It seems the King may be feeling the cost-of-living pinch. Last week, the royal family posted a job advert for an “assistant correspondence officer” based at Buckingham Palace, on a salary of £23,000. The role, starting next month, involves helping answer the King’s letters from the public.
The Londoner contacted the Palace to point out that the year-long fixed-term contract worked out at only £11.79 per hour for a 37-and-a-half-hour week, which is lower than the London Living Wage of £11.95. The LLW is a proposed pay packet suggested by the Mayor of London for people living in the capital.
The advert was then updated, bumping the salary to £23,500, putting it just within the Mayor’s suggested remuneration band. It’s great that the royals could find the money from somewhere.
Labour ad is too soft, says Jess Phillips
Labour MP Jess Phillips says her party’s controversial attack ad against Rishi Sunak last week didn’t go far enough. The advert accuses the PM of personally going easy on paedophiles, and was accused of ‘dog-whistle’ politics. But shadow minister for domestic violence Phillips, who thinks the Tories have broken the justice system, told the Political Party podcast she would have “gladly defended” it. “What’s everyone bitching and moaning about?” she said, adding it’s “not hard enough for me”. While Sir Keir Starmer defended the message, Phillips’s senior, shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, did not endorse the ads.
Dame Penelope calls the King a ‘modernising monarch’
Actors Dame Penelope Wilton and Jim Broadbent cuddled their canine co-star Harry at a screening of film The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry last night. They told us the King is a “modernising monarch”, and Dame Penelope, who played The Queen in the BFG, said she is looking forward to the Coronation. “Continuity is important, especially when everything else is going ballistic,” she said.
The Cabinet Office cracks down on WhatsApp use
Politicians have been told not to use WhatsApp and private email for official communications. New Cabinet Office guidance warns ministers and civil servants they will have to “defend their choices” if they use mobile messages or emails for anything other than the lowest level of security classification, the first update of the rules in a decade.
Matt Hancock will be welcoming the change.
Bowie style is in the house
Actor Damian Lewis was out with his musician partner Alison Mosshart at Mayfair’s Caviar Kaspia restaurant last night to celebrate fashion brand Mother’s clothes inspired by David Bowie.
In the West End, Sir Rod Stewart met the cast of The Temptations show while Beverley Knight posed with Elesha Paul Moses to celebrate five years of the Tina Turner musical.
Natalie Imbruglia went to an event for conservation charity Tusk at Langan’s Brasserie, while in Richmond, ex-England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio and reality TV star Olivia Bentley went to the opening party for a terrace at Scott’s restaurant.
And actress Priyanka Chopra went to an event for her show Citadel, and shrugged off a scar she got on set, telling us it gave her “street cred”.
