Get A Grip Man...

 

Poor Sod? Not sodding poor, that's for sure - image ©Times Newspapers

I was going to vent spleen over the Saturday Times article 'Overburdened, underpaid and a look of misery on his face,' referring to the abject penury in which our poor Prime Minister lives. But Marina Hyde got a piece in first in yesterdays Guardian Journal, and as always she was right on the button and funny as hell with it. But I might as well add my four penn'orth anyway.

The 'substance' of the Times piece is that a Prime Minister's lot is not a happy one, particularly when referenced against the working conditions and stipends of other World Leaders. Probably correct, but it does rather ignore the tiny factoid that most people go into politics as a vocation; usually with laudable, if too often unrealised, ambitions to right wrongs, do some good, etc. That Boris Johnson is manifestly unsuited intellectually, psychologically and culturally for this role is to simply state the bleedin' obvious, but The Times piece is scraping the barrel by suggesting the poor lamb has money worries.

He is apparently having to make do on less than half of his normal income in performing the duties of his office. If this was going to be a problem, then why the career-change; why swap a life of feckless self-indulgence for a job where hard work and responsibility are part of the job description? I would have thought that nearly three hundred thousand quid a year for writing a Telegraph column would be remuneration enough for the minimal effort involved, unlike practically living on the breadline on a Prime Minister's salary of £150,000. No mention though was made of any other sources of income that an Old Etonian might reasonably have access to, but I would guess he would have them lodged in the register of interests, wouldn't he?

As the estimable Ms Hyde puts it: 'Read the room, guys! What is this? The launch of the Bung a Bob for Big Boz campaign?' There are millions out there living on less than 10% of that sum, many, many on far less. In 2019, according to the ONS, the average UK salary was around £27,000. Although averages are misleading in isolation, they give a crude but useful comparison between different earnings groups. The starting salary for a junior doctor for instance, is around £23,000 a year; rising to only just above the national average in their second year. For those doctors undertaking specialist training this rises to between £30,000 and £47,000, the latter still less than a third of the PM's. And if you are twenty-five or older and having to live on minimum wage, you'll be on less than that 10% of the PM's salary. Younger than that and you will be on less still. I'd seriously like to see Boris try and live on £12,000 for a year so that he can see just what fiscal restraint means in the real world.

A little humility wouldn't go amiss from the man holding the highest political office in the land; a privilege that is afforded to very, very few and an opportunity that Johnson seems determined to squander. Get a grip man, or get out and make way for someone who really cares about their country and is not just in post for the status of being top dog.