AN EXPENSIVE HOBBY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 10194, 5 January 1926, Page 5

AN EXPENSIVE HOBBY

PRICE OF BEING BRITISH PREMIER. •

Mr J. Ramsay MacDonald, writing in “English I.i f e,” savs:— “The financial position of a Prime Minister is hardly less worrying than the task of keeping his team together. There is a notion that emoluments are one of the inducements to seek this high office. One cannot live in Downing Street on a pound a week and the work of a Prime Minister entails, under the care of- the most thrifty, an expenditure that would make an ordinary economist blush. Some of it may be owing to bad social habits, but when onp faces details with an axe one soon lays that down, as a pair of scissors is found to he the only practical weapon for pruning. And when the seals of office have gone into other hands obligations remain, and have to be met by more arduous labors to procure, the necessary income. No Prime Minister in modern times finds or can find his salary munificent, or liis savings in any way inadequate to bear the burdens he takes with him when the door of 10, Downing Street closes upon him. “No. 10, Downing Street makes a heavy inroad upon, and is not an addition to, the salary, and Chequers. that gracious gift of peace and refreshment, though it may properly he added to the enjoyment of the office, must be regarded , in spite of Lord Lee’s endowment, and a body of the most generous and considerate of trustees, as a minus quantity in its cash emoluments. The Prime Minister’s salary is now £SOOO, and not a halfpenny morfr. and of that the State deducts about £ISOO in taxes. The common history of all men of possession in public lile is a neverending struggle with debt.”