'Living wage' v 'modest sum'

There's obviously been a lot of talk recently about the issue of income and wealth distribution in the UK, and it's often quite bemusing to compare the attitudes of people at various positions on the social/economic ladder. One particular comment caught the eye recently. This came from blogger...er...the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator (who happens to write occasionally in a blog format which is only distinguishable from the paper's mainstream online content by its text size) Peter Oborne. He says, of Messrs Cameron and Osborne, and in the context of the Tories' political difficulties in administering the public spending cuts and welfare reform:

But Cameron and Osborne both come from a social milieu which has no comprehension of what it is like to live on such a relatively modest sum. Osborne, in particular, has a history of hanging out with the super-rich, a category that was much in evidence at the Birmingham party conference. The Daily Telegraph revealed this week that at one select dinner for party donors the company consumed bottles of Chateau Petrus – the most expensive wine in the world – at an estimated £1,000 a bottle, or just over £150 a glass.

I suspect the vast majority of the population could identify with Oborne's comments, but what precisely is this modest sum that he refers to? Earlier he had said:

The truth is that anyone trying to pay a mortgage and raise children on £40,000 a year is going to find life tough – which is why the loss of child benefit is so desperately painful and difficult for those on middle incomes.

Oh for pity's sake. Of course, Oborne may be referring to a joint income - although that's certainly not self-evident - and he does qualify the term modest as relatively so - but to use the word to describe an income of £40,000 per year is a bit much.

Oborne uses the clever headline "It's a bit rich for Osborne and Co to call £40,000 a year affluence", but in turn it's surely slightly rich of Oborne to call such a sum modest.

Iain Gray's proposed 'living wage' also has a four in it, but for a forty-hour week that equates to about fourteen grand per annum - a long way from Oborne's 'modest' forty grand. I wonder if the latter has "any comprehension of what it is like to live on" a relatively measly sum like the living wage, not to mention the current national minimum wage of less than six pounds per hour.