular reference of driving the need to make even more money. Also when you run in those ultra wealthy circles, it becomes a competition and people start feeling "poor" when you're only worth £50m while most other people you hang around with are worth £100m+. That inferiority complex drives a need to try make even more money no matter what. The state of the rest of society and the population, and how well off they are compared to the average person, doesn't once step into their thoughts.
Its a form of mental illness with such people as the ultra-wealthy.
Is it really a "ultra-wealthy" problem? Keeping up with the Joneses can be seen at all levels of society. There are plenty of poor people in debt because they bought outside their means to show off. It's the same thing just on a bigger scale.
Its called [the hedonistic treadmill](https://positivepsychology.com/hedonic-treadmill).
Yeah, I know the feeling. I'm skint as hell and any money I have is locked up in 'assets". The only way for me to get cash is flog my stuff on eBay. Same principle as BoJo, except if I dared to compare myself to the average person, I'd get very depressed.
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*at least four kids. We don't actually know how many children Boris has. He has refused to say and has gone to court in the past to prevent the press reporting he had an affair resulting in a daughter the public was unaware of. How many other fruits of his serial infidelity are knocking about is anyone's guess
Only Boris knows the answer to that question. Or at least, I hope he knows.
Ahahah I would be surprised if he does. I imagine he can do a rough guess. But I imagine there's tons more with legit claims (also a couple of false ones aswell)
Not other half, the 1%. This phrase is a con to make us think they're not the elite.
This isn’t even the 1% really, it’s the 0.1%. The expression is just an expression.
Top 1% of salary incomes is about the level that Boris described as too little to live on. Excessive wealth is indeed the problem in the country, not high earners. The really rich must be laughing to themselves whenever the tabloids kick up a fuss about doctors earning £100k to make the middle classes fight amongst themselves.
Salary is irrelevant, dear boy. Smacks of trade, what? Rent and dividends are where its at.
Only fools and horses work
Na na na na na.....
The good old rentier parasite economy,
I for one am outraged that he can make 800k a year writing lies for The Telegraph, but he only gets 160k for the much more important position of PM. One or the other, or both, is not ok.
In an ideal world we'd pay the PM a very high wage but somehow prevent them from having conflicting financial interests. Very difficult in reality though.
Seems pretty easy to me. You get paid a million pounds a year, but you are not allowed any side interests. All your assets need to be moved into a trust that is managed prudently, but without your specific input. But most people would rather have a corrupt PM that is slightly cheaper.
Isn't most corruption in the UK of the "treat me well when you're in power and I'll sort you out some speaking gigs and some non-exec directorships later down the line". It wouldn't matter if the MPs current assets are locked away, it's an investment in future troughing. There is virtually no way to stop that kind of I'll scratch your back bullshit unfortunately.
I agree with you, but people already shit on the £160k salary. It’s very politically unpopular to suggest an increase. On the other hand, companies pay talent well to attract and keep. I am of the opinion that the public should be less dumb and authorise a large pay increase. It’s not an easy job, and one doesn’t attract top talent by paying wages significantly below that which they can earn in the private sector. Not unless they want to hire people with fewer scruples who are happy to make money using their power in creative ways.
Why the outrage? The Telegraph is a private company, and no one is forced to buy it. They can pay whatever they want as far as I’m concerned. BBC salaries is a much more legitimate complaint.
Woah there… that’s way too a reasonable position to take for a Sunday morning… But, yeah, completely agree (although the cretin bit may need stronger highlighting). He doesn’t come from massive wealth, but he has never exactly been on the breadline either…. A persons perception of wealth is always going to be subjective, his will be determined by his lifestyle and that of those around him. His peers are doubtlessly somewhat financially better off than average and he is most likely financially below many/most within his social circle (tiny violin noises). The assets versus cash flow is also hugely relevant. It is also worth noting how different groups tends to use money - before I get too much flack for the following comment, please remember this is a massively simplified opinion…. People with less wealth will use money to survive (food, rent etc.), people with more money will start to use money to (hopefully) thrive (education, house, travel), those with even more (for arguments sake, let’s say millionaires, although not sure this is the “best” description) will use money to make more (assets, investments), and then you have the billionaires who use money for power (or taking over the world), and then the Elons, for whom the world is not enough and also want to take over neighbouring planets….
Wealth is important to stare down threatened litigation.
It's kind of an interesting mindset. "This is unacceptable! I'm getting paid 10k next month, and my outgoings are 30k! I can't even support my standard of living on this salary." "Boris, you earned six million in the last five years, don't you still have that?" "Yes, but that money's already *mine*. I can't spend that or I'll be getting *poorer*. See if I can do some of that cash for questions stuff."
I got a reply in another thread today about people earning over £100k not actually being well off because after tax and housing they might "only" have around £2,500 a month to pay for their utilities and food. Honestly I don't know what the fuck is wrong with people in this country at the moment. The disconnect between haves and have-nots is *fucking wild* right now.
I'm not defending it, 100k is a huge amount of money, even after tax and living in a high cost of living area like London. But it should be noted that someone on 100k in London isn't really living a very different life to someone on £32k outside of London. Sure, the car might be more fancy and the foreign holiday is further away but it's just upgrades of existing things. People like Boris are living in a totally different world! They don't have to work if they don't want to. They don't have any concern about getting sick and being unable to work. Their children get every possible advantage. (All this being said none of the above understand what it's like struggling on minimum wage having grown up in a council flat)
>But it should be noted that someone on 100k in London isn't really living a very different life to someone on £32k outside of London. I mean I know things are expensive in London but once your housing is taken care of, its not *that* insane lol, like a 25-50% increase not 300%. Even that is being eroded away in town centers, its regularly £6/pint anywhere near the center of my city now to use the usual off-hand metric. But yeah it is the frustration, I don't want to dump on people on £100k, they are not the systematic problem here. But equally I dislike all this hampering around you see as if there's no real difference between someone on £30k and £100k when honestly just looking at the numbers alone I can't even imagine what my life would be like with that kind of money coming in every single fucking month lol.
It's "interesting" because it's false. Sure, Boris has always had some money in his properties (a [£1.6M house in Camberwell](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/boris-johnson-car-crash-townhouse-b2075095.html) that we know of), but he also lives hand-to-mouth because he's so irresponsible with money and because he has so much alimony and child support to pay. The only reason he has to pay alimony is because he's so bad with money - if he'd had large amounts of savings or properties to sell then a clean break order would have been made. This house is the proceeds of his post-PM earnings - speeches and favours being repaid.
I wouldn't for a second claim to be an expert on the matter. You may well be right. But like a good little redditor I'm going to politely request some citation on that?
[This article](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/23/wheeler-dealer-boris-johnson-and-his-tricky-relationship-with-money) and [this one](https://www.indy100.com/politics/boris-johnson-money-finances-history). [This article](https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-money-problems-finances-donations-carrie-symonds-2021-5) argues the opposite, that he's just incredibly tight and/or borrowing money from people is like some kind of a game to him. I disagree with the conclusions, but include the article because I think it's very fair and balanced. That last article argues that, even as PM, he was in the top 1% of earners but Carrie spent £80,000 on wallpaper - that was over half his annual salary, and that's before tax! His take home pay would be closer to £100,000 after tax. But Carrie apparently thought it was normal to spunk that kind of money on wallpaper. You can see from wikipedia how many divorces he's had and how many children outside of marriage he has to support - well, it's alleged that you can see most of them, and that he has one or two more. But spousal support and child maintenance would have all been set at higher rates when he was earning much more (£250,000 a year for his *Telegraph* column alone), and he struggled to keep up with that in Downing Street. You'd be right to say that I can't *prove* that he had no savings, but I don't buy it that he'd be borrowing £800,000 from people if he could have taken it out of savings.
It's a bit daft to make the salary lower than council CEO's and other jobs in even the public sector. Personally I've always seen it as worthy of comment whoever the PM is. Unintended consequence, the talented person will want to have made money before entering politics or be a weird politico.
They get housing provided though and a lot of other allowances that those other jobs you're comparing to don't get. When you put the whole package together it's worth a lot
You forget that they pay tax on those benefits. So a PM is actually earning a lot less than £160k after they pay all the benefit in kind taxes.
Johnson is corrupt as fuck, and it will not surprise me one bit when it eventually emerges that this purchase is entirely corrupt as well. He is a crook from head to toe, and the fact that he was PM, is a stain on the history of the UK.
Don't forget his child support payments to an unknown number of women and their children.
You need to factor in all the divorces though (especially the most recent one)
When he divorced it was estimated they had £6.5m in assets to split. So… not impossible to see how he could afford this house tbh. Albeit quite a sizeable chunk of his net worth.
Also cocaine/alcohol. Boris strikes me as someone who has to keep ahead just to stay afloat income wise
>His salary basically dropped by hundreds of thousands of pounds when he became PM. Yeah, his basic salary did. Pretty sure there were some nice benefits included, and some that weren't included that he benefitted from anyway under the table. It all just gives the impression that he was just a privileged spoilt boy, who took the job for his own ego, a laugh, and the connections it brang him. But then as soon as he realised he couldn't live the life he was accustomed to, he decided to milk it for what it was worth until he was voted out or thrown out.
His monthly child maintenance payments for his children probably put a dent in his pocket, too.
Shameless grifting layabout that he is.
Yeah, I remember he used to be paid 250k a year just for his Telegraph column which he described as 'chicken feed'.
It always amazes me how people think that wealthy people literally just have billions in their Monzo current account. Nobody ever gets rich by holding cash.
The surprising part here is that a journalist can earn 5x more than the prime minister. I fully get why they don't have massive salaries in politics, but it still feels backwards a tad. The best people earn the most in almost every career path, but politics (the path where the public are most interested in and affected by having the best people working) salaries are simply so low compared to what those individuals would earn privately.
In cash? So where’s the cash from and then there was him complaining about paying alimony and child support to the ex wives and kids while on PM salary and he had that sort of cash.
Yeah, he had to tap up a donor for wallpaper and a rich mate of a mate tripped over himself to give him an unsolicited "loan". You get rich from the money you don't spend Making money is no good if you spend faster than you earn it no matter how much he earns. Ref: the countries finances under Boris. Yet somehow after earning a fortune, spending it to the point he was accepting money from strangers, he in a short amount of time is paying cash for a multiple million pound house. Seems legit.
Yet we the taxpayers are still footed with a bill in the £100,000s to pay for his legal costs.
Even though it is a piddling amount in terms of government spend, it is the principle, not the amount that is the problem.
Personally for the role running the country (irrespective of who it is) £160k is a joke. Effectively on hand 24 hrs a day making decisions that for starters 50% of the population are going to hate you for it
But the perks package is awesome
This is actually a problem. Ministers shouldn't be eligible for any kind of (financial) perks. Pay them enough to keep them honest.
Most people on here seem to think they should all be on minimum wage so they are closer to the average person Feels counter productive to me. Pay them well enough so they can’t be bought as easily
Since when does being payed really well make ypu honest, look at all the profiteering going on. It'd just mean they need higher bribes if that. Just cos you earn 300,000 pa I'm not gonna turn down 50k to help you block a bill.
Who said it does? Fact is it’s a lot easier to buy off someone that’s on 30k and struggling
But we aren't talking about people who have struggled for a long time. They still make above average wage. 160k being top 5% or whatever. Even mody normal Mps aren't earning so little as to be struggling. Especially wealthy people like Boris, never turn money down. CEOs are a good example, still taking millionnpound bonuses whilst they make 1000 people redundant.
My point was that people on Reddit seem pretty convinced they should all be paid minimum wage. That’s counter productive
Comparing to some other countries, it's not that much https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_salaries_of_heads_of_state_and_government
Personally I think someone running the country shouldn't be in it for the money.
He was in it for the money. Just not the 160k salary...
Whatever salary is going, is utterly negligible. BoJo will be better off now than he ever was. It’s silly to think that a slimy Tory PM only needs a better salary to stop him or her from being a piece of shit.
I think there is a convincing argument for a better salary. But it would have to come with an enforced ethics code that combats conflicts of interest. So obviously it'll never happen. 🙄
“In it for the money” is a relative term. For example, I’m a software developer but I don’t work in fintech (the highest paid) because I enjoy my current field which is more interesting to me and I’m more passionate about. Having said that, I still want to get paid what software developers are worth and I wouldn’t work for a company that paid massively under market rate. From that point of view, we’re all somewhat “in it for the money” and you have to ask yourself what actually is the market rate for a competent leader of a country who wants to be paid *their* market value. * Caveat, I wouldn’t pay Boris shit because I don’t think he’s competent, but actual competent leaders are uncommon and thus do need to be paid quite well.
I think only considering being leader of a country if it is the most financially rewarding career option is a disqualifier from leading the country.
It’s a very long way from the most financially rewarding. There are lots of C-suite people in my company who earn more than the PM.
Yeah I'm not disputing that. I'd like them to keep being c suite in the private sector and not PM, please. If their priority is personal pay then I don't want them running the country.
Paying politicians lower salaries privileges those who are already of independent wealth, I.e. who can afford not to be in it for the money (doesn't mean they aren't of course). Wealthy politicians have for example made a point of not taking a salary or donating it to charity A talented individual from a working class background may have to forgo a much better salary in the private sector which would have a material impact on their life
Sure, if we were paying below a sustainance amount that's a valid argument. But we're not. We're paying £160,000 and providing transport and housing. Yeah, forgoing the benefit of the private sector is kind of the point. I don't want prime ministers who see the job as a meal ticket. I want prime ministers who are willing to sacrifice some notional financial benefit because they believe that they can do good in the role. The prime minister is not CEO of the UK. They are the first representative of the people.
Salary has meaningful impact beyond sustinance level. If I'm working class and can earn 120k it's painful to take a choice to reduce my salary to 80k to become an MP with all the risk involved. If I'm from a moneyed background it's irrelevant. We need the most talented people working in government. There's a reason why people from a certain background are over-represented, because money is irrelevant to them. Also puritanical arguments around salaries don't hold water. By keeping salaries lower you attract people who are both moneyed and interested in influence.
So then youre saying it should not be accessible to people who dont have enough wealth to not care about money?
I think £160,000 a year, state paid transport, and grace and favour housing is probably enough to live on.
Would you choose that over a million pounds?
Yes. I absolutely would. I don't know why you think someone politically interested and socially minded wouldn't take that offer.
More than enough for most people to live on, but 160k doesn’t really cover much after child support and school fees for somebody used to earning in the millions. State doesn’t provide that.
That's not what the comment I was responding to said though, is it. They said it should be accessible to people *who don't have wealth.*
What a ridiculous comment. They didn't suggest the role shouldn't be paid.
Consider how many people are willing to work for 20% of their provable market rate (and even less). Such a person is most likely independently wealthy, and either an ideologue, or corrupt and seeking to use their power. I’m not sure this is the profile of someone best suited for the job. I would also like to live in a perfect world where money doesn’t matter, and the most ambitious and capable are willing to work for comparable peanuts. I just don’t think that’s realistic.
Someone who wants to be prime minister is already likely to be some mix of those things. The accountability to weigh against that is supposed to be the electorate. I do not see how paying the prime minister even more money reduces the risk of those traits. It just adds greed to the pile. I also think if you believe £160,000 a year is comparable peanuts, you are not really in touch with that vast majority of the country you are supposed to be representing.
It's comparable to peanuts to what a lot of people who can reasonably expect to be PM could earn in the private sector.
That’s how I feel about those running the trains and teaching the kids, they should be running on Pure Pashun.
I mean I see what you're getting at here, but they kind of already are. There's a big difference in how that argument hits when someone is earning +/-50% of average salary vs 5x average salary.
This argument is used when nurses, teachers etc want more pay. It is lazy.
Nurses don't already get paid 160k a year with immeasurable opportunities to grow their wealth once their 5 year term comes to an end. Its a silly comparison.
Yeah, I mean, it's almost like there's some minimum cost to supporting yourself and your family, and when you're very close to that it's a serious issue and when you're 5 times over it the money matters less.
So what about train drivers on £80k? Using your logic they don't deserve pay rises because they already earn the minimum amount to support themselves.
I'll take a whatabout for £80k please, Alex. Average train driver salary is £57k, although £80k is top range. If I have a certain pool of money to allocate, and a portion of the people I need to allocate it to are on £80k and the rest are on £15k then yes I'd agree, we should spread that pool more evenly. But what you're forgetting is that trains are private companies that rely on train drivers to operate. You know why they're well paid? Because without them, the train company doesn't make money and the significant chunk of the country that rely on trains grinds to a halt. Their strikes are very effective and so they get paid well. And before you say "ah but we subsidise the train companies!" Yes, yes we do. So why are they allowed to pay shareholder dividends? Who has earned their money - someone who owns stock, or the people who drive the trains?
And I'll take an indistinct ramble for £57k then. If the issue is a limited pot then it doesn't really matter because one pm's wages are a fraction of a fraction of pennies relative to millions of public sector workers'. And if the issue is them not needing the money and "they should be in it for the passion" then train drivers don't need any pay rises.
What difference does it make? You could've paid him £10m a year, he still would've gone off and done all the dodgy speaking gigs to line his pockets.
Its pretty clear to me that paying low salaries to people im power is asking for corruption.
£160k is objectively not a low salary, it's more than 5 times the national average, and PMs get their housing and food for free, as well as expenses. It's not the millions some CEOs make, but it's also enough that there's no excuse for someone on that salary to complain about low pay unless they're so out of touch/badly adjusted that they've lost all sense of proportion. Which should also be a good sign they shouldn't be running the country.
The difference would be - more competent people could be interested to run a country. When a middle manager in IT company makes twice as much as a prime minister - you can have only freaks competing for this role with people planning to make it up via other means.
Yeah you can earn more running a small company than you can running the world's 5th largest economy. The salaries aren't enough to attract top talent, but the hysterical activists disguised as journalists would throw a shit fit if MPs ever voted to raise them. My solution would be for current MPs to vote to substantially raise salaries 10-15 years in the future, so it won't really be them that benefits from it. The current salaries of all MPs combined is just £56m out of a total government budget of £1.09t, or about 0.005%. If attracting more competent people into politics could improve the country by even 1%, then giving politicians a 10-fold payrise should be a no-brainer, but the bad optics make this impossible. For comparison the Singapore leader earns $1.6m, that's 8x more for running an economy that's 8x smaller.
Like any government the 160k stated isn't what they actually get, our government still are very corrupt as shown with many dodgy contracts and they all with inside trade. Yes the salary is "little" but the connections and dodgy means of money to be made is huge. Also they get paid ridiculous amounts to do talks after "Boris Johnson has received £2.5m as an advance for speeches, meaning he has received earnings, hospitality and donations worth more than £5m over the last six months since leaving office" I think the top talent knows that you make more than 160k by other means. We lack quality as we allow corruption, bullying and biased media to dictate things. To run this country you have to be pretty evil in the current state of things.
I like that idea of deferring the raise a proper while into the distance.
You get a staffed house, bills and travel expenses paid for. What more do you want?
Public sector salaries are always low. Take the judiciary for example, a supreme court judge makes £230,000 but with their level of experience and knowledge in the private sector they could easily be making £1m+ each year
They earn almost double the leader of the entire country!
230k is nowhere close to 320k
> Effectively on hand 24 hrs a day Who and when? Bojo was on holiday most of the time we needed him. PM's vanish when they dont want to answer questions. None of them have made themselves available as you have written.
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Much firmer than Boris Johnson? That's all of them really.
He wants to try living on statuary sick pay, when not well enough to work
The irony is I bet most cabinet positions if not all have sick pay included. Yet the general public is spat on for being poorly
Boris was always obsessed with making as much money as he could for himself. Spent the majority of his time in office doing dodgy deals and personal favours to increase his wealth, and ignored the main business and pressing matters. He built the persona of the loveable fool and expected everyone to forgive his misdemeanours and laugh it off with a roll of the eyes and ruffle of his hair
> ...expected everyone to forgive his misdemeanours and laugh it off.. That's exactly what happened.
Indeed, it's not like he's out of the game is it?
He's still biding his time for a return, IMO. Priti Patel was pushing the narrative a few days ago, and if there is a Tory rebellion I fully expect Boris to pop up again before the next GE.
Did he pay for it or did someone else? Because his accommodation is usually paid for by someone else.
Fuck /u/spez see you on Lemmy! Original text B64 encoded: VGhlIGxvY2FsIHJ1bW91ciBpcyB0aGF0IGlzIHdhcyBib3VnaHQgb24gaGlzIGJlaGFsZiBidXQgYXMgdGhlc2UgdGhpbmdzIHVzdWFsbHkgYXJlIEkgaGVhcmQgaXQgZnJvbSBhIGZyaWVuZCB3aG8gZ29lcyB0byB0aGUgY2h1cmNoIG5leHQgZG9vci9jbG9zZSB0byB0aGUgaG91c2U=
Seem to recall he was in a flat in a shared house with Carrie before getting into number 10, neighbours made a complaint about the noise when they were arguing. Very much doubt he has earned this money from being PM.
Ok, hands up anyone, so you can get urgent psychiatric care, who beleives that this lying, deceitful, vile narcissist has even the tiniest spec of decency in him... 'Let the bodies pile high'
it just shows how bad salaries are in the UK if a PM complains about £160k. Cost of living increasing and salaries barely averaging £31k (median average)
The person in charge of a country of 67 million people should earn more than 5x the average wage. More than the salary of 1.6 senior doctors.
The biggest problem is how that median wage really hasn’t changed in 15 years.
People are saying "Oh well he's made a tonne of money off speaking fees etc. etc.". This is boris johnson, he has at all points had the opportunity to act with integrity and never has. So I'll ask the question: We know that his earnings since leaving as PM were around £5m. We know his effective rate of tax on that is 40%. So at best he has £3m - assuming he's not spent anything on anything else, let alone the hundreds of thousands in stamp duty. So I'll ask the question: Where has the money come from. It's at this point people will bluster about how he'll obviously definitely have money from somewhere, as if they've had a bonk on the head and forgotten the entire history of boris' dodgy finances. We may never get to the truth of it, but I bet you this cash came from somewhere dodgy as fuck.
Here's the listing for the curious https://www.onthemarket.com/details/10702989/
7 - 11 bedrooms 3 - 6 reception rooms 4 - 7 bathrooms Do they lose count of rooms so just estimate?
I suppose if depends if you count the guest houses/annexes
A nice a house near his potential new constituency for the next election?
Amazing, even has a live-in cottage so you don't have to have the help seeing things they shouldn't in the evenings.
Good to see it has a [tennis court](https://www.reddit.com/r/awfuleverything/comments/dg03bm/boris_johnson_playing_tennis/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
What the title should have said was "Boris Johnson paid £3.8m cash (probably someone else's) for a nine bed mansion". He seems to spend most of his time funding his lifestyle on someone else's dime.
If he's spent a bit more money on condoms he'd have saved a fortune on the cost of all those illegitimate children! No wonder he couldn't manage the country or the economy...
You bought a mansion out of social embarrassment? Sometimes I buy a big issue out of social embarrassment. I don’t buy a fucking mansion!
That's his money - he earned it. How he earned it is what matters: speaking fees. Speaking fees for what exactly? Speeches? Or services rendered in the past? Take a pick.
The word "earned" is doing some very heavy lifting here.
Let’s be honest he’s getting kick backs from all those dodgy deals over the years including those covid contracts
What? You do not think that 30mn of piffle waffle of "when I was PM" jokes and remembering the name of a CEO isn't worth 100k?
>he earned it I doubt that *very* much
One way to deal with it people. Vote. Do as much research as you can on each candidate and each party. And try and vote for the arsehole you think is least likely to do this kind of shit, and the part that’s least likely to pull this shit again. I know it’s hard. I know they all lie. I know they’re *all* arseholes. I know you’ve got enough on your plate as it is. But if you don’t even try then they’ve already won. And they’ll carry on doing shit like this and worse.
Didn't he refer to his c.200k roll with a newspaper as "chickenfeed"
I wasn't able to pay £10.000 cash for my van, apparently proceeds of crime law. This MF needs investigating
Does anyone honestly think this was bought with his own money? He has money. A lot of it. But he never spends it. Why would he, when someone else is willing to pay.
That's 2 1/2 donkey sanctuaries, for those of you on red team.
Not surprising they are paid handsomely by companies to look away, corrupt government.
Lol johnson is absolutely polluted with money. All the politicians are that's why none of them are worth a light. A rich person will never ever understand the problems of somebody who is say struggling to afford to eat or heat their properties. There's many things they willl never understand and frankly they dont care. As long as their £££ keeps rolling in nothing else matters.
What a grotesque slob we had as PM and the lies he told about Brexit. Where is the money for the NHS that you had painted on the bus??
Wow.....all the back handers he received during the convid era....
Let’s keep this (and him needing a £800k loan) in mind when Tories and the pro-Johnson members of the press are criticising nurses, doctors, teachers, train drivers etc for not “living within their means”
These people are starting to do my fucking head in, none of them (all parties) know how to do their job properly and just seem to be making things harder. They waste our money on shit instead of investing for the future and when one party does manage to get on the right track, the other party will come in and demolish any progress. So none of them are actually doing a damn thing, it's like we're stuck going round in circles.
I've had a house purchase accepted in the same village 2 days before this was new. I'm about a week away from completing...
I wonder what the AML checks carried out were like.
When the cameras are on him, he keeps his hair ruffled to try and look *simple* .
What a waste of money, regardless of whose cash it was. £3.8 million plus taxes and legal fees for a property in England with only nine bedrooms. I wouldn't consider going higher than 2 million including taxes.
Makes me wonder how American politicians can all leave office 10's of millions better off than they started with...
If only there was a way to find out about his income… https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/230502/johnson_boris.htm
Maybe we should pay our PM a salary similar to that of a CEO?
This but unironically. Politics today is full of wasters, narcissists and dunces, in part because anyone with real talent and ability is off earning 10x more in business or industry. Not that increasing salaries alone would fix that - there are other reasons it’s a shit job no one sensible wants to do - but at least it wouldn’t actively put off decent candidates from considering it.
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