Presumably, the voters will have to pay for a special election to fill the seat or live for a while unrepresented. All of this because a guy didn’t manage his budget properly going for a job whose compensation was public. Also, public figures lamenting their pay is a huge misstep, don’t expect anyone to have sympathy when you have a job that pays a lot more than minimum wage
He receives a ministerial salary of £89,435, plus £50,000 per year he received until two years ago as strategic adviser to a private healthcare company, plus approximately £28,000 he was entitled to in rental expenses, plus his wife earns another £25K a year as his Office Manager.
He can afford it, and he’s a wanker.
"He told the Radio 4’s PM programme: "It is primarily financial support that is needed … It doesn’t stretch anywhere near the cost of renting a flat in Westminster.
“Of course if MPs want to get into the business of travelling extensively from Westminster to the outer reaches of London to rent a flat then that’s up to them but that’s not the lifestyle I want and it’s not the lifestyle I have chosen for myself or I want for my family.”
Last year, Simmonds was named by his local paper as the most expensive MP in Lincolnshire after it was calculated that he had claimed £173,436.96 in expenses for 2013."
But he wants twenty servants and a solid gold toilet. So, his salary wasn’t enough. Right?
Pit him all you want for failing to do whatever a MP does, but I can’t see arguing that a salary is sufficient if the recipient says it isn’t.
Ok, I think I see your point here - he apparently doesn’t earn enough to pay for what he wants. My point is that what he wants is unrealistic and unreasonable given that other, perfectly feasible alternatives exist. But no, he wants to live in Westminster or nothing, rather than walk a bit further, drive a bit further or (gasp!) take public transportation along with the unwashed masses. Public opinion is unsympathetic, and rightly so.
I’m with the OP. There must be plenty of rabbit hutches in this guy’s price range.
Newsflash: homes in the most densely populated country* in Europe are small. The Daily Mail (unsurprisingly, since it’s not a real newspaper) fails to note that the average family size has gone down by a while child since the 1920s. The average British household now has just 1.7 children. It was 2.4 as recently as 1990.
*Other than Monaco, which doesn’t really count.
Do you really think an MP doesn’t get paid enough to live in London?
A British MP is paid £67,060 a year (approximately US$112,700) plus an expense account. And next year’s raise to £74,000 has already been enacted. London is an expensive city to live in and local incomes reflect this: the median income in London is £27,560 which is higher than the national median income of £26,244 (these are 2010 figures).
So over half of the people in London are getting by on an income which is less than half of what Simmonds says he can’t live on in London. If Simmonds really can’t get by, he’s apparently very poor at managing his money.
As for doing better, it might be true that Simmonds could make more money in some other line of work (although I’ve noted his apparently poor financial skills). But that’s beside the point. People shouldn’t run for Parliament because they figure it’s the best way to make money.
If financial gain was Simmonds’ motivation it raises other questions. The salary for an MP is a matter of public record (I found it with a minute’s worth of googling). Simmonds must have known how much he would be officially paid when he ran for office. So how could he have been surprised to find himself making less money than he expected? The only apparent explanation is that he was expecting to receive additional unofficial income. It appears Simmonds’ complaint is that nobody is offering him the bribes he thought he’d be getting.
He is stepping down as a minister immediately, but I believe he says he will remain an MP until the next general election, due in 2015.
I think that there are people who, on his salary, could live happily in London(maybe everyone in the world other than him). But if he believes he’s not paid enough, isn’t that all that matters?
He’s absolutely free to decide that his salary is insufficient to meet his requirements, and no-one is saying he isn’t. He’s just making himself look like an odious, elitist twonk. He faces no sanction for his choice other than public ridicule.
Simmonds was originally elected to Parliament in 2001. MPs’ “expense” budgets have been slashed since then after it turned out the taxpayers were paying for pretty much everything MPs could think of in the guise of “living expenses”. So perhaps he’s been trying to get by since the crackdown and has finally given up.
snerk
It’s not just pay, though, is it? It’s the lifestyle. Sometimes, if you can’t stand the lifestyle the job requires you to lead, it doesn’t matter how much $$$ they are paying you. (And I’m inclined to think MPs probably are underpaid, by comparison with foreign ones and comparable jobs. We have been cutting down for years the recommendations of the various commissions who were tasked with assessing what they should get, and telling them to fill their boots on expenses to make up the difference.)
Shouldn’t a belief have to have some rational basis to support it? If Simmonds was saying he didn’t want to live in London because he was afraid it was full of vampires, would anyone be saying “Well, as long as he believes in vampires, that’s all that matters.”
Not when he makes objective claims about what he can’t afford. Or when he makes it public.
This isn’t just for MPs, either. If any other guy who made nearly quadruple the average salary and then publicly whined about not making enough money, I’d think he was an asshole, too.
Does a member of Parliament have to live in London?
Sorry, I keep hearing how wonderful the British Rail system is, and jumping jesus, the entire country is about one good sized US state … you can get across the country east to west in a couple hours, and top to bottom in like 8 hours … why would you need a whole house, you keep the wife and sprogs wherever your constituancy is, and you take a rented room. How the hell much room does a single male need? You don’t even need to cook - there are more than enough fantastic places to eat in London …
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This MP person may be a twat, and the Daily Mail disgusting, but houses in Britain are repellently small.
US: 2,300sf
Australia: 2,217sf
Denmark: 1,475sf
France: 1,216sf
Spain: 1,044sf
Ireland: 947sf
UK: 818sf
Average Home Sizes — Square Foot Floorspace
And they are actively trying to force smaller living spaces. The difference between older council houses, from the 1940s, and new around here looks to be 3/5ths.
Since when does the size of family gave anything to do with how big living space should be ? Anywhere in the world, from New York to London in the 19th century, one could find 8 - 12 people to a room, shared by large families, whilst a wealthy bourgeois might live in 15 rooms if he so chose ( and why shouldn’t he ? ). Housing is not allocated by numbers but by need. Those older country council properties I mentioned had big gardens and sheds, and space for hobbies, ( maybe a model railroad, say ).
Cramming people together has extremely detrimental long-term effects, and Britain is a viler place for it. Living space should be maximized for as many people as possible in this world, regardless of family, income or exploiters. There are people in India who are in much the same plight, or worse, as those earlier slum-dwellers, some with single sheets of metal as a roof. Giving them their own homes would be the single best change possible. Failing red revolution.
[ And of course, Germany, like the US, adds cellar space: something not built into modern British homes. ]
As for the MP I will reserve judgement unless he’s criticized benefits seekers for greed and sponging off the state, which would make him a kinda hypocrite.