Hot Features
Premium
Trade like a pro: Leverage real-time discussions and market-moving ideas to outperform.
Are you getting a pay rise this year? Not many folks are. Some like those on welfare are, in real terms, getting a cut. Pensioners are worse off thanks in part to low interest rates. The Government needs to slash its spending. To sack people. To make them unemployed. As Call Me Dave said “we are all in it together.” Er… not quite. Some folks are more equal than others. MPs are demanding a pay rise. A 32% pay rise. Where is Guy Fawkes when you need him? These pigs are beneath contempt.
An MP already gets paid £65,378 a year plus expenses. Those were meant to have been reformed but as has become clear they are still fiddled on an industrial scale. The House of Commons has extended holidays and will in fact be open for business just 156 days this year. Effectively MPs are on holiday 2 days in five. Many have outside jobs. And so for this onerous existence MPs find themselves in the top 5% of wage earners.
One particularly loathsome MP suggested the other week ( as you can read here) that becoming an MP meant such a financial sacrifice that some kids of Parliamentarians might have to go without Christmas presents – scumbag.
Yet there is no shortage of those wishing to be an MP. Any party fighting a safe or marginal seat will be deluged with applications for approved candidates. So when Lib Dem Nick Harvey says that “not reasonable” to expect MPs to make “enormous” financial sacrifices and said pay rates must be high enough to attract the best candidates he is talking bollocks. If Harvey thinks MPs are making sacrifices they can always do what other folk do and go find a better paid job and quit.
As for attracting the best candidates that is sheer drivel. If local associations cannot find a good candidate from the hundreds who apply for safe seats (and a chance to be in the top 5% of earners) already, what difference will an extra 32% make? I happen to agree with Harvey on one matter. Many MPs are thick, crooked or just generally useless. But that is not down to pay but is the fault of the local parties who select these cretins.
Jack Straw, who is presumably still mourning the death of his friend the late Colonel Gadaffi argues that “now is as good a time as any” for his colleagues and he to stiff the taxpayer with a bumper pay rise. Rubbish. Give the MP’s a 1% increase like welfare claimants and see if we care if they all go on strike? Fewer daft laws passed – it would be good news all round.
I still do not understand why the US House of Representatives has 435 members representing 260 million folks while the Westminster parasites need 650 MPs to represent 60 million of us. How about we cut the number of MPs to 200 and see how many of the current incumbents are happy to take the immense financial sacrifice and fight it out to try and represent the remaining seats? We all know that there would be no shortage of takers.
Just when I thought I could not despise most MPs any more, I find that I do. Having just worked a 22 hour day for a lot less than £65,000 my sympathy with these sleazy scumbags is not great.
In light of this my weekly caption contest is on a porcine theme. You can have a butcher’s and enter here.
This article first appeared on my main TomWinnifrith.com blog which carries links to all of my financial articles as well as a welter of political, sporting and economic pieces.
And how has any of this got anything to do with shares?
Either way, let’s go back to the good old days when only those rich enough to work for free were MPs.
Michael, do you not agree with Tom’s thoughts about how certain MPs abuse the system for their own personal pockets?
Michael it is nothing to do with shares.
I noted however that the 2 most read articles I have published on this site were a) my macro calls for 2013 and b) Pig of the Year 2012.
One was economics and the other politics.And thus I serve up what folks wish to read. For those who like it there is far more of this stuff at TomWinnifrith.com
As to your second point, no: Lets have far fewer MPs and pay them £65k a year. Those who think that is not enough can quit & can you honestly say we would miss them?
Tom
According to David Cameron, ‘We’re all in it together’, so we can all expect a 32% pay rise?