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Boris calls £250,000 fee ‘chicken feed’
Mayor defends second salary: ‘Why should I not knock off an article as a way of relaxation?’
London's Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson has been labelled "out of touch" with millions of Londoners after he described the £250,000 he is paid for a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph as "chicken feed". He said it was "wholly reasonable" to take the annual fee on top of his £140,000 salary as mayor.
Johnson made the comments during an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk programme at a time when David Cameron is asking his frontbenchers to give up their second jobs by December.
Asked about the Daily Telegraph money, Johnson said: "It's chicken feed. I think that frankly there's absolutely no reason at all why I should not knock off an article as a way of relaxation.
"I write anyway, I happen to write extremely fast. I don't see why on a Sunday morning I shouldn't knock off an article - if someone wants to pay me for that article then that's their lookout and of course I make a substantial donation to charity."
Johnson is understood to give £50,000 of the fee to charity. "Maybe that money shouldn't go to charity, maybe you'd rather I didn't make those contributions to charity," he added.
When asked if his actions contradicted his party leader's stand on second jobs, Johnson said: "Well I'm not a member of his shadow cabinet and I'd like to see what the detail of that is."
Norman Baker, the Lib Dems' transport spokesman, said yesterday: "There is nothing wrong with people writing newspaper columns, but this is an enormous amount of money and for Boris Johnson to dismiss it as 'chicken feed' shows just how out of touch he and the Conservative party are from the reality of life for millions of Londoners struggling to make ends meet in the depths of a recession."
There was no sign this morning of any report in the Daily Telegraph of the mayor's comments. ·
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Boris sounds a bit plagiaristic of 'the Master' who claimed that he dashed off the odd piece of a morning between breakfast and bath. And 5K quidlets for each dashed off piece, cluck cluck?
Boris is Boris. As Frank Carson used to say "It's the way you tell 'em". On paper and without prior exposure to Boris the phrase 'chicken feed' could look arrogant. But, Boris is Boris, and I hope Boris will be PM one day. I'd much prefer to see him in No. 10 than a bunch of unprinciple, policyless PR spivs.
And, as Alan Scott above, has pointed out you don't get much in the way of footballers for 5,000 pounds per week.
Perhaps Mr Baker, whatever his qualifications are, could pontificate on the enormous monies paid to footballers, TV "entertainers" etc, or would that endanger his "man of the people" stance? At least Mr Johnson gives us intelligent witty articles for the money.