Everyone should pay more - except me

When it comes to public spending, it's not surprising that everyone wants the burden of paying for it to fall on somebody else.

A fascinating little row has kicked off in the blogosphere between right wing commentator Guido Fawkes and freelance journalist, activist and feminist writer Laurie Penny.

Penny is advertising for a researcher to be paid £500 for "about 85 hours work". Fawkes accuses her of "flouting minimum wage legislation", on the basis that this comes to £5.88 an hour rather than the £5.93 an hour that constitutes the UK's minimum wage. Penny says that isn't so, which is why she put the word 'about' in. It all turns into a humdinger pretty quickly (check out the Twitter insults).

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.