A FAMILY AFFAIR
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 09:51PM 
Pigs. Snout. Trough.
I was reading that lobster-fishing enthusiast Ian Paisley Jnr really IS in the money.
As an MLA, he earns around £85,00O in salary and expenses. But he is ALSO a junior Minister - a position he occupies care of his Dad. As a junior Minister, he earns around 20k above the basic MLA salary. So that takes him up over the 100k. But that's not enough.
It is now revealed that Ian Jnr is ALSO receiving a salary from Westminster as a "researcher" for his North Antrim MP father. Sir Alastair Graham, the former chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, described this as "very bizarre".
"It means he is being paid as an assembly member, a junior minister and also by his father from his parliamentary allowances," he said. Mr Paisley said his research job has been detailed in his register of interests since 1998.
Now there is nothing illegal about this. Greed, however, is a different ball game.
That's also the thing about nepotism, gotta keep it in the family.
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Reader Comments (6)
It's really getting beyond a joke now.
One wonders though if the good Dr. obeyed all the Equal Opportunities legislation when he recruited his son to 'work' for him? What did the other candidates he presumably interviewed for the post think of his selection?
So it turns out Eurasia was the enemy all along!
What would he be able to make in the real world? He may face that soon, unless Seymour gives him a job!
It is an outrage that someone should be given a state position just because of the family they came from. But the Paisleys are Monarchists and may see it differently.
Peter and Iris Robinson are pretty good at the nepotism thing too. Turns out they employ their son and their daughter as Assembly assistants.
They are both MPs as well, and guess what? They claim expenses for two London apartments (his 'n hers). I wonder who they employ as assistants / researchers at Westminster?
Did I read that the Robinson's filed claims for some £40000 for accommodation costs alone in London in 2007?!!
Scandalous amounts.