Of course it’s important that we stay in the EU or vultures like Baroness Ashton would starve.
This odious creature will be entitled to £400,000 at the taxpayer's expense over three years for doing nothing after finishing her five year term as the European Union's foreign minister at the end of 2014.
Labour peer Ashton, who finishes her job as High Representative of foreign affairs in October next year, will be paid £133,500 a year, 55 per cent of her basic salary, until the end of 2017.
The "transitional allowance" does not require her to do any work at all and she will be paid under reduced rates of EU "community" tax, rather than the standard British rates of taxation for high-income earners.
The allowance is defended as "the price for the total independence" of senior EU officials like Lady Ashton, who is also a vice-president of the European Commission, who must also "ask permission for any job they would like to do for 18 months after leaving".
"It's important that commissioners don't start looking for a new job during the last months of their mandate, and that they take their time over finding appropriate new employment," said a commission spokesman."That way, they can continue to give 100 per cent to the job taxpayers are paying them to do, and there is much less risk of a conflict of interest."
Ashton will then take up her seat in the House of Lords, where she will be entitled to £300 in untaxed daily allowance for sittings of the unelected chamber, without loss of EU payments.
So after pulling out over £1.6m of our money from the EU in BASIC salary I wonder what make-work ‘position’ she will be appointed to?
Still don’t worry Cathy – only 5 more years to go and you can then claim you state pension as well.