Monday
24Dec2007
mp's salaries
Monday, December 24, 2007 at 11:51AM
From The Devil's Kitchen: -
Spare a thought for our impoverished leaders this Christmas.
MPs are paid £60,000 plus expenses for a mere 160 days' work a year. These expenses routinely climb year on year and this year averaged some £136,000. I would therefore contend that MPs are actually paid nearly £200,000 plus, of course, a very generous final salary pension scheme (which NuLabour—by dint of being utter fucking wankers of the very first water—have now ensured is denied to the vast majority of the population).
Spare a thought for our impoverished leaders this Christmas.
Reader Comments (10)
I shall weep salty tears for them into my sherry! I hope you, the tigress and the cubs have a very happy christmas
Merry Christmas, Jams.
I hope you and the not-wife have a wonderful New Year too.
Hmm. 160 days in Parliament =/= 160 day's work. They all have constituency stuff to do as well. Also, they need to maintain somewhere to stay in London, and pay for at least one member of staff to organise shit. MPs are not my favourite people, but I don't think they do nothing for their money.
I also get antsy about people who have never done a job assuming it's easy and that it doesn't deserve a lot of pay; but then, I /have/ been a checkout girl and a barmaid. I have been in the situation of getting to the end of a fifteen hour shift dealing with members of the general public being complete twats, only for a drunken one of them to tell me they could do my job with their eyes shut. So I kind of have some sympathy for MPs, especially when they've been doing surgeries.
Or maybe it's just the spirit of the season infusing me with good will to all men ;)
Hi Jennie,
I think you have some good points. But DK also makes an important point about pensions. What's good for the goose...
Merry Christmas Ms. Gob.
x
And season's greetings to you too, Mr Stripy Pussycat ;)
* expands this discussion in her own entry *
DK's figures are of course complete bollocks—the expenses are accounted for, and the MPs I know use a big chunk to pay for required office space and staff, and most of them do a 60+ hour week during session and 40+ hours most weeks when they're not in Westminster.
But, y'know, who needs to let the facts get in the way of a good rant?
I expect this kind of rubbish from the screamsheets who aren't keen for facts to get in the way of a good headline. MP's paid £200,000 is complete and utter rubbish and I'd expect better of you than to quote such crap.
Politicians of whatever colour have these rather niggling things like having to pay for staff (which incidentally accounts for the vast bulk of 'expenses'), not to mention their ongoing training, renting offices, stationary, heating, lighting, office equipment and furnishings, public liability insurance, fire inspections and all the other plethora of needs for running what is in effect a small business. All monies have to be handled through the fees office of the House of Commons so none of it actually even passes through the hands of MP's.
Anyway, happy Christmas.
I’d expect better of you than to quote such crap. ~ Political Penguin
Should I feel suitably chastised? Would it make things better if skulked around under the table for a couple of hours, then maybe if I fetched your slippers and looked doey-eyed at you for forgiveness? Would it work?
I wonder, when Gordie raided pensions in 1997, by imposing tax on pension dividends (whooooaaaa?), did he have the foresight to realise that this could potentially cost the average UK worker £100,000 – or up to 13% of the total value of their pension account? (BDO Stoy Hayward Accountants)
This could cost me (yes, me, myself and I) £6,000 per-annum when I retire.
So maybe DK’s line about, “a very generous final salary pension scheme (which NuLabour—by dint of being utter fucking wankers of the very first water—have now ensured is denied to the vast majority of the population)†has some resonance to me…
Merry Christmas to you and yours, too.
By all means criticise the pension situation and if you feel inclined quote that, but you may notice I was referring to the part that you quoted about the salaries position for which there is no justification for passing on such obvious nonsense and misleading claptrap.
this country is no longer the place i was brought up in,none of the political parties have the interests of the people at heart, we are not protected from the usuary which is called banking or the legal robbery which is called taxation, mp's in general are only in it for the money,no wonder big business calls the uk "treasure island" they can do more or less what they like without government interferance its called a freemarket economy or lets shaft the population