Sadiq Khan

[claretdj]

Well said fella!


"Highly paid football players are people who can carry the greatest burden and they should be the first ones to, with respect, sacrifice their salary, rather than the person selling the programme or the person who does catering or the person who probably doesn’t get anywhere near the salary some of the Premier League footballers get."

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has also written to all the Premier League and Championship clubs in the capital to ask to support the NHS during these "unprecedented times".

[TheFamilyCat]

Mayor of London earns nearly £150k per year. He can probably sacrifice a bit of that. I wonder if he will.

[Pimlico_Claret]

Mayor of London earns nearly £150k per year. He can probably sacrifice a bit of that. I wonder if he will.

True, but some footballers earn that a week.

[evensteadiereddie]

Let's see if he supports the introduction of higher taxes when the time comes.............

[randomclaret2]

If Premier League clubs can have a whip round for Mr Scudamore amounting to £5m they can either chip in themselves or " encourage " the players to do so

[tim_noone]

Can bugger off.

[Grumps]

I really don't get the outcry for footballers to take pay cuts. Individuals will do what they feel right, but there are many rich people in the world not taking a pay cut, why pick on footballers?

[CFS]

I really don't get the outcry for footballers to take pay cuts. Individuals will do what they feel right, but there are many rich people in the world not taking a pay cut, why pick on footballers?

Because clubs are axing regular staff when it's easier to cut the wage if players. Why should working class club staff lose jobs just to keep the players banks ticking over.

[Grumps]

Because clubs are axing regular staff when it's easier to cut the wage if players. Why should working class club staff lose jobs just to keep the players banks ticking over.

That would be the clubs decision, I read Khan saying players should sacrifice their wages means he thinks they should do it by choice

[IanMcL]

Some are but not enough.

[Rileybobs]

If footballers sacrifice their salary where does the cash go? If the players were furloughed the saving would go to the club. Whereas if they continue to be paid their current salaries wouldn’t their massive income tax contributions be of more benefit to the current situation? Have people really thought this through?

[Claretmatt4]

If footballers sacrifice their salary where does the cash go? If the players were furloughed the saving would go to the club. Whereas if they continue to be paid their current salaries wouldn’t their massive income tax contributions be of more benefit to the current situation? Have people really thought this through?

Its not about furlough pay its about players voluntarily accepting a small pay cut in order for clubs to pay their regular staff at the present time.

[Rileybobs]

Its not about furlough pay its about players voluntarily accepting a small pay cut in order for clubs to pay their regular staff at the present time.

Fair enough. I misunderstood the context in this case. There is another thread where people have suggested Burnley players for example should be taking pay cuts.

[Rowls]

edit - deleted.

[Rileybobs]

Further to my post above though, if I was a Premier League player at Spurs for example, and was asked to take a pay cut to help pay the salaries of the non-playing staff I would certainly be questioning the need. It seems that clubs like Spurs are playing the system, which they’re perfectly entitled to. But again, why should the footballers carry this burden when in effect the club hasn’t lost sufficient revenue to justify furloughing non-playing staff.

I’m sure the various departments of a club like Spurs will run as mini-businesses so obviously the catering receipts will be 0 where as the catering wage bill will still be the same. But if Daniel Levy asked me to take a pay cut to pay the programme sellers I’d think he was taking the p!ss out of me - which he would be.

[aggi]

Its not about furlough pay its about players voluntarily accepting a small pay cut in order for clubs to pay their regular staff at the present time.

But given the club made ~ £70m in profit last year and had over £120m in the bank they could probably pay the regular staff and the players.

[Devils_Advocate]

I see Eddie Howe and Jason Tindall leading the way in taking a voluntary pay cuts. Wont go down well with some on here as no doubt the usual suspects will find a way to use it negatively against them

[Pimlico_Claret]

Footballers(at the top level) have done exceptionally well financially in recent years. If you are earning £50k a week, and you complain that you might miss £1k of that, then there's something wrong.

[KateR]

Didn't Daniel Levy just recently take a 20% pay cut? I would have thought that would be a good example to all, though depends exactly where that 20% goes at the end of the day. The government scheme of 80% must be a help for many at the end of the day but obviously not all.

Massive industries are suffering just as much and maybe more, but maybe the discrepancy across the pay gap is what puts footballers in the frame to point at.

Was an article regarding North Sea workers who were laid off by company very recently, they had done it in such a way as to ensure that those people could not claim under the Gov. scheme. I noted after the bad publicity that the Company had changed that policy and that if fact the employees could claim under the scheme. All N. Sea assets have gone to minimum manning, the onshore support/service industry is virtually shutdown with many casualties.

There is a project ongoing in Kazakhstan, very remote, camp type job, all personnel working a 4 X 4 week schedule, In Feb all employees on there rotational jobs were told to stay at home until the foreseeable future, up to 90 days. All personnel on site were told they could not rotate home and were stuck in the camp for the foreseeable future, up to 90 days, the 90 days would be reviewed at some time in the future. I would have thought very difficult for many of those personnel in the camp who have families at home and to be told you can not go home at this time. NOTE the camp holds thousands, not just a few, or hundreds. I have no idea at the moment how many refused and demanded to be sent home, this will be repeated across the globe for many projects that are "considered" essential. Some real hardships ongoing across the world, footballers do not fall in to this category.

[paulatky]

I really don't get the outcry for footballers to take pay cuts. Individuals will do what they feel right, but there are many rich people in the world not taking a pay cut, why pick on footballers?

Should make everyone question their own values.

[fidelcastro]

Should make everyone question their own values.

Ultimately it'll come down to whether you're a greedy ******* or not.

[Jakubclaret]

Further to my post above though, if I was a Premier League player at Spurs for example, and was asked to take a pay cut to help pay the salaries of the non-playing staff I would certainly be questioning the need. It seems that clubs like Spurs are playing the system, which they’re perfectly entitled to. But again, why should the footballers carry this burden when in effect the club hasn’t lost sufficient revenue to justify furloughing non-playing staff.

I’m sure the various departments of a club like Spurs will run as mini-businesses so obviously the catering receipts will be 0 where as the catering wage bill will still be the same. But if Daniel Levy asked me to take a pay cut to pay the programme sellers I’d think he was taking the p!ss out of me - which he would be.

The government would claw it back, the government aren't going to let businesses abuse the system without giving something back, nobody gets a free ride, it's more a show of we are all in this together united as 1, meant to post in response to your other post on this thread. Sometimes it goes a long way just setting a good example & having honourable intentions, I feel that's eclipsing your thought processes.

[Clarets4me]

I think the fact that Tottenham announced their full year accounts, ( with a profit of £70 m, and a £3 m bonus for Mr Levy, on top of his £4 m salary ), at the same time as announcing they were putting their lowest paid employees on " Furlough ", before asking their extremely well paid players to make any sacrifice, was rather ill-timed, to say the least ..

They appear to be taking advantage of the Government's system, and frankly, it will do nothing to dispel some people's prejudice's ...

As for Sadiq Khan, he's well on the way to making Boris look like a brilliant Mayor of London, there seems to be no bandwagon that this man will not jump on !!

[Claretmatt4]

Fair enough. I misunderstood the context in this case. There is another thread where people have suggested Burnley players for example should be taking pay cuts.

No worries, easy to get things mixed up!

[arise_sir_charge]

Would love to see a top club furlough their squad.

It would bring football back to the working man, just for a moment.

Will obviously never happen though as those footballers hold all the cards.

[TVC15]

Further to my post above though, if I was a Premier League player at Spurs for example, and was asked to take a pay cut to help pay the salaries of the non-playing staff I would certainly be questioning the need. It seems that clubs like Spurs are playing the system, which they’re perfectly entitled to. But again, why should the footballers carry this burden when in effect the club hasn’t lost sufficient revenue to justify furloughing non-playing staff.

I’m sure the various departments of a club like Spurs will run as mini-businesses so obviously the catering receipts will be 0 where as the catering wage bill will still be the same. But if Daniel Levy asked me to take a pay cut to pay the programme sellers I’d think he was taking the p!ss out of me - which he would be.

What happened to the quote footballers often come out with about the importance of everyone who works at the club....from the tea lady to the etc ?
If I was on £200k a week and was asked to take a temporary pay cut to help staff on not much more than £200 a week then I would not think twice about it.
I’ve already said on previous threads that I think that income tax rates should be increased for the rest of this year on salaries of over say £40k per annum as a way of funding these extraordinary measures.
It feels completely morally wrong for Spurs or other clubs to be paying these obscene wages and yet asking for the tax payer to fund their claim for furloughed workers.

I hope the government intervene and challenge these requests..

[Rileybobs]

Would love to see a top club furlough their squad.

It would bring football back to the working man, just for a moment.

Will obviously never happen though as those footballers hold all the cards.

But any employee has to agree to be furloughed. So a professional footballer who is offered the choice between taking a reduced gross salary of £2500pcm or being laid off is always going to choose the latter. The footballers don’t hold any more cards than the ‘working man’, other than they are better at what they do and therefore in much higher demand.

[Rileybobs]

What happened to the quote footballers often come out with about the importance of everyone who works at the club....from the tea lady to the etc ?
If I was on £200k a week and was asked to take a temporary pay cut to help staff on not much more than £200 a week then I would not think twice about it.
I’ve already said on previous threads that I think that income tax rates should be increased for the rest of this year on salaries of over say £40k per annum as a way of funding these extraordinary measures.
It feels completely morally wrong for Spurs or other clubs to be paying these obscene wages and yet asking for the tax payer to fund their claim for furloughed workers.

I hope the government intervene and challenge these requests..

I would also happily donate some of my salary to the cause, but not to a greedy chairman.

I also would like to see Spurs’ case challenged, although are the employees employed by the hugely wealthy holding company or subsidiary companies who could claim that independently they are unable to retain staff during this crisis? I expect it would be messy.

[Tall Paul]

But any employee has to agree to be furloughed. So a professional footballer who is offered the choice between taking a reduced gross salary of £2500pcm or being laid off is always going to choose the latter. The footballers don’t hold any more cards than the ‘working man’, other than they are better at what they do and therefore in much higher demand.

They aren't on standard employment contracts though, so can't just be laid off without the club having to pay up the rest of their contract, so in that sense, they do hold more cards.

[mdd2]

Mayor of London earns nearly £150k per year. He can probably sacrifice a bit of that. I wonder if he will.

He will pay 50,000 in income tax and about 7000 in NI but may pay less tax if he pays into a pension fund.
For the job he does I think if the above is correct he pays his fair whack

[Rileybobs]

They aren't on standard employment contracts though, so can't just be laid off without the club having to pay up the rest of their contract, so in that sense, they do hold more cards.

Fair point, I suppose you could look at it as an extended notice period or redundancy package. Some players will be out of contract at the end of June which is a shorter timeframe than my notice period. In any case they would no doubt take the option of becoming a free agent as opposed to agreeing to be furloughed.

[Dy1geo]

This really is a PR disaster at the end of this what is to stop the Govt introducing a one off 60% tax rate aimed at salaries above say £250k

[Claretmatt4]

This really is a PR disaster at the end of this what is to stop the Govt introducing a one off 60% tax rate aimed at salaries above say £250k

Boris Johnson

[Grumps]

What happened to the quote footballers often come out with about the importance of everyone who works at the club....from the tea lady to the etc ?
If I was on £200k a week and was asked to take a temporary pay cut to help staff on not much more than £200 a week then I would not think twice about it.
I’ve already said on previous threads that I think that income tax rates should be increased for the rest of this year on salaries of over say £40k per annum as a way of funding these extraordinary measures.
It feels completely morally wrong for Spurs or other clubs to be paying these obscene wages and yet asking for the tax payer to fund their claim for furloughed workers.

I hope the government intervene and challenge these requests..

Would you still take the pay cut if it meant you couldn't pay your bills etc?

[TVC15]

Would you still take the pay cut if it meant you couldn't pay your bills etc?

I would imagine that a threshold could be set where a tax increase kicks in and it would be affordable by the vast majority. If there was a small minority who could not pay their bills then you could introduce some kind of appeal system. If someone is on £40k or £50k salary and say a temporary 5% increase in income tax is imposed if the extra £100 or so a month is the difference between them paying bills or not then it’s likely that at some point they are going to be in trouble with or without a tax increase.

There are other things you could try and do to minimise this happening - taper the tax rates, increase the threshold etc.
This is about the “wealthier” supporting those in need most in conjunction with all the other various government support measures in an emergency situation.

Whatever you do there will be exceptional individual circumstances but as said deal with these on appeal.

[Bordeauxclaret]

This really is a PR disaster at the end of this what is to stop the Govt introducing a one off 60% tax rate aimed at salaries above say £250k

The people who fund the Tories.

[jojomk1]

Lots of examples coming out now
Newcastle scouting staff all on furlough
QPR management and coaching staff taking wage cuts (many other examples but can't remember them all)
Backroom/Admin staff at a lot of clubs on furlough

Not heard of many players (especially Prem) who are prepared to take a cut

Yes, they are not the only people who are paid huge salaries, but here is a chance to get some very good PR for themselves and the game in general

Gordon Taylor in discussions with Prem and EPL on the matter

So don't expect anything to change

[mdd2]

This really is a PR disaster at the end of this what is to stop the Govt introducing a one off 60% tax rate aimed at salaries above say £250k

Sounds like a good idea but how much would it pull in?

[TVC15]

Lots of examples coming out now
Newcastle scouting staff all on furlough
QPR management and coaching staff taking wage cuts (many other examples but can't remember them all)
Backroom/Admin staff at a lot of clubs on furlough

Not heard of many players (especially Prem) who are prepared to take a cut

Yes, they are not the only people who are paid huge salaries, but here is a chance to get some very good PR for themselves and the game in general

Gordon Taylor in discussions with Prem and EPL on the matter

So don't expect anything to change

Gordon Taylor taking a cut in his salary ? This guy was on £400k a year nearly 20 years ago which had increased to more than £2m a year a couple of years ago.

[tarkys_ears]

I'd rather they "sacrifice" their wages on a monthly basis, say at 45% like the rest of us

[claretdj]

"Take a pay cut, play your part"


The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock has urged Premier League footballers to take a pay cut and make a contribution to help in the battle against corona virus.

Over to Dyche n the players now.

[aggi]

"Take a pay cut, play your part"


The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock has urged Premier League footballers to take a pay cut and make a contribution to help in the battle against corona virus.

Over to Dyche n the players now.

I assume he's also saying the same kind of thing to people like the owners of JCB who received a £75m dividend but are furloughing their staff.

[FCBurnley]

Well said fella!

Utter garbage by Khan. Lead by example not by trying to shame footballers or anybody else. Try giving 20% of your salary first then maybe others might follow your lead.
"Highly paid football players are people who can carry the greatest burden and they should be the first ones to, with respect, sacrifice their salary, rather than the person selling the programme or the person who does catering or the person who probably doesn’t get anywhere near the salary some of the Premier League footballers get."

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has also written to all the Premier League and Championship clubs in the capital to ask to support the NHS during these "unprecedented times".

[TVC15]

Sounds like a good idea but how much would it pull in?

For Premier League players and managers alone back of a fag packet stuff it could bring in between £150m and £200m a year.
You’ll get another chunk of revenue from the championship players too...and then there is the rest of the population earning more than £250k so it’s not an insignificant amount this could raise in a year.....a billion ?

[tiger76]

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has revealed he has taken an immediate 10% pay cut to his £152,734 ($193,000) salary and frozen pay for senior City Hall appointments as he calls on the UK government to help councils facing funding shortfalls during the pandemic.

Like in many cities, he said, the capital's public finances faced "unprecedented challenges" which, unless ministers acted, could mean cuts across the Metropolitan Police, London Fire Brigade, Transport for London (TfL) and the Greater London Authority due to a shortfall of almost £500 million in funding.

He said TfL - which last month secured a £1.6bn bailout to keep Tube and bus services running - had seen a 90% drop in fares due to lockdown restrictions and income from business rates and council tax had "fallen off a cliff".

Khan called on the government to act on the promise by Prime Minister Boris Johnson - a former London mayor himself - that he would not "force another era of austerity on local and regional government" to balance the books after the pandemic.

Some of England's biggest councils could see "large-scale reductions" to services as they attempt to balance the books after the crisis, with 39 authorities facing a funding shortfall of £2.5bn according to a new report by the County Councils Network.

Credit to the present London Mayor for this act, now let's see what his predecessor does in response to these worrying figures. Or will the buck rest with councils, if it's the latter prepare for cuts or large scale council tax rises next year if not before.

[mdd2]

Yes Boris will need to dig deep, but the deeper we have to dig the more we will have to pay. Remember the Government has no money, only what it gets from taxation and borrowing, the latter has to be paid for eventually from taxation.
The younger posters on here will be paying for all this long after I am pushing up daisies.

[kentonclaret]

In view of the fact that every government minister that has appeared at the Downing Street briefings has made much of the £3.2 billion (2 lots of £1.6 billion) already awarded to Councils, I have long held the view that increases in Council Tax are inevitable to make up the inevitable shortfall that Councils will face.

[tiger76]

Yes Boris will need to dig deep, but the deeper we have to dig the more we will have to pay. Remember the Government has no money, only what it gets from taxation and borrowing, the latter has to be paid for eventually from taxation.
The younger posters on here will be paying for all this long after I am pushing up daisies.

I agree there's no easy solutions, but the more people that can be kept in employment, then the more tax revenue for the government to play with, and obviously less spending on welfare at the same time. Equally if people are confident in their own finances they'll be more inclined to spend and this could jar parts of the the economy into a recovery, particularly the retail sector.

The big problem is the uncertainty, and until that's clarified either with this virus dying out naturally or by an effective vaccine, the economic storm clouds will remain.

I can't see how the government can avoid extra borrowing, at least in the short term, and of course this will eventually have to be offset by future tax rises, this government have ruled out imposing austerity publicly on a number of occasions, so if they were to renege on those pledges their support will rapidly dip, now the bigger question is who foots the bill, this government were elected on a levelling up agenda, so if the lowest paid were made to bear the burnt, then that won't go down well in many of those newly won northern seats, so plenty of big decisions both economic, political and social for this present government to grapple with even when the present crisis is at an end.

[kentonclaret]

In the Tory manifesto Boris Johnson pledged no tax hikes and to retain the Triple Lock on Pensions.

Following Covid19 many of these manifesto pledges will have to be rewritten.

[tiger76]

In the Tory manifesto Boris Johnson pledged no tax hikes and to retain the Triple Lock on Pensions.

Following Covid19 many of these manifesto pledges will have to be rewritten.

You may well be right, but the PM stated a couple of weeks ago at the daily press briefing that the Conservatives would stand by all their manifesto pledges, so if they perform yet another u-turn, they'll have some explaining to do to the public.