'What should we pay our MPs?' poll discussion

mapcr77

Pont wrote: »

I want.......to vote for you!

Me too!! :j

Di_nero

I think they should get a 'Brasso' allowance for their neck!

Favfly

You might as well throw a dart at this list to choose a salary for an MP; it's completely arbitrary. People, no matter what job they do, should be paid proportionate to their productivity.
MP's aren't productive members of society, they're parasites.

(My first post)
Viva la revolution! ;-)

Midas

Saucepot wrote: »

The opinion is often heared that you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Well we pay top dollar and still get monkeys. Half of these venal and corrupt MP's are unemployable in the real world, they earned tuppence before they became an MP and are not worth the £65k basic salary.

Actually we get what we vote (or don't vote for because we're too lazy and apathetic to get our bums to the polling station once every four or five years). In a democracy, the people get the representatives they deserve. The MPs' expenses scandal holds a mirror to our society, and we don't like the ugly face we find staring back.

wolvoman

There's some odd replies on this thread, and I can't help but think most of them are borne of either naivity or envy, or perhaps both.

I consider myself to be middle management, I work normal hours (50ish). I don't have to make speeches in front of many people. I am not answerable to 70,000 people where I live. And I don't have the responsibility for deciding legislation that impacts 60,000,000 people.

However I earn a hell of a lot more than an MP.


So are they really overpaid??

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I'd say they should receive exactly the equivalent amount of Income Support appropriate for their situation - after all, they have second homes, so don't have any dependents to claim for (but would be able to claim the housing allowance to the level permitted for single people for housing benefit), plus actual staff wages and pens, paper, etc. Oh yes, and the people dealing with their payment would be JobCentre Plus/local council staff, they would have to fulfill all the conditions in exactly the same way as a benefit claimant has to (eg, make a phone call to make an appointment for a phone call, to be told to go into an office, to wait around to be told there was no appointment, etc, etc). And they would have to wait for the claims to be dealt with before eating, as all personal savings/family income would be prohibited in the period, as this would mean that they would know how people feel waiting 8 weeks for a claim to be dealt with.

Bet things would change then.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

I'd say they should receive exactly the equivalent amount of Income Support appropriate for their situation - after all, they have second homes, so don't have any dependents to claim for (but would be able to claim the housing allowance to the level permitted for single people for housing benefit), plus actual staff wages and pens, paper, etc. Oh yes, and the people dealing with their payment would be JobCentre Plus/local council staff, they would have to fulfill all the conditions in exactly the same way as a benefit claimant has to (eg, make a phone call to make an appointment for a phone call, to be told to go into an office, to wait around to be told there was no appointment, etc, etc). And they would have to wait for the claims to be dealt with before eating, as all personal savings/family income would be prohibited in the period, as this would mean that they would know how people feel waiting 8 weeks for a claim to be dealt with.

Bet things would change then.

8 weeks?
That would be nice.
Try claiming housing benefit to pay a mortgage. Even when the qualifying period is over it takes many months to get it. My friend only kept a roof over his head by using his DLA to pay his mortgage. He has none of the little luxuries that many of us take for granted and has often been too ill to go out for food when he can afford it (I sometimes shop for him and get him dead cheap food such as late evening reduced bread.
The irony of it is that because he was paying the mortgage from DLA, he couldn't afford a home help to come in to assist him. Therefore, as he lives on his own, the benefits people are slashing his DLA to a lower level.

Now let's see. The housing benefit screw up his claim so that he can't buy in help. Therefore, DLA slash his benefit because he doesn't buy in help. Basically, because one government department can't or won't do its job, another government department cuts the money. If the housing benefit had been paid as it was meant to be, he could have paid for someone to stop over part of the time and would have retained the higher level of DLA.
I wish that some of the media that highlight people on the fiddle would highlight cases such as this as well.
Of course, there seem to be people (some of them apparently on this forum) who would be happy for people in my friend's situation to be kicked out of their hovels and put on the street to beg so that they could spit on them and abuse them.
No he doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs. No TV. Only basic food and toilet paper. Not a parasite. Just someone who got a permanent sickness through no fault of his own.