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

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.
No, not at all. Anyone who considers £80k as pocket money is not qualified to represent people to whom losing £20 is a disaster.

No, if we are going to improve our democracy we need more politicians coming from the bottom up. We have relatively few of them. But we’re already massively over represented by politicians coming from the top and who don’t come down anyway, because if recent evidence is anything to go by they just bring their top earning day jobs into Parliament with them
 
As many of us are listening to Fela this week can we rename this thread "Tory corruption & sleaze (lobbying, second jobs, dodgy contracts etc) - dem regular trademark"?
 
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.

£450k buys a 3 bed end of terrace in Catford:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/116131544#/

20 mins on the train to London Bridge. 40 mins door-to-door to parliament - perfect!

...what do you mean MPs don't want to live in Catford?
 
And yet there are countless families in London earning a fraction of that and managing to scrape by.

Yes of course, I was very aware of that when I posted, and that's why I said “middle class aspirations” Things like a separate bedroom for each child, a state school with an excellent reputation nearby, a garden even, safe for teenagers on the streets -- that sort of thing.
 
£450k buys a 3 bed end of terrace in Catford:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/116131544#/

20 mins on the train to London Bridge. 40 mins door-to-door to parliament - perfect!

...what do you mean MPs don't want to live in Catford?

That looks like it's on an estate, former council property. Where I am houses on estates are often really well priced because the estate itself can be a bit dodgy.

Look at the crime stats there for September 2021

Local Crime Information for Waters Road, Lewisham, London, SE6 1UE - September 2021 (streetcheck.co.uk)
 
That looks like it's on an estate, former council property. Where I am houses on estates are often really well priced because the estate itself can be a bit dodgy.

Look at the crime stats there for September 2021

Local Crime Information for Waters Road, Lewisham, London, SE6 1UE - September 2021 (streetcheck.co.uk)

I wasn't suggesting it was a dream house - just an example of the kind of thing professional families (teachers, doctors etc) living in London can afford. What makes MPs so special?
 
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'm sure you're right. But my point is that - given that - it should be the responsibility of politicians to deal with it and provide affordable housing. We don't elect them so *they* can live in a nice house/area, but to help ensure the rest of us can.
 
That looks like it's on an estate, former council property. Where I am houses on estates are often really well priced because the estate itself can be a bit dodgy.

As per house prices. Maybe it would focus the minds of said politicians on dealing with crime. Mind you, that risks them finding they need to do so in board rooms as well, which could be awkward for them.
 
No, not at all. Anyone who considers £80k as pocket money is not qualified to represent people to whom losing £20 is a disaster.

No, if we are going to improve our democracy we need more politicians coming from the bottom up. We have relatively few of them. But we’re already massively over represented by politicians coming from the top and who don’t come down anyway, because if recent evidence is anything to go by they just bring their top earning day jobs into Parliament with them
If we are to have a true Representative Democracy, we would have truly Proportional Representation.

We need a Parliament that is representative of the incomes of the electorate. So if those earning over £85k are 5% of the public, we should only have 5% of MP places allocated to MP’s who themselves earn over £85k. The next say 15% of places might be allocated to those representing £40-85k. Most of the rest would go to the £10-40k with rather too many representing the rest.

Basically we’d have a Parliament of normal people and Jacob Rees Mogg

Or to put it another way, a Parliament that represents the real world
 
I’m a service engineer and don’t consider my trade to be any different to politicians. Most aren’t qualified but think they are the best engineer in the trade let alone company. Don’t care for quality of workmanship, spending more time on mobiles than doing the job and fiddling as much overtime as possible. I remember dropping an engineer home on the day he left and he said I wouldn’t believe the fiddles he got up to. It’s a me society I’m afraid.
 
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.

Yeah, Mike Ashley for PM!!

Maybe the answer is to move parliament. Birmingham is more central and housing is pretty cheap compared to London. Win/win.

For God’s sake not Birmingham, they already persist in calling themselves the second city…

Coventry or Wolverhampton. Crewe and Stoke are pretty central too.
 
While not in any way excusing the Daily Mail, you've obviously never looked at the Daily Express.

I have to admit I’ve no idea which is worse, plus there is obviously The Sun too. The latter is still all but banned in Liverpool and with good reason, I just wish other parts of the country would do the same. They are all connected to the Tory Party and Cameron even brought one of the Murdoch phone-hackers, Andy Coulson, right into the heart of government. I can’t remember if he was the one who hacked murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler’s phone, but he was certainly guilty of enough to be jailed. Dacre is no better IMO. Just as repugnant and therefore just as in place as part of this Conservative government.

PS Whilst we are talking Tory sleaze and corruption it is worth drawing attention to the plight of poor Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who remains detained as a hostage in Iran with her husband starving himself to death on hunger-strike outside the HoC. It appears the root of this situation can be traced back to the 1971 Heath Tory government stiffing Iran on a paid-up £450m arms deal. They paid, the political situation changed, and the Tories reneged on the business deal. It now looks that a lifetime later than they are actually going to pay their debts…
 


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