Wednesday 11 July 2007

A big row about Ministers' salaries

Again? Is the ruling family at it again? No, in this case the news is from the Netherlands: "Home Affairs Minister Guusje ter Horst wants ministers and state secretaries to be given a 10 percent raise. The proposal will be discussed in the cabinet meeting on Friday, the Volkskrant reports. The Socialist SP has rejected the plan immediately. "Just ridiculous," says MP Harry van Bommel. "Politicians should be setting a good example by freezing their wages." The basic ministerial salary comes to about EUR 130,000 gross annually. This comes to EUR 172,000 when bonuses and pension contributions are added in. The salary increase will only be applied to the basic salary."

So our Harry Potter look-alike Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende makes € 130,000 per year and the plan is to give him a 10% raise. I guess the Lees will be laughing: Lee Jr makes S$ 3,091,000 or more than ten times the Dutch PM's salary. After all, Singapore has 4.5 million people and the Netherlands only has 16.2 million so it all makes a lot of sense.

In other news, I was supposed to have dinner with MI but he just cancelled as he had been drinking too much yesterday. So I have the evening (the last one home alone) free - what shall I do?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What shall you do?????

Huh. Is this a rhetoric question?

Well, clean the house, of course!

But then, I am sure you are now at CN doing some cleaning too. hehehehe.

DA in SF

Colin said...

They absolutely deserve their pay raise... do you know how lucrative salaries are in the pirate sector?