Now I know that MPs salaries are a hot topic, and I know that many people will think "low life, good for nothing scumbags, why should they get so much money?". To be fair, in many cases you would of course be right.However, what made me nearly fall off the sofa even before the red wine had kicked in was when I learned how much the cost of the most review of ministers and MPs salaries by the Senior Salaries Review Board had actually cost.
According to Harriet Harman who, as we all know, is very good with managing her own money, the current cost of the review so far has been £136,296. The cost of actually publishing the report on how much they should be paid has not been finalised yet, doesn't bode well does it? So just to put that into perspective. They've spent the equivalent of approximately two MPs' salaries reviewing how much they think an MP's salary ought to be.
Why they can't just have an inflation-linked payrise and be done with it thus saving the extra cost of writing a report that will effectively say the same thing anyway is beyond me.
4 comments:
David Cameron has come up with some good proposals via Ken Clarke.
According to the papers: DC said MPs' salaries should be linked to a benchmark such as the growth of average earnings in the country as a whole, or that of public-sector pay.
He also recommended tightening up the MPs' allowances system, with stricter controls on what can be claimed in "second home" costs.
And DC promised to scrap the £10,000 a year communications allowance for sitting MPs 'straight away'.
Dizzy, you know what this lot are like. They ask for reports before they take just about any decision, that way they don't seem accountable. They can always say "but the report said it was a good idea". It's part of Brown's vision, don't you know...
Dizzy, dear boy, it is quite obvious. If you want to award yourself an above inflation pay rise every year (disguised as expense, allowances, entitlements, allotments, whatever) you have to cloak the fact by hiding the detail and methods in a thick wodge of unintelligible waffle and gibberish which, to normally literate people, will be largely incomprehensible.
Hi Dizzy only discovered your site today. Great to see some really serious debate amongst the humour. I am seething about MP's salaries. Firstly whenever do you see a full House, only at Prime Minister's question time. Only 19 MP's attended the very serious debate on knife crime. You may be lulled in to thinking they are working in their constituencies then! My MP has a surgery on a Saturday morning every fortnight!
Secondly, on major issues they mostly do not represent our views. They know there is strong feeling against Europe and the reinstatement of the death penalty,for instance, yet consistently deny us the right of a referendum and take their own or a party line vote. Where does democracy come into this set up?
Thirdly, when they have been caught with their "fingers in the till" they don't do the honourable thing and resign. They are not instantly dismissed for theft as most ordinary employees would be. Indeed, the general view held seems to be that to "steal" (for that is what it is" tax payers money is a perk!
There seems to be little in the way of vocational aspiration from this lot, just a lot of pocket lining and feather nesting!
Joan Goddard
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