Nigella drug use

"Love of money is the root of all evil" - where have I heard that before? I may understand the effect of a luxury lifestyle on domestic staff but it does not excuse emulating it at the expense of others nor does it justify an attitude where having to live "in Battersea" is seen as a fate worse than death! You have to laugh at their sorry attitude when you consider that Battersea properties can change hands for millions. What planet are these benighted souls on?

This doesn't compare IMHO. If I was stacking shelves in Sainsbury's I doubt I'd know what Lord S even looks like, unless I had seen a photo in the company newsletter. In the Saatchi case, those sisters were considered to be 'part of the family' and when their spending was first discovered, I think it was Saatchi who gave evidence to the effect that it was felt they had been 'naughty'.

Not that it excuses their behaviour, if anything, it makes it worse.

I agree, Maggiemaybe. The women may have been contributing to the lifestyle of their employers, but they were well paid for that job and shouldn't have felt any entitlement above and beyond that.

Really? Surely when you work in a world where this is the case, you should be grounded enough to know that you are doing exactly that, working. You are not part of the family, and not entitled to the lifestyle. Obviously you can expect to be treated fairly and with respect, like any other employed person.

My niece is a nanny for a very wealthy family. She has the commonsense to be grateful for the fact that she earns a healthy salary, and enjoys various perks, for a relatively easy job. If you're a shelf stacker at Sainsburys, you're contributing to Lord Sainsbury's lifestyle, but you wouldn't expect him to be inviting you round for supper.

But when you are working in a world where a £100,000 monthly credit card bill doesn't cause a blink or a comment, you must feel the difference and begin to feel that as you are contributing a lot to the life style by looking after children, taking them on holiday (!!!!!) and begin to feel you have an equal entitlement to the good things in life

The accountant seems to have been less than diligent.

£28,000 is what an average nurse gets in London - so by any measure this was a generous salary when added to free board & lodgings i.e. no rent, utilities, food, transport, etc. The package is worth at least £40,000 gross, each.

Soutra - "greedy" is the word that sprang to my mind, and no wonder given the atmosphere in which they lived and worked for so long. If Saatchi genuinely doesn't bother his head with even large sums of money, as he says, then I imagine the sisters aren't the only people getting a tad carried away. Theft from employers is sadly no uncommon, and I expect it's at various shades. Put these 2 sisters in such a position of power, comfort and security with no one questioning their accounts, and I suppose, sadly, it isn't surprising their sense of entitlement just grew (like Topsy)

Without knowing the ins and outs, I too think £28K plus board and lodgings (and hardly in a run down area of London!!) sounds pretty good. My DD has a nanny 3 days a week and she has to pay her a net salary - i.e. after tax and N.I. So if the sisters were getting £28,000 plus keep as an after tax salary perhaps some maths whizz could tell me what that equates to? There are a heck of a lot of people earning an awful lot less, but when you are rubbing shoulders with the "great and the good", perhaps it doesn't seem enough.
Does the word "greedy" spring to anybody's mind or is it just me?

That - not 'that's' ( I really must preview!)

That's makes sense in a way - we have very wealthy relatives (not in the UK) and the woman of the house does not emerge from her bedroom till midday (the husband works away a lot). When we visit, we have our own quarters and we keep our normal hours and are up early etc and it is quite jaw-dropping to witness how the household staff (about 8 in total) are usually congregated in the kitchen cooking up a big breakfast, sitting around chatting, someone will be on the house phone to a friend, etc etc., and they' don't seem to be in any rush to start their working day. And we were not surprised when we heard recently that the husband had started querying the huge household bills that are sent through to him for payment.

So I suppose the point I'm making is that it is not unusual for staff to 'take over' when they are left largely unsupervised (not excusing it though!). Does make you think - I mean any other job, you'd have "supervision" with your "manager" who would know what was going on and what your performance was like.

It's definitely a case of "How the other half ..."

Well I think it would be inadequate without that, but I would say it sounds like a fairly generous package with it. There was also the alleged remark by one of the sisters that they would rather go to prison than live in Battersea, which if true, suggests that they might have developed rather expensive tastes.

Mamie I hadn't taken into account the free board and lodging. A friend of mine is a PA for a high flyer and her salary is £46,000 per year and she works more or less regular hours (in a flexible pattern).

......but that is part of his carefully crafted image

You would think that with all that money he could afford a decent pair of socks ( picture in The Mail today)

And interesting that his brother, Maurice, seems to be the total opposite. A devoted and caring husband who is still grieving for his late wife.

One of the interesting things about this whole affair has been the press reassessment of Charles Saatchi. For years he has been seen as a man with an inspired eye for modern art but someone who was retiring and reclusive, so reclusive he often did not attend the opening days of his own art exhibitions.

Now, with the things that have been seen and said since his marriage breakdown he is being seen and reported as a controlling and manipulative person rather than retiring and reclusive one.

I realise £28000 p.a. isn't much of a salary in Saatchi terms, but with full board and lodging it doesn't sound bad for a live-in nanny later housekeeper? From the sound of it (if I have understood correctly) the expenses got very muddled because the sisters used to look after the family and take the children on holiday using the Saatchi credit cards, which would have included their own expenses.
Yes I think Nigella has had a tough time, losing her mother, sister and husband to cancer at such young ages.
And I still don't like the tenor of the press coverage.

Lets face it the poor woman didn't get a great start in life. Can't have seen much of her dad can she.
Living in bed for a day sounds like goddess spin on an outrageous hangover

I haven't been back here for a while, having started it off. I put the emoticon at the start of the OP because can't put them in the title but I should have put 'alleged' before we get GN sued.

Saatchi looks like one of those rumpled old smokers (yuk) who carries a cloud of nicotine odour with him a bit like the character Pig Pen in the Snoopy cartoons.

I remember reading an article where Nigella was quoted as saying they would sometimes spend the day "living" in their super kingsize double bed including eating and watching telly, and at the time that didn't sound very appealing. Now even less so.

I'll be interested again in the original story when she takes the witness stand, I find the whole upstairs/downstairs thing quite fascinating. Those sisters have been with her for years, and she paid them not very much, had them work long hours (by all accounts) including taking her children away on holiday. Makes me wonder why there wasn't just decent employment contracts in place, with a good salary and if there was a corporate credit card, expenditure was routinely checked. The whole thing is obscene for sure.

And why did the odious man have to come to Court with a couple of minders? On second thoughts..............

"Obscene" barely does it justice! There is an overweening arrogance about him plus what a plonker (euphemism) to pay so little attention to expenditure. No wonder the ghastly sisters ripped him off.

Saatchi looks seedier in every picture we see of him. Quite apart from the drug accusations what about the sheer obscenity of the sort of wealth where thousands of pounds going missing every month is "trivial" ?

I do apologise for being too flippant on such serious subject. This is an honest apology.

gracesmum, not at all, meant when she was tasting her delicious food. Nothing to do with the terrible picture of her husband grabbing her by the throat. Didn't cross my mind.

As Mamie says Saatchi has backed down and admitted he can produce no evidence Nigella took illegal (or presumably prescription)drugs. What an odious creep the man is. I hope her lawyers can find a way of squeezing him until the pips squeak for his unfounded allegations.