Trouble is, lip service doesn’t pay so well. Days after that interview, the recently ejected chancellor began a speaking tour of America. In just a month, it was revealed last week, he raked in £320,400. Osborne made more from five speeches (nearly all to the finance industry, naturally, and putting in what his parliamentary register records as a total of 13 and a half hours’ work)than the average British worker will earn in over 11 years.
So, that’ll be some £130,000 or so of American money that flows into HM Treasury. An appalling outcome we all agree Mr. Chakrabortty.
I’m not here to defend Osborne but to claim it was only 13.5 hours work is bollocks. Speeches don’t write themselves, research doesn’t get done for free, travel time has opportunity costs and experience is rewarded.
I’ll bet he understands the value of great works of art, even if they only took 13.5 hours to paint, or a great piece of music that took a couple of hours to write and record. But when it comes to people spending their own money on stuff and people he doesn’t approve of he gets all sanctimonious.
Can we measure Chakrabortty’s income in units of Average British Worker?
Once talking to a real expert in his field, he told me that he had learnt from someone else how to deal with impertinent cheapskates in companies that wanted to contract him.
‘What? €15,000 for a day ‘chatting’ to our Board?’
‘No, no, I give you my day free, no charge. The €15,000 is to pay your part of the cost of my getting the knowledge you want from me.’
I’ve done that in a field I was expert in. Was asked for a short report on the marketplace. Sure, take an afternoon. That’ll be $4,500 please. What? Yup, you’re paying for the time it took to know it, not the time to write it down for you.
They paid.
bilbaoboy,
If I was still working I’d use that line, its very good.
Amazed that anyone in finance would pay to hear Osborne.
As Osborne couldn’t run the proverbial whelk stall I presume this is a bung for past favours?
Only in America….apart from one strange payment which appears to come from a sole trader futures broker in Southend(?)
It’s the same with Murphy. He’s not paid for the six minutes it takes to mash a keyboard with his fists.. he’s paid for the 40 years he spent with his head buried in a pile of horse manure.
Scott Adams says in America a speaker gets paid according to how famous they are, not the content. How else do we explain Chelsea Clinton
“If I was still working I’d use that line, its very good.”
The old jokes must have perished.
Plumber, to the Duke of Snooks: to replacing a washer – one penny. To knowing which washer to replace – one guinea.
“Can we measure Chakrabortty’s income in units of Average British Worker?”
Can we measure his output in units of Average British Worker? Do we have equipment sensitive enough for this?
Anyway, I missed his outraged articles on how much Brown raked in from his speaking tours.
“Plumber, to the Duke of Snooks: to replacing a washer – one penny. To knowing which washer to replace – one guinea.”
And for turning out on Christmas Day, 25 guineas.
Anyway, I missed his outraged articles on how much Brown raked in from his speaking tours.
Isn’t he running a scam similar to the Clinton Foundation where he does all this stuff tax free as a charity, which happens to pay all his bills?
Chackroslartibartfast’s thinking is straight out of the Leftist moron manual which thinks the price of coffee in Starbucks should depend solely on the price of coffee beans.
And Chelsea’s parents: $153,000,000.
The banks/foreigners wanted to know their expertise on banking. And to get their projects approved.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/
I don’t get this umpteen thousands of pounds to listen to washed up politician stuff. The people listening to this bilge must be minted to be able to afford to pay $$$ to attend these events. If you have money, why the fuck would you waste it on that sort of nonsense? Its hardly entertainment is it? At least a famous actor or TV star might be funny and have some decent stories to tell. But George Osborne? Or Gordon Brown? For fucks sake I’d die of boredom. Go on Gordon, tell us the one about neo-endogenous growth theory. And that one about how you abolished boom and bust always slays me.
Now Fred Dibnah on the other hand…………….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzgKCSMyNVA
@Jim: I infer that it’s somebody else’s money that pays for the tickets, probably the shareholders.
I wish I’d known how to get onto the dinner party racket when I retired as a local councillor. 😉
@dearieme
Yes, but why?
Jim,
“But George Osborne? Or Gordon Brown? For fucks sake I’d die of boredom.”
I got invited to a CBI dinner where Brown was guest speaker and still Chancellor, it was the most boring speech I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through. Not only was the subject dry but he delivered it in that dry monotone voice that said he didn’t want to be there. I’d rather have gone to one of my wife’s choral society concerts.
As Picasso was once supposed to have said (or if he didn’t he should have)
You are not paying for the three hours it takes me to paint your picture, you are paying for the lifetime it took me to learn how to paint as I do.
Or. as I sometimes say to clients who baulk at my tax advisor fees….
If there was a bomb on this desk, ticking away, and a bomb disposal expert could tell you in five seconds the wire to cut that would disarm the bomb rather than setting it off, how much at a per hour rate would you think that advice was worth?
Or the brain surgeon who was challenged on charging 10,000 for a surgery. The family complained, “You didn’t even participate in the patient prep or even drilling the hole in the skull! You just traipsed in and worked for 15 minutes! And left everyone else to close the incision.”
He grabbed the bill, and struck out the 10,000.
Then wrote:
Cutting on brain: 100
Knowing what to cut: 9900
Paying off the ones that are out of office is a way of reminding the ones in office where they stand to gain when they leave as you can’t pay them off while they are in office
As ever, cui bono? That doll-eyed little shit Gideon, onviously, in the proximate sense, but who else? I assume the ulterior stuff is in the old one-hand-washes-the-other monkey business. It really is enough to turn you into a Spart.
Good point, BniC.
But there is also the case of Trump – he already has billions. How do you corrupt someone who already has it all?