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Tory corruption & sleaze (lobbying, second jobs, dodgy contracts etc)

Spraggons Den said:
The OP was referring to the halcyon era of Tory Sleaze in the early to mid 90s with Hamilton, Mellor and of course Jonathan Aitkin who was happy for his teenage daughter to lie for him in the witness box before he was caught out and jailed. The expenses scandal was 2010 ish.
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What's that duck thing about, then?
 
An element of their pay has to be ‘performance’ related and by that I mean those who don’t turn up for debates or constituency work while they are off earning money at a second job, have their pay cut and other sanctions enacted. Cox is a good example, as is Douglas Ross who failed to attend while earning money as a linesman at football. He found the extra cash more attractive than discharging his duty to attend the national VJ commemoration.
In any event, it looks like the house of cards is about to fall this winter- Cox is going now but the others have to follow him. The public is suffering serious economic damage while watching this lot literally steal money from them.
 
Ponty said:
You make my point for me. It gives us MP’s who don’t currently earn 80K or are loaded to the point of 80K being pocket money. The vast swathe of professional people / business owners we should be attracting can’t afford the pay cut. I’d pay them more money but severely limit the amount of secondary earning allowed. Oh, and have fewer of them to be cost neutral.
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I agree with your analysis, but you assume such people would be interested at any price. If you are genuinely good at a technical, business or artistic role, have spent a life perfecting that skillset there is likely no way you could be attracted into the grubby myopic partisan rat-race of politics. I know a lot of very talented and highly paid people and can’t think of anyone who would be prepared to move into politics at all. I’d certainly not touch it with the shitty end of a very long stick as I’d just not be prepared to deal with existing political organisations, current MPs, or for that matter much of the voting public. The wage wouldn’t be a factor at all, no amount of money would ever get me there.

PS Another option is to actually do it like jury service, i.e. you are called to serve for a year on a lottery basis and can only get out due to security or mental health issues!
 
Ponty said:
You make my point for me. It gives us MP’s who don’t currently earn 80K or are loaded to the point of 80K being pocket money. The vast swathe of professional people / business owners we should be attracting can’t afford the pay cut. I’d pay them more money but severely limit the amount of secondary earning allowed. Oh, and have fewer of them to be cost neutral.
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Or it leaves us with those guys, plus 95% of the working population. And that's just before we get to the (very!) high-earners capable of managing their finances well enough to be able to live on 82k plus expenses.

Honestly it's a completely bizarre argument and I think it only occurs to those who think that people earning less than 100k aren't quite real.
 
Whilst discussing Tory corruption and criminality we should keep the spotlight on the ongoing grubby attempts to appoint disgraced hard-right ex-Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to the Ofcom role. Dacre has already been rejected as being (so obviously) unsuitable for this key regulatory role, so the bent Tory government are again trying to fix the rules to get their own Josef Goebbels in place (Guardian). Paul Dacre’s Wikipedia entry.

There really is no barrel bottom this government will not scrape. Every facet just as rotten and corrupt as every other. They exist entirely beneath any concept of integrity, decency, public service or honour.
 
vince rocker said:
Why? How about we work out how to attract people with vision, principles, decency and commitment?
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Attributes which the vast majority of successful professionals / business owners have, in my experience. Unfortunately politics seems to attract scoundrels who don’t need the money.
 
Tony L said:
I agree with your analysis, but you assume such people would be interested at any price. If you are genuinely good at a technical, business or artistic role, have spent a life perfecting that skillset there is likely no way you could be attracted into the grubby myopic partisan rat-race of politics. I know a lot of very talented and highly paid people and can’t think of anyone who would be prepared to move into politics at all. I’d certainly not touch it with the shitty end of a very long stick as I’d just not be prepared to deal with existing political organisations, current MPs, or for that matter much of the voting public. The wage wouldn’t be a factor at all, no amount of money would ever get me there.

PS Another option is to actually do it like jury service, i.e. you are called to serve for a year on a lottery basis and can only get out due to security or mental health issues!
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Agree. I wouldn’t do it for all the tea in China.
 
Ponty said:
Nonsense. 80K is circa 4.5K a month take home. Many people will have rent / monthly mortgage payments greater than this (particularly in London and SE).
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I'd be interested to see reliable stats on that. If nothing else, limiting MP's pay might clear their minds wonderfully when it comes to people getting more affordable housing!

Perhaps they could be offerred alternative accomodation in a rental block with dodgy cladding, etc.

Might help clarify why someone wants to be an MP as well.
 
Ponty said:
All I’m saying is that if we want to attract a cross section of society to become MP’s, we have to accept that for very many professional people, they simply can’t take the pay cut and meet their financial commitments. Therefore many won’t bother, certainly the ones who don’t have considerable wealth already behind them. I can see how we end up with MP’s who frankly, couldn’t earn £80K a year anywhere else and those who are seriously wealthy to whom the £80K is a rounding error.
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Given how poorly the current arrangements have served us, maybe it would be a useful filter to see who really does want to be an MP to serve the rest of us rather than feather their own nest.
 
Ponty said:
Don’t be so pessimistic. Where are you moving to?
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Can't say WRT the person you asked. But I live in Scotland. And have come to look forwards to it gaining independence. What the English continue to then infilct upon themselves is something I can then only sympathise and advise about. Having spent all my life trying to get them to reject the Tories, I fear it will be their mess to handle, not mine.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
I'd be interested to see reliable stats on that. If nothing else, limiting MP's pay might clear their minds wonderfully when it comes to people getting more affordable housing!

Perhaps they could be offerred alternative accomodation in a rental block with dodgy cladding, etc.

Might help clarify why someone wants to be an MP as well.
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If you’re earning 80K, what % of your take home pay do you think is a sensible amount to spend on rent / mortgage? Let’s assume 50% for a moment, so circa £2,250 a month. That will service a circa £450K repayment mortgage at 3% over 25 years (let’s bravely assume IR’s remain at that level for 25 years). Not exactly living the dream is it, particularly in the south of England, shocking as those figures might seem.
 
Ponty said:
You make my point for me. It gives us MP’s who don’t currently earn 80K or are loaded to the point of 80K being pocket money. The vast swathe of professional people / business owners we should be attracting can’t afford the pay cut..
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I can't help feeling that you really mean a subset of "professional people" like fancier lawyers, money-shufflers, etc. I doubt that 80k would be regarded as poverty by many professional engineers or academics, though, for example. And *just* possibly they - advised by pro lawyers, etc, called to house committees, might do a better job with less of a tendency to go to the trough. So the more you make your point, the more I come to feel that limiting MP income to a level as 'low' as 80k might well be a good idea.
 
Ponty said:
If you’re earning 80K, what % of your take home pay do you think is a sensible amount to spend on rent / mortgage? Let’s assume 50% for a moment, so circa £2,250 a month. That will service a circa £450K repayment mortgage at 3% over 25 years (let’s bravely assume IR’s remain at that level for 25 years). Not exactly living the dream is it, particularly in the south of England, shocking as those figures might seem.
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You miss my point. I don't think we should elect MPs who want to view it as "living the dream" from a financial POV. They should be doing it to serve the electorate. And as I said, if they can't 'afford' the housing costs that should tell them that affordable housing is their priority. NOT having a high wage so they can not bother to help those non-MPs who *can't* find decent affordable housing.

Their problem is ours: That housing is too costly. They shouldn't be allowed to featherbed themselves at the expense of the rest of us.
 
Ponty said:
If you’re earning 80K, what % of your take home pay do you think is a sensible amount to spend on rent / mortgage? Let’s assume 50% for a moment, so circa £2,250 a month. That will service a circa £450K repayment mortgage at 3% over 25 years (let’s bravely assume IR’s remain at that level for 25 years). Not exactly living the dream is it, particularly in the south of England, shocking as those figures might seem.
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Jim Audiomisc said:
I can't help feeling that you really mean a subset of "professional people" like fancier lawyers, money-shufflers, etc. I doubt that 80k would be regarded as poverty by many professional engineers or academics, though, for example. And *just* possibly they - advised by pro lawyers, etc, called to house committees, might do a better job with less of a tendency to go to the trough. So the more you make your point, the more I come to feel that limiting MP income to a level as 'low' as 80k might well be a good idea.
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The thing about 80k p.a. is that it won’t be enough for you to buy a nice big house with a garden in a safe neighbourhood close to shops, public transport and decent schools in or near London. And that’s a real problem if you want to have two or three kids.

I know it sounds like a lot, it is a lot, but honestly, in London for a family with “middle class aspirations” as it were, a family starting out with no inheritance etc., it’s not really enough.

(I once saw a French comedy where a young snob said he thought that the centre of Paris should be made exclusive to those who show earnings of at least 10K€ a month. The more than 10K club. Everyone laughed, but de facto much of Greater London is coming close to that.)
 
We need people of business who know how to run a business, in Parliament- and these people command high remuneration. Philip Green now he would have made a great Prime Minister and look at President Trump, he had the smarts.
 
mandryka said:
The thing about 80k p.a. is that it won’t be enough for you to buy a nice big house with a garden in a safe neighbourhood close to shops, public transport and decent schools in or near London. And that’s a real problem if you want to have two or three kids.

I know it sounds like a lot, it is a lot, but honestly, in London for a family with “middle class aspirations” as it were, a family starting out with no inheritance etc., it’s not really enough.

(I once saw a French comedy where a young snob said he thought that the centre of Paris should be made exclusive to those who show earnings of at least 10K€ a month. The more than 10K club. Everyone laughed, but de facto much of Greater London is coming close to that.)
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Won't be long before central London houses average over £750k; we've got two children more or less obliged to live there. No idea what'll happen if interest rates rise.

One of the spouses is now between jobs but finding freelance jobs to keep things going for now.
 
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