The Bollinger bolshevik on £145k a year

Transport Workers union (RMT) boss Bob Crow lives off a fat salary in a council flat intended for the poor. That's when he's not dining in Mayfair or cruising in the Caribbean.

Bob Crow revels in his image as a "man of the people"; in reality he's no more a man of the people than I am. There may be a sign saying "Working class" on the door of his office near Euston, and a bust of Lenin inside, but this is a man with a taste for high living. Comrade Crow' is the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), which has been plotting the latest round of tube strikes strikes that cost London's economy around £50m a day. By repeatedly holding the capital to ransom, he's done very well for Tube drivers, who now earn £40,000 a year. He hasn't done badly for himself either, as Paul Bracchi points out in the Daily Mail. In 2002, when Crow took charge of the RMT, his basic pay was less than £60,000. Now this "communist-stroke-socialist" (as he calls himself) has a salary of £97,747 and an overall package worth at least £145,000 a year.

Small wonder then, says Bracchi, that he can afford to patronise exclusive restaurants like Scott's in Mayfair. He and four left-wing colleagues were spotted there last week: they "quaffed bubbly' from crystal glasses and knocked back bottles of Morgassi Superiore 2009 Piedmont at £39 a time". The bill for the lunch, to celebrate Mr Crow's 50th birthday, was £650. He likes expensive holidays, too. In January, after his union had set up two train strikes in Britain, he headed to Barbados for a cruise. Meanwhile, he still lives in social housing in Woodford Green at an estimated rent of £150 a week. He's quite unrepentant about this. "Bob Crow makes no apology for living at the heart of his local community," says an RMT spokesman.

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