Sunday, April 12, 2009

How Much Severance Pay Will McBride Trouser?

A thought just struck me. I wonder how much the taxpayer will be fleeced for to pay for a nice little severance deal for Damian McBride. Six months? A year?

Let me make a suggestion. He shouldn't be paid a penny beyond yesterday. If I was his boss I would have sacked him for gross misconduct. Perhaps he was allowed to 'resign himself' in order to get a better pay off.

How Brown handles this will be very illuminating indeed.

25 comments:

Lexander said...

How Brown handles this resignation will be fascinating and the odds are that Brown will try and get somebody else to do it. As for pay off - well at least six months or he will sue somebody! Let's talk about £100k (taxpayers' lolly of course).

Hacked Off said...

He's too unpleasant to just fade quietly away. He may be "gone" but the stench is still there.

http://therantingkingpenguin.blogspot.com/

Jon Lishman said...

Good point.

And if that drink-soaked mutant McBride is 34, then I'm a toddler.

Happy Easter.

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans said...

Perhaps the PM needs some old style civil servants to tell him the real truth about what is going on

http://dylanje.blogspot.com/2009/04/epistemological-problems.html


bring back Sir Humphrey...

Conand said...

I think McBride fell on his sword to protect his boss (Brown, ergo Brown needed protecting, therefore Brown knew something about the smears/Red Rag).
Unfortunately for McBride this selfless act won't win him any Brownie Points, as it were. Brown doesn't care about the fate of his underlings, they're all just cannon fodder as far as he is concerned.
The failed Labour Ministers are in a different position, they can all potentially do a Howe/Cook speech that will seal Brown's fate.

Donal Blaney said...

I suggest the Select Committee with responsibility for the Civil Service looks into it all:

http://donalblaney.blogspot.com/2009/04/parliaments-role-in-smeargate.html

Daily Referendum said...

Kevin Maguire applying for McBride's old job?

Eckersalld said...

Hopefully it'll be a large pay-off, with all sort of benefits.

A bit like Fred the Shred's, and it can be brought up to embarrass Labour more, and ask questions as to why he wasn't sacked, and instead allowed to resign.

McBride will still be kept around, he's too useful to Brown and in a few months time I reckon it'd be well worth tracking down where Browns expenses are going... After all, McBride will want paying and it'll probably not be via a direct payroll.

Eckersalld said...

Oh, and in other news Brown has difficulty understanding the word 'voluntary' - as on the BBC it's reported he wants "compulsory volunteers"

He really puts the 'moron' into 'oxymoron' doesn't he?

Richard Brown said...

Of course, if he really *has* resigned properly, then surely all sorts of civil service processes must have kicked in?

* Security passes cancelled?
* Email address deleted?
* Blackberry and mobile phone service disabled?

Surely in this time of elevated surveillance, we can't have ex-employees wandering around Westminster with top-level access, can we?

I wonder how one could check these things?

Unsworth said...

McBride knows where the bodies are. He'll be looked after - one way or another.

Cynic said...

Didn't Gordon announce two weeks ago that he was cutting the early retirement pay-offs to members of the Senior Civil Service? In any case, he resigned so he should get nothing.

Goodnight Vienna said...

New video here:
McBride Downfall

Graham said...

As McBride was clearly doing Labour Party work while on the Civil Service payroll, the Labour Party should be be required to re-imburse the taxpayer for part of his salary (and any pay-off).

Tom said...

I'm sure he sorted all this out with Lord Myners in advance.

Anonymous said...

Surely if he resigned he should only be paid up till then.As he was a civil servant then he was not doing his job properly and should not even expect a pension,let alone severance pay.Can members of the public club together and sue him if he gets away withy it.

Eddie 180 said...

Brown is very clear...
there should be no rewards for failure!
The project failed.

neil craig said...

It certainly would make Brown's use of Sir Fred Goodwin as as=n Aunt Sally look even more hypocritical.

I wonder if Harperson will be invited on the BBC to say that "the court of public opinion" says not to pay him?

Twig said...

Since when does compensation become payable upon resignation?

The bunker team have had a few weeks to formulate their defence strategy since the issue was made public on the Daily Politics Show.
If Brown was not aware of the Red Rag plot he would have questioned Draper and McBride at the time, and demanded to see the emails, and then handed out the P45s.
The fact that he said nowt until the News of the World got in on the act says it all.

davidtbreaker (www.davidbreaker.com) said...

I thought a year was customary.
Look out for the government's last honours list as well, nothing would surprise me after LORD Mandelson!

David T Breaker
www.newsjunction.co.uk

Prodicus said...

How does that work, then? In the real world where I live, resigning means you forfeit severence package & pension - everything except your own contributions and accrued holiday pay. You have dropped your employer in it so you go with nothing. If you are sacked for good reason, ditto. You only get anything at all if you are sacked unfairly or made redundant. So, er...? Is it very different in the public sector? Is McPoison a member of Unite or something?

wv trucur

Prodicus said...

Donal,

I suggest the minister for the civil service sort it out. Oh, wait...

wv pangloss. What's going on with this wv?

Farmerlobby said...

You asked how old he is - I think 34/35 is right. He was at Cambridge with my wife - the Peterhouse '95 yearbook has some pictures. He has aged terribly..

Anonymous said...

Unsworth got it in one

Mc Bride has a lot of ammo stored

Unknown said...

So, yes, as he resigned, there can be no severance - at least not officially. He'll be OK though. I'd have thought he is well connected enough to make his resignation financially beneficial. And if the worst comes to the worst, I'm sure he could find a job at the Telegraph...