Only person on the list I actually know is making slightly more than Kuenssberg, a bit more than twice a good GP's salary, which seems all right: he was a longtime foreign correspondent in tough postings and he's got a certain charisma and a certain audience following. He and his wife have a decent house, but it's not exactly a lush pad and it's not in a swanky area. I've known lawyers and financial PRs and so on who do better than that.

Vine does get a lot, but then it covers about four jobs. And his income tax would buy the country a couple of GPs or a slightly higher number of teachers or nurses.

I'd bet Peston's itv salary would be very high up that list. Fair enough we aren't directly paying for that but still.

Nolan doing his show now and it's dedicated to his wages.

Completely unlike him to make it all about himself.

Taking dogs abuse lol. Fair play to the ****.

vince cable wins unopposed

old AF but at least a serious person with a bit of clout

'a launch event on Thursday, Farron said that his successor was “well and truly strong and Cable”.'

Possibly Farron's best contribution.

Well, you pay for it through the hidden advertising levy on all goods and services that you buy from ITV's advertisers.

Come to think of it, someone else I was at college with, apart from the BBC presenter mentioned above, is a current very senior ITV executive. I shudder to think what he makes, but I doubt it's south of half a million.

He's a charming guy, but... he used to tell girls they had to sleep with him because he'd got a rare form of leukaemia and had only two years to live, but they mustn't tell anyone because it was this totally personal secret. (That worked on three girls, to my knowledge. Well, if you don't mind shagging idiots...) When he went to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the university revue group, he and an accomplice stole the entire petty-cash fund, some hundreds of pounds. Oddly enough they didn't even spend it on coke and hookers, they just bought clothes, which was a bit feeble. The thrill was simply robbing their friends. When challenged and accused of taking the money, our man just spread his hands and made his happy-clown face and went, 'Well... it was there!'

Jacob Rees-Mogg making a heck of a move in the betting markets - In from 50-1 post general election to 6-1 second favorite alongside Boris and Hammond to be the next Tory leader.

Possible collision between May and new bezzies over tax credit rape clause. DUP are the progressive side in this debate it seems


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...rthern-ireland

https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...-student-debts

No Jeremy, but you were aware of how your words were interpreted and of course are only clarifying that now...

To be honest, that sounds like any number of somewhat vague promises politicians make during elections or referendums that do not end up becoming policy.

Yeah course, but Jeremy isn't like other politicians.

Fair point.

To be honest, at no point did I think he promised to wipe out existing student debt. However, basically saying, we hinted at it, but we had no idea how much it would cost is ****ing weak sauce.

I mean it's a moronic policy that he should be backing off (I say this as a guy with 20k+ of debt that I'd be very happy to see gone). There've got to be better priorities for spending than a big gift to mostly wealthier graduates. I agree with the righties that it was a bad policy somewhat cynically employed. There's lots of things to like about corbyn and momentum in general but this was a misstep imo.

You can offset big gifts to wealthier graduates by taxing them more.

But what's the point? We're already paying a tax called student loan repayment. It comes out of the paycheck just the same. Why go through the administrative nightmare of cancelling all debt and then slap the same tax back onto the same people? We agree the nhs police etc need more money giving me 20k then taking it back a few % of my paycheck at a time is pointless at best no? I'm willing to be convinced cause I'd quite like 20k but I don't see it.

It also gives the wealthiest ways to avoid and evade such a tax.

To be clear I'm not talking about a graduate tax I am saying that all higher earners should pay more tax so you aren't slapping the tax onto the same people you distribute it across all higher earners. Proposals to strike off student debt doesn't equate to giving you back that money as you are paying it a bit at a time in any case. Now if the suggestion is to give money paid to student debt back that I'd oppose but I thought the idea was to forgive existing debt. If I'm wrong on that my bad.

Or you could realise that "taxing the rich more" isn't a bottonless pit (or a magic money tree), and therefore it's best to be careful about what it's spent on. I wouldn't say this should feature very far up the list of priorities.

well they'd benefit from not having to pay back student loans for a start.

It's probably unclear what the cost is because we don't know how much will be written off under current arrangements. For the record there was never a promise to scrap current debt, only a consideration.
Pleased to see Jeremy has clarified the threshold figure as being below 18k, not over 21k as previously bandied around.
Debt write off is a form of investment by government which would help kick-start the economy alongside a package of investment measures.

How about rent caps to save £9.3b dished out to private landlords in 2015? Scrap a few more subsidies and you're on your way.

Rail subsidies £3.8b

Taking money from private landlords will kickstart the economy? Also - they've already done that with the tax changes.

Fossil fuels £26b