London mayor Johnson calls £250,000 "chicken feed"

By Jack Hodsoll

LONDON (Reuters) - London's outspoken mayor, Boris Johnson, came under trade union fire on Tuesday for describing as "chicken feed" the 250,000 pound second salary he earns for writing a weekly newspaper column.

Workers on London's transport network, which ultimately is headed by the mayor, reacted angrily to Johnson's comments, which he made in an interview with the BBC.

"Transport workers in London will look at Boris Johnson's claim that 250,000 pounds a year for moonlighting in a second job is 'chicken feed' and wonder just what planet he's living on," said Bob Crow, the head of the RMT transport union.

"Our members working as cleaners on London Underground, who have been denied the London Living Wage that was promised them by Boris Johnson, will be especially angry when they are out there doing dirty jobs for little more than six pounds an hour."

Johnson, who attended Eton College and Oxford University and was a Conservative member of parliament, also earns a regular mayoral salary of 140,000 pounds a year. The average annual wage in Britain is about 25,000 pounds.

In the BBC interview, Johnson was asked whether he thought having a second job paying a quarter of a million pounds was appropriate alongside his busy mayoral role. He dismissed the sum as "chicken feed."

"I don't presume to ask what you earn from the taxpayer and frankly there's absolutely no reason at all why I should not on a Sunday morning, before I do whatever else I need to do... knock off an article," he said.

Johnson's remuneration from the right-of-centre Daily Telegraph newspaper, which amounts to about 5,000 pounds per article, is unlikely to go down well with workers in London, where the average earnings are about 630 pounds a week, according to the national statistics office.