MPs overpaid by £11,000 already according to the public

Naf

I'd be over the moon with 33k... or 22!

[Deleted User]

Those suggesting removing expenses:

An MP from the south is invited to a meeting in Scotland at short notice, the costs of travel and accommodation will come to roughly £500 for the meeting, the meeting could have an outcome that will be hugely beneficial for the MPs constituents, however... the MP has just invested in an extension for their house (they have another child on the way, MPs are real people too!) and spending £500 at short notice is not something they can really afford to do, so they opt to skip the meeting. Their constituents have lost out.

Poor example but you get the idea. Removing expenses means MPs now have a personal financial consideration when it comes to doing things, which can (and would) lead to things being skipped to save money. Okay £500 might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but when your salary is £70,000 and your take home is ~£45,000 (£3700 per month) that means a couple of expensive events a month and you're eating into the money needed to pay for your kids food and a mortgage...

Andy_L

SCO wrote: »

MP's are civil servants

no they aren't

Andy_L

citricsquid wrote: »

Those suggesting removing expenses:

An MP from the south is invited to a meeting in Scotland at short notice, the costs of travel and accommodation will come to roughly £500 for the meeting, the meeting could have an outcome that will be hugely beneficial for the MPs constituents, however... the MP has just invested in an extension for their house (they have another child on the way, MPs are real people too!) and spending £500 at short notice is not something they can really afford to do, so they opt to skip the meeting. Their constituents have lost out.

Poor example but you get the idea. Removing expenses means MPs now have a personal financial consideration when it comes to doing things, which can (and would) lead to things being skipped to save money. Okay £500 might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but when your salary is £70,000 and your take home is ~£45,000 (£3700 per month) that means a couple of expensive events a month and you're eating into the money needed to pay for your kids food and a mortgage...

Without expenses the Scotish MP (insert other remote constituncy if Scotland goes independant) won't be able to afford to come to Westminster to represent their constituants

Naf

citricsquid wrote: »

Those suggesting removing expenses:

An MP from the south is invited to a meeting in Scotland at short notice, the costs of travel and accommodation will come to roughly £500 for the meeting, the meeting could have an outcome that will be hugely beneficial for the MPs constituents, however... the MP has just invested in an extension for their house (they have another child on the way, MPs are real people too!) and spending £500 at short notice is not something they can really afford to do, so they opt to skip the meeting. Their constituents have lost out.

Poor example but you get the idea. Removing expenses means MPs now have a personal financial consideration when it comes to doing things, which can (and would) lead to things being skipped to save money. Okay £500 might not be much in the grand scheme of things, but when your salary is £70,000 and your take home is ~£45,000 (£3700 per month) that means a couple of expensive events a month and you're eating into the money needed to pay for your kids food and a mortgage...

Andy_L wrote: »

Without expenses the Scotish MP (insert other remote constituncy if Scotland goes independant) won't be able to afford to come to Westminster to represent their constituants

But why an expenses system? All they need is travel & accommodation (why should they have their food paid for?), so a central charge card system is much easier to manage & harder to abuse.

Idiophreak

Idiophreak wrote: »

Hate to say it, but I'm not really convinced that's a valuable outcome from the poll, to be honest...being an MP is a full time job, so they're entitled to minimum wage. If you discount the option that doesn't permit this, even the median suggests that they're being paid just fine...

Not quite as striking a headline, though, I'll admit.

The more I think about this, the more I'm concerned by the way this number was generated...the bands were plucked out of the air and were not evenly distributed.

Could just have easily have put three bands
£0
£10,000,000
£10,000,000,000

and then reported "most people think MPs shouldn't be paid".

Then, of course, two methods of calculating average suggest that MPs are currently underpaid...yet it was only the third that was reported on.

Then there's a bunch of inference in the article which really doesn't belong there...The question was simply how much people thought MPs should be paid...not whether they opposed the pay rises or not. I can imagine plenty of people would like MPs to be paid less, but would not necessarily "oppose" a move recommended by an independent body. It's just putting words in people's mouths.

Finally, of course, there's no mention of the demographics of MSE users, which doesn't always represent the broadest cross-section of the "public"...

In all, there's really nothing in the article and it's just a sensationalist headline with flakey research to back it up - quite disappointing, tbh.