Easy Money?

In the wake of a recent headline-grabbing news story about GPs in the NHS earning £250,000 a year despite the abysmal lack of funding for hospitals and healthcare services, today’s Independent has a double-page feature on people who earn similar salaries. The reader is left to ponder the question within the headline “The pay debate: Are they worth £250,000 a year?”

Among those listed are a certain prime minister’s wife and barrister, a radio DJ who earns a quarter of a million for presenting a three-hour show five days a week, a few managing directors, a university vice-chancellor and a sports writer who gets his excessive salary for writing a twice-weekly column and exposing Wayne Rooney’s gambling habits. It makes you wonder why someone like Wayne Rooney should feel the need the gamble given the amount of money he earns just by playing football. But then as James Bond said “the world is not enough”. Maybe he’s saving up for a plastic surgery operation to get his face remodelled.

There’s also a former Big Brother contestant, not particularly noted for her good looks or intellectual prowess who reputedly earns her millions by entertaining readers of the Sun and Hello magazine. So who says you need looks and academic qualifications to succeed in this world?

There’s no direct mention of obscenely overpaid Premiership footballers, presumably because they earn well in excess of the figures quoted. £50k a week for kicking a ball around a field, yet teachers, nurses, care workers, farmers, paramedics and firemen work their fingers to the bone in stressful and often dangerous conditions for the benefit of society and earn less than this in a year. This isn’t an anti-football rant, by the way. I do like the game, but I think like many other people that the money players at the top level earn is ridiculous. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was entertaining, but with the amount of 0-0 draws that happen in the modern defensive game there are so few games that provide any kind of value for money nowadays.

What also springs to mind for some reason are two middle-aged rock musicians from Dublin, whose names both begin with B. I don’t begrudge them having the money – they’ve worked hard to earn it – but I do resent their hypocrisy and sickening sanctimonious holier- than-thou attitudes. Geldof is irritating, but I can just about tolerate him. However in the self-righteosuness stakes I don’t think he quite compares to Bono. This is the man who pretends to be all concerned about 3rd world debt and global poverty, then he takes his ex-wardrobe assistant to court over a fucking hat. Maybe he wanted to give Pat Spillane something to eat. How to dismantle a sanctimonious tosser, indeed.