A nice bit of regulatory capture featured in The Daily Mail:
Miriam Gonzalez has landed a top job as an EU trade chief in a move set to infuriate euro rebels, while the Coalition battles it out over the country's relationship with Brussels.
The wife of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is risking accusations of conflict of interest by taking a job with U.S. law firm Dechert, heading up the firm’s EU trade and EU government affairs practice.
Miss Gonzalez, a high-flying Spanish-born lawyer who has kept her maiden name, is already the main breadwinner in her family's household, earning an estimated £500,000 a year as a head of International Trade Law at DLA Piper.
Sure, he pays himself "only" £200,000-odd a year for being an MP and Deputy PM, and on paper she gets twice that, but how much would she be paid if she weren't the wife of the Deputy PM?
British corruption is all very genteel, of course these large corporations wouldn't dare pay a politician £500,000 a year while he's still in office. They normally make these payments after the politician concerned has lost or left office*, or they just declare his wife to be a "high-flying lawyer" and do it that way.
* See e.g. William Hague earning hundreds of thousands a year from giving lectures after he got chucked out as leader of the Tory party, despite being one of the dullest men alive, or Tony Blair being paid two million quid a year to advise JP Morgan, despite him knowing nothing about banking or finance.
Big Green Bills
32 minutes ago
11 comments:
"British corruption is all very genteel"
It is - and life at the top seems to be full of these genteel coincidences doesn't it?
FFS MW, we'll be reading about your body being recovered from an "apparent suicide" if you keep telling the truth like this.
Yes, I can see it now. But it will be no suicide. He'll be trampled by cows from the SAS dairy squad...
AKH, that's why they get to the top, that's how they stay at the top.
Anon, D, I'm only saying what everybody else is thinking, and they can't make us all commit suicide, can they?
Apparently, according to one study, whose name I have annoyingly forgotten, such practices make the UK one of the most politically corrupt countries in the world, which is going some, considering the competition. Much more corrupt than the good old US of A. We just think we are not corrupt, because it is not usually done with actual cash money.
Hague may be dull by the standards of men but he's lively by the standards of politicians.
Was she a high-flying lawyer before her husband became Deputy PM? I strongly suspect so.
There are shades of bitterness and envy in this post I'm afraid. There are plenty of "top" law people who bring in half a mill. You don't have to be shagging I Agree With Nick to be getting that kind of money.
It's not like Mrs Clegg was a junior secretary before the election, is it?
BE: "It's not like Mrs Clegg was a junior secretary before the election, is it?"
Nope, before that Mrs Clegg was married to a prominent Lib Dem MEP who had spent his whole life in the EU bureaucracy, and who had a fair chance of becoming leader of the Lib Dems (sure, him actually becoming Deputy PM was unexpected, but so what?).
I think you need to give at least some credit to her as an individual. She herself has spent her whole career in the Eurobureaucracy and almost certainly would have been doing well for herself without having met Mr Clegg.
You do know that women are allowed their own careers these days, don't you?
And it's not as though lawyers who haven't shagged Nick can't do well. Jeez, even some bitter and twisted accountants do pretty well for themselves.
BE, yes, it is quite possibly true that she could have battled her way up the EUracracy ladder without his assistance, but it's all a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?
As to "bitter and twisted accountants", I simply don't know any. Most of us are perfectly happy with their lives. And I can't deny for a second that I've done well out of this large-state, high tax, Home-Owner-Ist madness and have never complained about my personal circumstances.
BE, Ok, Ms Gonzales might have battled her way up to being worth £500,000 with Nick, I she probably did, I can't see that being married to the leader of the Lib Dems was any great career boost, but would she have got her latest post without him?
And it's spot on about Tony.
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