MP Pay

Too high IMV.

£80k top whack. Limit expenses to travel and overnight stays for attending the HoC. They can buy their own lunch as everybody else at work does.

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If you pay peanuts…etc.

I agree with Mark (save me from myself someone. Please), £120-150 is enough to entice a better quality of monkey. Disallow any outside interests and you get a focused employee, who isn’t as tempted to feather their own nests.
Which is exactly what they should be.

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There’s precious little evidence that large pay packets attract talented people. Plus anyone who won’t work as an MP for under a 100K probably isn’t the sort of person we want in that job - wanting a 6 figure plus salary and a selfless nature aren’t natural bedfellows

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I really wish they’d move Parliament up to Halifax, Rochdale, Stoke or Hull or even down to Taunton or Exeter. We might then learn who was really committed to the job.

There might also be some incentive to improve infrastructure & transport links in those places.

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Yeah, cos it’s worked so well up till now :roll_eyes:

I didn’t say that, it patently doesn’t work how it is, but paying more salary won’t make it any better - Its not like most of the incumbents need the money anyway, so the salary is probably irrelevant. Doesn’t stop them accepting ‘independent’ (above inflation, in exception to everyone else in the civil services) pay rises does it?

If you’re on £75k you have no chance of buying a house anywhere you’d want to live in London. I have friends with family income of well over £100k and they can’t afford to buy a place in St Albans.

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They have no issue with expecting all the services that keep them educated, safe and healthy (not to mention clean their houses and offices, serve their subsidised food and drink etc etc ) to manage on a fraction of that

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I’m not putting a figure on it but I’ve thought for a long time if we paid our MP’s similar salaries to the CEO of a big national level company then we might actually get people who knew what they are doing rather than a bunch of complete nuggets.
Also anyone with a degree in politics (I.E someone who set their stall out to be an MP from day one) can’t be an MP these are the worst of the fucking lot. No real life experience to draw on to make reasonable decisions.

PS
In my mind the above comment means a whole new set of MPs from top to bottom none of them are suitable to run our country.

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Don’t think many would disagree with that statement

£75K pa would be fine in Redcar.

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They don’t have to live in London. A house of commons hotel for all on official business.
Sometimes even the working class have to work away from home

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Point missed much ?

I might be prepared to have an open mind about changing the pay to attract the right calibre of people to represent us in parliament, I certainly agree that any other sources of income need to be closed off under any such arrangement to remove the most obvious conflicts.

But when you see the state of the current shower, I’d find it very difficult to award them anything. Wouldn’t pay them in washers.

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I also think that they should have lived in their constituency for at least five years before being eligible to stand.

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It seems priorities are to be pissed on power or pissed on profit - Sadly this pisses on people.

I would also like to see psychological / emotional and intelligence entry testing. I don’t care so much about the wage but clearly politicians should not be able to create policy in order to profit

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When you equate MPs with CEOs or other similarly paid folk we should remember that, for the most part, CEOs and their ilk have skills and experience that got them that post. MPs have none. There is no minimum standard for becoming an MP. We expect MPs to be truthful, loyal, honest, have good judgement etc etc. No qualification is available to my knowledge exists that demonstrates these qualities. Similarly being a CEO, lawyer, Dr, ex military doesn’t necessarily make a good MP.

So why do we want to to pay them £150k per annum? This is at least 4 times the national average I think.

It’s pretty clear to most that pay attention that elections are simply beauty contests in that favourites are chosen for all sorts of reasons - sometimes it even has something to do with political beliefs I’m told.

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This should happen. Parliament should travel round the country. As for pay they should get what all the other public sector employees get…
Let’s face it pay them £200k and we are still gonna get the same stupid warts put up for election. So cut their pay.

‘Want’ is a strong word here but an increase to £150k with commensurate removal of expenses would (I think) be revenue neutral and rather more transparent. Want to hire your immediate family to be your staff? Fucking pay for it out of your take home.

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