£32,000 a year is well above the average wage. Many people earn significantly less. Yet Bristol’s Assistant Mayor Gus Hoyt has been moaning on Twitter about his low pay.
It all started when someone suggested on Twitter that he might like to go to New York. His reply was that he couldn’t afford it. When his correspondent suggested that was a shame, he replied:
Yeah, Big time. Am in big job but low pay…local government
When Liberal Democrat Councillor Alex Smethurst and his colleague Chris Martin questioned his view of low pay, and a local resident mentioned that she earned a quarter of that the Assistant Mayor got a bit Hoyty toity.
Alex & Christian can’t be trusted more than you can spit. Believe their (sic) s*** if you will.
I’ll leave it to you to judge whether this fits with the requirement of the Bristol City Council Code of Conduct for members.
Always treating people with respect, including the organisations and public I engage with and those I work alongside.
It was 3:34 am on a Sunday morning, so you can only assume that he must have been a little tired.
If you look down his Twitter feed, though, you don’t have to go too far to see that he buys all his toiletries from Lush. He can afford to tweet photos of beautiful looking food from local restaurants and cafes in Bristol. We are not totally convinced by his pleas of poverty.
Local Council candidate Andrew Brown has compiled a Buzzfeed story showing how the events unfolded.
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41 Comments
So, when it comes to paying executive level employees of banks which are majority state owned, we are told we have to pay them amounts in the millions, that is needed to attract the necessary talent. Why is it one rule for one sort of state employee, another rule for another sort?
£32,000 IS a low salary for what this job involves – try comparing it to the salary rates for similar jobs. I appreciate salary levels are a bit higher where I live with London weighting, but £32,000 is the salary for a fairly routine admin job. If you want someone with senior admin skills, you are going to have to pay more than that. I definitely wouldn’t want to give up my full-time job for pay at that level. So is “The Voice” here saying that the position of Assistant Mayor shouldn’t go to people like me who have skills and experience that brings us in a slightly better salary that £32,000?
£32,000 probably isn’t a sufficient salary to be taking holidays to New York on a whim, frankly. One gets the feeling The Voice ought to shut up if it doesn’t want Lib Dems who’ve said similar things having their dirty laundry aired.
Robin Wilde
£32,000 probably isn’t a sufficient salary to be taking holidays to New York on a whim, frankly.
Indeed. Although, I earn a fair amount more than that as a university lecturer, I’m not taking a holiday this year because I can’t afford it. A lot of people have been asking me things like “Are you going away this year?” knowing that we have done in the past, and I’ve been replying with just those words, “No, not this year, just can’t afford it”. It’s just the truth. Slowly rising costs of other things mean that luxury has had to go.
So, should I be abused and insulted for saying that? Sure, I know I earn a fair bit more than many people, and having to cut out the foreign holiday is nothing like the sacrifices people on lower earnings are having to make. However, what I earn is a lot less than what someone with my skills could earn elsewhere – students I teach who get good degrees are typically earning more than I earn after three or four years, and my salary hasn’t kept pace with inflation so it’s been slowly diminishing over the years. If I have to just shut up and accept that because other people are earning less, then why do we have all this stuff about bankers having top be paid millions to attracts the right skills? Isn’t teaching the next generation how to write software (what I do in my job) something where we need to attract people with good skills?
This is a mean-minded and nasty article from “The Voice”. This sort of party political mud-slinging does us no good.
Matthew,
This is not an argument about pay levels for Councillors and Office Holders. That is a red herring.
It’s the characterisation of a salary £6k above the national average and £10k above the Bristol average as “low pay”, particularly when he stands for a party which claims to speak for the marginalised, and when his ward contains some of the poorest areas of Bristol.
It’s also about the preposterousness of pleading poverty when your salary is a matter of public record.
The Voice (and the Lib Dems referred to) seem to be claiming that regardless of how “big” the job is, if somebody is earning more than the average then they’ve no right to feel underpaid. I guess it’s just cheap point-scoring ahead of local elections, but it reminds me of Patrick McAuley’s recent article (https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-support-teachers-right-to-strike-but-not-the-nut-strikes-in-june-39492.html) which seemed to think that teachers should be grateful that they earn more than a trainee baker.
As a potential voter for Andrew who likes what he has seen so far of his campaigning up until this point, can I say that I think Mr Hoyt is crealy wrong to bleat about his pay in such a way, but that Alex and Andrew and Chris are all potentially wasting time pursuing this in such a name-calling, negative way, and I feel this is counter-productive campaigning.
A one-off complaint would suffice, not a confected harrassment. It is this aspect of local campaigning seen in so many different local areas that has put me off becoming a party member so many times in the past.
Andrew Brown
It’s the characterisation of a salary £6k above the national average and £10k above the Bristol average as “low pay”, particularly when he stands for a party which claims to speak for the marginalised, and when his ward contains some of the poorest areas of Bristol.
I spent 12 years as a councillor for a ward which was in one of the 10% most deprived in the country. I grew up in a family where my parents’ earning meant we WERE officially below the poverty level.
So I do know what I am talking about here, but I stand by what I said. It seems to me that this is a deliberate “yah booh sucks” piece of party political mud-slinging, twisting the original mundane point made. The bloke in question couldn’t just take off and go to New York on a whim, his salary, though higher than an average salary for all people wouldn’t allow that. Why can’t he say that? It IS a low salary for what the role involves, and I think this needs to be acknowledged – people that go into local politics are NOT doing so for the money, or at least not if they have the sort of skills that the job requires to do properly.
One of the reasons I gave up on being a councillor is that I just couldn’t face this continual accusation thrown at me that “You’re only in it for what you van get out of it” etc etc, when the reality is that putting my energy into being a councillor rather than my full-time job meant I lost career opportunities which I will never recover – the net effect on my lifetime earnings is negative.
I always try to be careful with what I say on things like this, because I know full well that compared to people on minimum wage or welfare benefit, I’m very comfortable and well off. Nevertheless, if people like me with good professionals skills and good earnings, but not enough to be able to giver up the full time job, are put off getting involved in local politics because of the financial consequences, what will be the result? It means the only people that go into it are people who don’t have the skills to get higher paid jobs, or people who are so wealthy or have a private income or whatever they can afford not to be concerned about the financial side. Or people who are really altruistic – but my altruism stopped short when I was warned my full time job was at risk, and I knew I had to give up being a councillor to avoid losing it.
Maybe you could take something I’ve written here, twist it and distort it and quote it out of context, and make me out to be a bad person who knows and cares nothing about the real low paid. Well, that sort of politics (my Labour opponents did it a few times to me) sickens me, it’s another reason why I no longer wanted to be involved. The consequence is that everyone involved in politics ends up just uttering safe slogans and being afraid to think and say new things of their own, for fear of how it could be twisted and misrepresented.
Someone on £32k is not going to rush off to NYC at the drop of a hat. There is a big difference between having enough money to buy some soap from an upmarket shop and blithely rushing off to Manhattan, of all the ridiculously expensive places.
And yes, it is mildly surprising that the assistant mayor, whatever that actually is (but it sounds important enough to be a ‘big job’) of a city the size of Bristol is being paid about the same amount as a physics teacher. Sadly, you haven’t linked to the tweet in question (which is mildly naughty, incidentally – context matters). Looking at that tweet shows that it was in response to a guy called Richard Turley, a New-York based (albeit originally British) VP at MTV who Hoyt apparently knows well enough to call ‘mate’. For context, the mayor of NYC is entitled to $225,000 per year. I don’t know whether NYC has an ‘assistant mayor’ but it does have several deputies, some of whom famously receive more money than the mayor is entitled to (I say ‘is entitled to’ because NYC mayors tend to be fabulously rich, and hence typically decline to draw their salary).
To summarise, this guy told an NYC-based, wealthy mate that despite having a job that sounds from his mate’s perspective as though it should be very well paid by NYC standards, it isn’t. Well, he’s right. It isn’t, especially by his mate’s standards. For this I am invited to condemn him?
As for all this Alex and Chris stuff, looks like infighting to me; put it away, nobody cares. All I get from this article is that a) this guy is more open on Twitter than he ought to be, b) this guy has some well-paid and apparently talented mates and c) some people with access to LDV don’t like him very much.
Isn’t the question why was a Green contemplating going to New York. Flying is as bad as stabbing someone, it’s been suggested. Sailing isn’t greener.
A salary of 32K is not “high pay” so he has some grounds for complaint. That said no one is forcing him to seek re-election if the salary is too low.
I guess the first question is how low is 32K if earned in the Bristol area. According to the salary calculator that equates to a take home of £2060 PCM.
Well against housing costs, Bristol (according to rightmove) had an average to buy cost last year of just under £220K. But we all know housing costs have gone up this year so I guess if you want to buy a house £32 is probably too low to get a mortgage if no sizeable deposit. If we assume he had a 10% deposit and needed a £200,000 mortgage at say 4.5% (it’s a 90% mortgage so probably a fair rate). He would need approx £1120 PCM for the mortgage.
To rent, the average according to home.co.uk was approx £850 PCM so the cheaper option…
Add in Bills etc then he is by no means living in poverty but is likewise not particularly well off. So he would be a hypocrite had he plead poverty as Andrew Brown claimed.. “Note that the Assistant Mayor pleads poverty…” Only he didn’t plead poverty, in the context of a trip to New York he said that he had a big job with low pay.
I don’t think it’s unfair to compare one’s remuneration to the job undertaken. He is, according to the Council website responsible for Finance and Corporate Services. It looks like the council spend approx £390 million (again according to their website) so I guess this is not a small job. So the first half of his statement is pretty fair. That’s about 10 times the turnover of my company last year and my head of finance earns marginally more based in a area with a lower cost of living.
I therefore would have seen nothing wrong with him stating he had a big job with “relatively” low pay, especially considering he is responsible for Finance and Corporate services in an area that cover 4 Westminster Constituencies. Having said that I think any reasonable adult looking at the twitter feed would have read it in the context it was written and assumed the relative bit..
I also think that Andrew Brown is more than a little disingenuous when stating he plead poverty. Unless I’ve missed something, not only was it out of context, but it’s just untrue he didn’t plead poverty. Take issue with the low paid quote but do try and do so without exaggerating what was actually said.
Of course I may have missed the poverty plea, I’m sure Andrew will place a link to where he did plead poverty on the thread for us all to follow…..
I do not understand. Is this an elected post? If he thought he was not being paid enough for it why did he stand for election?
I do not know why this is on LDV. There are far more important issues around high pay than this one.
To put a little context on to this, the current Mayor of Bristol (not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of Bristol)- who will remain in office until 2016 is paid as follows:
“The Mayor will be paid £65,738, the same salary as an MP.”
[Source: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/mayor/role-elected-mayor ]
The Mayor is supported by a Cabinet of six “Assistant Mayors”, one of which: “Councillor Geoff Gollop will serve as the statutorily required Deputy Mayor”. The current Cabinet I note consist wholly of elected Councillors. However, the website doesn’t indicate whether a Cabinet post is a full-time or part-time position and hence what the £32K actually represents.
In either case I don’t agree that £32,000 a year is” well above the average wage”; yes it might be above the average but not ‘well’. Remember someone needs to earn quite a bit more before they cease to qualify for benefits…
Oops! last sentence should of read:
Remember someone needs to earn quite a bit more before they are better off than someone on average wage with benefits…
And all due respect to Alex Smethurst (despite my above waspish comments), who I’m sure is campaigning hard in Redland and posts on and off on this site, but I don’t think he is yet the councillor for Redland as the election has not happened yet; he is certainly not listed on the BCC website as such.
There is a difference between saying you can’t afford a break to New York and saying that you’re in a “low paid job”.
It is a fantasy to say that someone earning about 1.5 times the national median wage is in a “low paid job”.
@Graeme
Relative to the MTV VP he was talking to, he is certainly in a low-paid job. Mountain, meet molehill.
This is a nasty piece of personal character assassination. £32,000 does not make someone such a plutocrat they are banned from wishing they had more money in a conversation with an apparently much richer friend.
Comparing his salary to the median salary is stupid as well. Is he doing the median job? And the median salary is £27,000 a year. So he’s barely above that either. Nasty puritan stuff either way.
Embarrassing that this has been put on LDV.
I agree with Stephen, this is embarrassing for LDV to highlight a twitter storm on LDV.
What is even more worrying is the suggestion that politicians are paid too much. This is a dangerous road and one that the Tories like to peddle. It creates an environment where only those who can afford to stand for office, do. It is the road to volunteer politicians. It creates social exclusion, preventing those without the means for standing for posts such as assistant mayor. As a party I’d like to think we are serious about knocking down the barriers of social exclusion everywhere. But sometimes I wonder!
You know what they say: pay peanuts get monkeys or even worse only get those who are only rich enough to stand to represent the people of the UK.
A surprising amount of whinging on this thread from people who should know better. The starting point here is that £32k is NOT low pay, especially not outside London. In fact £32k puts you in the top 25% of earners. For a politician in the top 25% of earners to complain of being “low paid” is pathetic, and just adds to the image of politicians being out of touch with the rest of the public.
Yes, it’s not as much as MPs earn; and yes, it’s not as out of touch as buying castles for your duck-pond; and yes, it’s not like bankers moaning about the high price of champagne… but for a councillor of a party that’s currently made the cost of living and the plight of the low paid a centre-piece of its election strategy (along with the environment) it’s a double-standard. How does Cllr Hoyt think this looks to his residents – who are among the poorest in the country and most of who will never reach a salary of £32k in their entire lifetimes – to see such a salary referred to as “low pay”?
@William Jones – saying £32k is now low paid is not saying the politicians are paid too much – it could be that £32k is exactly the right amount for this job. However, moaning that you’re on “low pay” when you’re on £32k does give the impression of politicians who are out of touch.
As it happens Cllr Hoyt has a bit of history of double-standards, e.g. buying Council houses when his Party’s policy is against it.
http://www.bristol247.com/2014/05/20/gus-hoyt-under-new-fire-over-council-house-sale-35816/
Anyway, for people who want to know, the job of “Assistant mayor” is a formal political advisor to the Mayor. It’s not the same as the usual council Cabinet role, because the Mayor of Bristol has reserved all decision-making powers to himself – so the Assistant is a purely advisory role. The Assistant Mayors do debate the cabinet items at Cabinet meetings, in a kind of public charade, but the Mayor is the only voter.
£32k is a enough money to have an annual holiday, a car and enjoy most of the benefits of modern civilisation. Lots of people work very hard in dirty or dangerous jobs and get paid a lot less with no chance of ever earning more. I suspect that very high paid jobs drag this average up and the reality is that the majority of people earn far less than £27k. Anyone on more than the so-called average salary should never raise the subject of their salaries in any public or semi-public forum. I am always mystified by people who say that they deserve a high salary because of their “responsibilities”. Running your own business or looking after the vulnerable or looking after your family is a responsibility. Someone in a salaried post can walk away at any time without any liability if things go wrong.
MBoy: “For a politician in the top 25% of earners to complain of being “low paid” is pathetic, and just adds to the image of politicians being out of touch with the rest of the public.”
Very probably, and so does 3 local eleciton candidates spending their time trying to raise to the attention of voters and others some ill-advised by not actively offensive Twitter remarks when all their manifestoes say they believe in community politics. This is not community politics, it is not looking very like the ‘grown-up’ politics required to make coalitions work that Nick Clegg referred to in his Telegraph interview this week (and despite the points you make, there is an element of cross-party, coalition politics to how the COuncil operates in Bristol).
What it looks like to me is what happens down the bar after Students’ Union meetings, carried on by people who are probably sober and well over 21, via electronic means.
@Ed Shepherd – Spot on.
Let’s get some details of the job, MBoy. Is it part time? If it’s part time, then the pay is probably fine. If it’s full time, maybe £32k is not great for the level of job.
The danger here is that we are descending into the politics of “pay” envy and that turns my stomach.
Ed Shepherd
” I suspect that very high paid jobs drag this average up and the reality is that the majority of people earn far less than £27k. “
Maths lesson: The £27k figure that was provided above was specifically identified as “median”. It’s not possible for the median to be dragged up by “very high paid jobs”, because what it means is that 50% of people earn less and 50% earn more. You can’t accept the figure as valid and then claim that “the majority of people earn far less”.
@William Jones: it’s a political job – it’s as many or as few hours as the holder decides. Some do it full-time, some do it part-time. It’s difficult to do a full Cabinet job part-time, but this job is less than that.
Sad this gent ” brags” about 32 k on twitter when many on twitter will only get minimum pay or zero hour contract does he feel poor in comparison to the people who see his tweet and wants them to vote for him
Don’t apply for a job if you will not be content with the pay
Off course forgot if he was on benefits he would be sanctioned for refusing a job.
Some of the comment here seems either very theoretical or to be making generalised assumptions about the man’s financial circumstances. To make full judgements we would need to a lot more, but I appreciate that could be seen as intrusive.
For someone who owns a home, in fair condition, and a car outright, has a partner with income and has access to credit the figure might allow for luxuries, like a trip to New York. Someone with debts, either their own or family, a single income and dependants might require extremely tight budgetting to get by.
We just don’t know what is the case here.
My point is that it is over-simplistic to quote a middle level salary on its own and expect that gives anything like a full picture.
As a matter of interest: MBoy are you either you the author of this story, Alex Smethurst, Chris Martin?
I find it strange someone with anyone would do the job for that low an amount , when Head teachers earn in excess of £150,000 a year and GP’s can be earning £300,000. This is the point surely yes lots of people earn less but lots of people with less responsibilty earn more.
This is an odd post to put up here, especially unsigned by “The Voice”. There is a good and important debate to be had about pay levels of elected politicians, but just putting this up as if it’s obvious that 32K is a very high salary for this role, is a bit strange.
Maths lesson: The £27k figure that was provided above was specifically identified as “median”. It’s not possible for the median to be dragged up by “very high paid jobs”, because what it means is that 50% of people earn less and 50% earn more. You can’t accept the figure as valid and then claim that “the majority of people earn far less”.
But I never said that I accept that figure as valid. I think it is wrong. I think that more than 50% of people in this country earn less than the the claimed median average of £27k.
At the company I work, there are perhaps 2,000 employees. There is no way that more than 50% of them earn more than £27k per annum. I would be surprised if even 20% of them earn more than £27k. Out of all the people that I socialise with (a cross section of society including highly-paid businesspeople, doctors, nurses, industrial workers, , people stuck in dreary McJobs, retired people and the unwaged), there is no way that more than 50% of them are earning more than £27k. I suspect the £27k figure is incorrect if it is meant to be a median.
Can I again point out the factual error in the first paragraph that Alex Smethurst is not (yet) an elected councillor?
Ed: my point was that the basis on which you claimed to reject it was wrong.
Even the basis you give now isn’t much cop. I don’t know whether you even really know the median wage of the 2,000 people in your company — you might do, if you work in the wages department, but the way you phrase the claim makes me doubt it, so it’s just an assumption.
As for using the “people that I socialise with” as a guide — you do realise how meaningless that is, don’t you? You claim that it’s a “cross section of society” but I very much doubt you have analysed the proportions to be able to claim that it is a truly representative sample (it would be quite bizarre if it were — society tends to be much lumpier than that) or that you have actually enquired into the incomes of everyone you know. In my experience, that’s considered quite rude even amongst friends. And of course, including “retired people and the unwaged” in a discussion of the median wage is a straightforward category error.
You probably think I’m being pointlessly pedantic or sneery, but I’m not. The point is that we do tend to make assumptions about things like average incomes (or lifespans or spending patterns or any number of things) based on what we think we know about our own peer group (but have mostly just extrapolated from a much smaller base even than that), and it’s just a bad way to do it. If you want to question the £27k figure, look up some stats on it. (According to this report in the Guardian it’s a recent figure based on a pretty well based survey by HMRC, but perhaps you know better.) If you want to attack the Green party figure for wishing that he earned more than he does you’re free to do so, of course, but I don’t think you’ll get anywhere by claiming that the median wage is less than it is without actual, meaningful evidence.
MBoy
A surprising amount of whinging on this thread from people who should know better. The starting point here is that £32k is NOT low pay, especially not outside London. In fact £32k puts you in the top 25% of earners. For a politician in the top 25% of earners to complain of being “low paid” is pathetic, and just adds to the image of politicians being out of touch with the rest of the public.
Well, ok then. Let’s put all those bankers in the 81% state owned bank, RBS, on a salary of £32k. And if they moan about it, give them this reply.
Why not, MBoy? Many of them have fairly mundane money-shuffling jobs, not half as varied as what an executive officer at the top of a unitary local authority had to deal with.
Here you go:
http://www.local.gov.uk/web/guest/local-government-intelligence/-/journal_content/56/10180/3015313/ARTICLE
There is some actual information about pay rates in local government, so you can stop guessing and invoking your mates’ salaries now, because the answer is that assuming this is a full time job he is around the 75th percentile for gross pay for males working in local government in the South West (using figures circa 2011-12, so he is probably slightly lower now).
On the other hand, the figures also show that he would be far better off if he were on the 75th pay percentile as an architect, building control officer (47k!!!), chartered accountant, chartered surveyor, educational psychologist (also 47k), engineering professional, environmental health officer, legal professional, occupational therapist, planning officer, policy officer, project officer and so on.
He appears to be on about the same salary progression as a social worker. Who are famous for jet-setting off to NYC at the drop of a hat, of course.
@William Jones: No.
@Matthew Huntbach: Are RBS staff currently running a centre-piece campaign about the Living Wage and concentration of wealth at the top of society then? I missed that one, but it’s about time bankers started running campaigns about, er, bankers. This salary is entirely in line with similar posts elsewhere; out of interest what do you think a political post that is like a council cabinet position – but with no decision-making power – should be paid?
As you can see from the link I posted, this Green Party councillor is also in hot water for buying a £185k council house (in cash) despite opposing the sale of Council houses. This is also the same councillor who spent ages getting photo-opps among the “Occupy” tents in Bristol parks in 2011, and then recently tried to bring in a By-law that would have criminalised putting up tents in parks ( http://robinsland.co.uk/2014/03/18/the-meteoric-rise-of-gus-hoyty-toyty-and-his-ambivalence-about-tents/ ).
Frankly this kind of casual political hypocrisy deserves to be exposed. Poor people who are opposed to the sale of Council houses don’t turn up with 185k in cash to buy council houses and then moan their £32k salary is low.
MBoy
This salary is entirely in line with similar posts elsewhere; out of interest what do you think a political post that is like a council cabinet position – but with no decision-making power – should be paid?
As you say, it’s in line with similar posts elsewhere; I think it’s about the right amount. I’m not saying I believe the pay for the position should be higher, but that does not stop me recognising that it is comparatively low when compared to posts with similar sort of job requirements elsewhere. That’s not the same as saying it’s absolutely low compared to all salaries for all people.
My union held a strike ballot recently, calling us out in protest at our “low pay”. Now, as I’ve said, my pay as a university lecturer is somewhat higher than this deputy mayor’s allowance. So are you and “The Voice” going to come out and condemn the UCU as outrageous, say we should be grateful that university lecturers get paid big money when compared to the average wage for all workers in all fields, say that we have no right at all to complain about our lot, or to ask for a salary increase (even though our salaries have not kept up with inflation for years, and in my case the students I teach will be earning more than me after three or so years work at what I taught them)?
Actually I didn’t even see the quoted words from this Deputy Mayor as particularly complaining. I saw it as explanation, as acceptance that his post was relatively low paid compared to the sort of executive types that someone in that post would be working with. It was in a private conversation explaining why he couldn’t just hop on a plane to New York, not in some public campaign where he was saying no-one could be expected to live on £32k.
I have used similar words myself this year when people have asked me “Are you taking a holiday?” or asked me whether I would be going on a particular trip organised by a group I am involved with. I’ve said “No, sorry, I can’t afford it”. It’s just the truth, I can’t afford it. If I were working in the job I train people to work in, I could afford it several times over. In that sense I am “low paid”. So, go on, I’ve said it – throw the mud at me, tell me what a horrible insensitive and uncaring and ungrateful person I am for doing so.