Oh, come on. They may not be earning as much as they could, but that hardly means they’re not earning a “living wage”. 65 large is hardly minimum wage. Now, I’ll agree that it might be quite a stretch to maintain two homes on that much, especially if one of them is in or near Westminster, but claiming twice one’s salary is still unconscionable.
Their pensions are index-linked, aren’t they?
Don’t forget all the subsidised travel, subsidised food, junkets abroad, opportunities for advancement… an index-linked pension, maybe a seat in the Lords - the ultimate retirement job - and so much more.
It’s worth bearing this in mind.
If the rug hadn’t been pulled out from under their feet, these greedy bastards would have just carried on claiming for all and sundry for as long as possible.
Furthermore, if Mr and Mrs Nobody had been caught fiddling the system they would be up before the beak in no time, ordered to pay back every penny they’d fiddled and possibly face a custodial sentence.
These MPs are no different, they should be thoroughly investigated and any monies obtained dishonestly by them should be returned plus interest.
Then slap the buggers in clink sharing a cell with a 6’ 2" trucker from Doncaster with a penchant for buggering benefit thieves
Yes, as I said it’s not the survey I heard mentioned on the radio but I missed the reference to that particular one. The emphasis mentioned on the radio was on their skills. Many of the mps were career politicians and hadn’t had any experience in a real work environment. If press reports are correct - and I have as little respect for much of the media as I have for politicians - then next year we’ll have a better idea of how saleable a member of parliament’s skills are since it’s been reported that the expectation is many will lose their seats next time round.
Living in the insulated world of parliament - only having to emerge for the occasional surgery with your constituents and a general election - means the rank and file mps lose touch with the general public. As I mentioned before most of those caught with their sticky little fingers in the honey pot are rarely contrite about what they’ve been up to. They are in fact rather indignant that we have the cheek to question their"snouts in the trough" expense claims.
On the pension front what a perk it is to be able to vote on keeping your own index-linked final salary scheme when millions of workers have seen them withdrawn from their workplace.
Actually, they’re paid more than most headteachers. £100,000 is what a headmaster of a large secondary school in inner London that has recently been in special measures might get paid, not an average headmaster. If an MP takes on extra duties then that MP (committees and so on - and the ministerial pay, of course) also gets paid more.
£100,000 is an average GP’s pay, but a GP has been training for a decade (and gettting into huge debt to do so) and is a highly-skilled professional who, quite literally, has hundreds of people’s lives in their hands every day. That’s not really comparable to a job which requires no qualifications or experience at all and is so low-skilled that even Boris Johnson could do it.
Plus, MPs pretty much always have lucrative other jobs at the same time as being an MP, and some of those directorships and newspaper columnist jobs are work they wouldn’t have got had they not been an MP.
If Anne Widdecombe thinks that three times the national average wage is not a living wage, then how she can justify the minimum wage being a tenth of an MP’s basic salary? If she genuinely thinks that £65k is so low that it deter all but people who have a private income, then she’s so out of touch with reality that she should go out and learn more about the world before ever offering an opinion again.
£65k is only too little if you’re a money-grubbing bastard, and, frankly, I don’t want to encourage money-grubbing bastards into parliament - we have enough of them.
As an American I can see the outrage, but I find it rather hypocritical. If you are going to maintain a monarchy in style it is fairly easy to see how MPs wouldn’t feel abashed at extending that largesse to themselves. I guess what I find amazing is that this wasn’t made public long before it was. With journalists and the public on the trail this type of scandal would have been unearthed in the US.
Our flavor of corruption comes much more from politicians and business rather than politicians fleecing the public.
I’m afraid I don’t follow your thinking. I don’t see what the monarchy has to do with this.
We have people that can do that as well.
What’s the monarchy got to do with it? BTW, it’s only the Queen who gets any money from the public purse - not a single member of the rest of the royal family does.
The reason it’s taken this long for this story to leak is that the Freedom of Information Act only happened a couple of years ago, and, since then, MPs (represented in court by the Speaker) have been fighting to prevent the FoIA applying to them. It’s not a matter of lazy journalists.
And she is almost certainly a net benefit to the economy. A monarch doesn’t really cost an awful lot in the modern world of service-based industries and GDPs in the (US) trillions.
No cite, but she gets less from the Civil List than the income from the properties she nominally holds. She hands this income to Parliament and it gives her the Civil List.
Last night’s BBC Panorama came at a rather appposite moment for the above discussions. It was about how MPs can - and - do bolster their salaries in various ways. For me, the real ‘gasp’ moment came when it was disclosed that MPs employ family memebers. For example, one MP employs his two student sons as secretaries at - get this - £40,000 each. Does Daddy get a kickback, do you think?
Probably not, actually. Assuming Daddy would otherwise be a captain of industry or a well-regarded solicitor or somesuch, you’d expect him to find the kids a sinecure there, too.
Is 40k really that much for a secretary in Britain? I know lots who make more than that.
ETA: More in comparative terms, not absolute terms.
We’re talking about 18-20 year olds who are at university. I don’t know what - if anything - being his secretary entails, but it certainly can’t be full time. And £40,000 certainly seems like a substantial wage to me.
Just to add: that £40,000 each is paid by us, the public, not him. He has a £100,000 allowance for his employees. That’s in addition to his salary and expenses.
Well, that would be different.
Lets face it- whichever way you want to spin it the ones taking advantage of the system - and getting found out- are blood suckers.
I just want to challenge the perception that Michael Martin was made a scapegoat for this. He’s been speaker for a decade, and in that time has fought tooth and nail to stop any of this from coming to light. He oversaw, and in some cases personally issued, innumerable Freedom of Information requests for the expenses. When ruled against by tribunal, he spent thousands of pounds of taxpayer money fighting the ruling in the high courts, on ludicrous grounds such as personal security for MPs. Even after losing that battle, he continued to delay and obfuscate, postponing publication several times. His first reaction to the Telegraph leak was to call in the police to try and prosecute the person who supplied the public with information he was already supposed to have provided them. While the buck should obviously not merely stop with him, there should be no sympathy for Martin whatsoever.
Martin was out of his depth as Speaker. He’s been promoted beyond his competence, as he’s demonstrated several times before ExpensesGate started running (why hasn’t anybody called it that, yet?). People have been plotting to defenestrate him for some time. if only it could be done.
Yes. £40k would be about right for an experienced PA for a mid-level manager/director. In the public sector, £40k secretarial-level positions are even rarer.
Entry-level admin work comes in under £20k pretty much everywhere.
Since MPs salaries were being compared to headteachers, it’s worth pointing out that £40k, the amount that was being paid to those supposed secretaries, is more than the minimum rate for a *headteacher. * (See the link I gave above) £40k is also in the higher rate tax band, so that gives you some idea as to how good a salary it is.
Sometimes I wonder what world people are living in where high salaries like that aren’t much.
Psst… America. 
Not that I would say 40 thousand pounds isn’t much - it’s a damn sight more than I make, especially considering the current exchange rate - but I was under the impression that pretty much all salaries in central London had become exorbitant because of the ridiculous cost of living.