Are you glad you voted Labour ?

That's an odd comment. Good on labour getting rid of a leaky pot. Blaming them for not campaigning for him to go under Tories is silly. It was their job to get rid of worng'uns. I think they had other reasons to keep him though.

No. Nobody’s taken a pay cut, that I know of.

(If reports are to be believed, Case will be forced out by Labour anyway, Labour being so concerned about his inability to stop leaks. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe Labour ever campaigned against civil service leaks when in opposition.)

I may also be wrong about this, but I don’t believe Sue Gray is a civil servant, though she’s no doubt paid from public funds.

There are a number of civil servants who earn as much as or more the PM. Here are figures from 2022. Why weren't the press hopping up and down then?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ca69066ae44e000d11b414/150k_2022_Master.csv/preview

Do you think other civil servants, like Case, should take a pay cut?

Why did you refer to “politically connected” companies if you weren’t implying corruption and wrongdoing? If you weren’t implying that, what could be wrong with government panic buying PPE in the face of a pandemic? How could that be relevant to Sue Gray’s pay hike?

My point about Sue Gray isn’t that there’s anything legally wrong. It’s just greedy. “A few grand” is a £25k pay increase. Which means the PM’s COS earns more than he does.

I do agree that Sue Gray’s pay isn’t especially newsworthy. But it tells us something about the personal priorities and choices of senior Labour figures, just as Starmer’s willingness to sanction crony appointments and accept freebies do.

If "unlawfulness" is the bar you're concerned about, then there's nothing unlawful about Sue Gray's salary either. So what's your problem with it?

I think I’m older than you and I still want it.

Yours is a kind thought @EasternStandard but our one and only is just 25, and the UK is a better bet, workwise. But yes, listening to the World Service is a useful jolt to the everyday.

Good luck @fussychica , I thought I wanted that sort of thing too, and then I got older.

I listen to the world service these days and the amount of floods and climate pressures reported daily is immense, I had missed this but I agree on considering it for any move. Especially for dc if they go too, although yours will be older if you are retiring

@EasternStandard central belt of Portugal is enduring big forest fires at the moment. Climate considerations are not to be dismissed.

It is possible to retire in most of mainland Europe IF you can meet property purchase qualification thresholds and income requirements. Portugal has the D7 visa which is easier. But in most of Europe if you can buy a house for 500k euros, and are not planning to work in the local economy, there are workarounds. Usually one is required to buy one or two years private health insurance too.

Yes. 14 years of Tories with their snouts in the trough was far too long. However, I want some proper policies to start taking shape now, be radical, be bold we need to change things for the better.

Oh I didn't know about the fires.

It is amusing when people go on about get behind Britain or whatever

This site has been crazy over tearing it all down for years.

Oh well. Now Starmer has tripped his own public backlash, only himself to blame

Surely Brexit has put paid to that possibility, anyway?

I didn't vote for them but to narrow the margin of loss. And, as I am old and have some savings, I actually quite like the idea of living in another country. DH likes Portugal but it's too hot in summer, and right now it all seems to be on fire. I would have moved to France where I speak the language well but their intransigent stance seems to close that door.

OK.
I can't help but feel a lot of the vitriol for Gray is because she nailed Johnson for partygate. Its a shame people can't move past it and get behind Britain. We can't succeed if people don't support the Will Of The People, which at the moment is a Labour government.

Completely misleading. Until July 2024 the comparable figure was at most £145k. Cumming’s job had been done by a later cos for less, relatively. So the period for adjustment for inflation should be at most a single day.

It also seems Sue Gray wanted Spads paid less before she joined Labour.

Yes.

Leaving aside the absence of any evidence of unlawfulness (aside from a VIP lane transgression in public provision so minor the court refused to grant a declaration) in all the GLP’s relentless judicial reviews, these were contracts awarded in the middle of a pandemic. If the government hadn’t awarded PPE contracts its opponents would have accused it of reckless negligence.

And the NAO said there was no evidence of ministerial wrongdoing.

(There was fraud - the DoH estimates it as 1-4% - but all public procurement suffers from fraud. It’s fraud on the government not by the government.)

So, really, yes. To add to Starmer’s award winning freebie snaffling.

What's the point of Labour if they're just another bunch of greedy bastards lining their pockets at the public's expense?

Just googled
Dominic Cummings was paid £140,000-£144,999 in 2020.

Adjusted for inflation, that would be approx £172,000-£179,000 today.

Sue Gray's salary is £170,000.

Here ends today's economics lesson.

https://x.com/henrymance/status/1836383403563790488

Yes. They are far from perfect but better than the tories!