State of UK Politics

[saif]

Smurfy, when its not football, you talk a bit of sense! Joking of course.
MPs have to be paid a reasonable amount of money for what they do. An MP's salary is about £63k, cabinet members get about £140k and the PM gets £190k.
To me, they sound like decent salaries, most of my colleagues would laugh at them. A £63k salary in London is really nothing special. The reason these expenses are taken is mainly for second homes etc - they are the big ones and frankly, the others are immaterial. The moat cleaning one is funny cos it shows what kind of person the Tories have as MPs and is embarrassing to Cameron on that basis. What would £2k get you though? The max you can get on expenses is about £20k and the main reason that MPs claim them is because, in essence, their salaries are pretty low really and they cannot vote themselves pay rises that are commensurate with their work.
I look around my (accountant's) office of about 400 people (in C London). My salary does not approach that of an MP. There are probably about 50 people here who make more than an MP and about 15 people who make about 5x as much. How many people you work with make more than an MP?
MPs are not bad value at all imho. If you want to see disgrace, get our taxes back from rich people that avoid them.

[abigsmurf]

It's still a rise. MP's are paid well. As of April 2008 the pay for an UK MP is ?63291. Pretty good by the national average pay standards (median 2008 is ?24908, source: National Statistics Online). This is excluding pension and expenses. It also excludes pay of ?14039 for those who are chairmen of various committees. In fact, in the ten years since 1998, their pay has increased by ?18225. Pretty good, IMO and certainly not a wage that would put people off being an MP or having to resort to "questionable means" of raising money. Other than abusing their expenses system, I suppose...

All this info was gleaned from here.
UK parliament download
National statistics online, average pay



I'm not suggesting a referendum for every issue. I just think that it's folly to ask people to vote on their own pay for obvious reasons.

Being an MP isn't an 'average job' though. It's a 'never off the clock' job that completely removes any personal privacy, puts you in charge of extremely sensative data, gives you an incredible amount of responsibility and adds an amount of criminal liability that you don't get in private sector jobs. There are more rules and regulations than pretty much any private sector job and you are resonsible for the well being of hundreds of thousands if not millions.

To compare it to the average joe office worker is farcical. Compare it to company heads instead.

[abigsmurf]

Ady nailed it, there are more of us then them. Down side is most of us have no idea what is going on and do not want to rock the boat of our comfortable lives.

And there are far more Daily Mail and Sun readers than there are of us. You don't want these people rocking the boat unless you enjoy living in a hardline right wing country.

I'm going to butcher a Terry Pratchett quote but here goes : "you can work out the intelligence of a mob by finding the smartest person in it, then dividing his IQ by the number of people".

[saif]

Brats' point about UK politics is not really about cash though, the real problem is PARTY politics. People are not really allowed to vote with their brains, they vote with their whips. New Labour was not really supported by most backbenchers and do you honestly think most Conservatives believe in their green and caring rebranding? Cameron cycles for the photos with a car to escort him! Supergreen.


As an aside, after the mention of the Metro, the Mayor of London came to power on the basis of being MORE accountable. Until recently it was not possible to read his manifesto online and has been recovered by the Guardian newspaper. He has not met most of his manifesto pledges outside W London but the regional media is WRITTEN in W London..... The deal to renew the TFL distribution deal for the Metro is also up soon and you don't rreally wantto disappoint the man who could give you that golden goose back.
His response to questioning on the shambles of the single day of Snow in Feb was to walk out of the committee and labelled questioning as party politics.

[Brats]

Brats' point about UK politics is not really about cash though, the real problem is PARTY politics.

As usual, you are spot on. This thread has got carried away with the expenses row, but that is but one small part of what is a rotten system.

To me, there seems to be a fundamental conflict of interest in the current political system. MPs are elected to represent the views of their community yet to make to it to a position other than being a back bencher, you have to tow the government line. Thus the people with the most power are spineless lackies whilst the people with genuine passion and independent thought get sidelined, like Bob Marshall-Andrews who has sadly decided to leave politics for good .

Here's an idea - what if there were no political parties? We all vote for independent MPs and once they are all elected, certain members put themselves up for the big jobs and the other MPs vote for the person they think will do the best job. At any time, if enough MPs are unhappy, they can call for a new vote of any position.

The only reason to have political parties is for manifestos on big policy decisions. But as the parties don't stick to their promises anyway and do things like go to war when the majority of the public are against it, who needs them?

['Press Start']

And there are far more Daily Mail and Sun readers than there are of us. You don't want these people rocking the boat unless you enjoy living in a hardline right wing country.

I'm going to butcher a Terry Pratchett quote but here goes : "you can work out the intelligence of a mob by finding the smartest person in it, then dividing his IQ by the number of people".

Nice quote. Unfortunatly I think part of the plan is to get people so fed up they make rash judgments and these hardline parties gain more of a foothold.

Add a new political correctness row and a new immigration scandall and you have created perfect fringe party voting conditions.

[egparadigm]

Here's an idea - what if there were no political parties? We all vote for independent MPs and once they are all elected, certain members put themselves up for the big jobs and the other MPs vote for the person they think will do the best job. At any time, if enough MPs are unhappy, they can call for a new vote of any position.

The problem being that political parties provide the funding and organisation to run an effective campaign. Most individuals cannot afford to compete with that. Plus, even if – for the sake of argument – you got a parliament of independents, they would just group into larger factions in order to form a government or win votes.

I do have a problem with the party system as it stands though. The two main – conservative – parties form an entrenched elite. If it's not one party, it's the other. They form a cosy consensus between themselves. You'll notice that when the government cannot win a vote, the Tories come riding in on horseback to bail them out.

The only answer to this problem is a change in the system of government, starting with electoral reform. I also think proper checks and balances are in order. The power of the Prime Minister needs to be restrained and the executive extracted from the legislature.

[EJG1980]

The problem being that political parties provide the funding and organisation to run an effective campaign. Most individuals cannot afford to compete with that. Plus, even if ? for the sake of argument ? you got a parliament of independents, they would just group into larger factions in order to form a government or win votes.

At least you wouldn't have the problem you have now of individual MPs being forced to follow the party line on certain votes. Everyone being independent meant you could group together to vote the same way on issues you all had the same view on, but there would be no party machine to stop you voting against the mainstream if it was something you strongly believed in.

[saif]

Independent candidates usually have one thing in common - cash. Either mummy and daddy gave it to them or they have swindled it out of the public and avoided paying too much tax. Not sure we need more rich people to make us better represented. As it is, politicians are very low-paid for what they do and nobody enters for money. Junior staffers are appallingly paid and work horrific hours - most MPs had to do their time before they go to being MPs.

There are a few instances where the independent candidate has managed to generate funding/media themselves but that could not bedone for 600-odd positions. Party funding is necessary and is useful that MPs are allied to parties as I then know what they stand for in general and can check the details with that knowledge.
MPs vote loads of times and the best way of keeping them accountable is to check up on them yourself. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ Type your MP in (or postcode) and find out what you (plural) voted for. E.g. my ward is chipping barnet and my MP does this:

Voting record (from PublicWhip)
How Theresa Villiers voted on key issues since 2001:

Has never voted on a transparent Parliament.
Voted very strongly against introducing a smoking ban.
Voted very strongly against introducing ID cards.
Voted moderately against Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
Voted very strongly for an investigation into the Iraq war.
Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
Voted for equal gay rights.
Voted strongly for laws to stop climate change.

i.e. whatever Conservative Central Office told her to....

[EJG1980]

How do you vote very strongly against something as opposed to voting moderately against something? Surely you just vote yes or no on each bill?

Unless they're taking into account something like speeches made for or against certain bills to get to how strongly they voted on something?

Edit: never mind, looked it up on the site, clear now.

[abigsmurf]

I know I said I don't care about this expenses BS and that's still true but my attitude towards politicians has plummeted over the last few days. The way they rounded on the speaker, used him to divert attention and act as a scape goat frankly sickened me.

Up until then I had no real change of opinion on politicians but to me they've now sunk incredibly low.

We could have an election call within the next month but... Meh. Tory and Labour policies are incredibly close together now, the Tories won't reverse the things making our country crap; generations of families living on welfare, incredible numbers of new laws robbing us of freedoms (of all kinds), using poor enforcement of existing laws as an excuse to implement draconian laws...

*sigh*

Only other option is the Lib Dems whose policies tend to either be unworkable or "everything that the other parties said in their mefestos but the opposite". Would be nice to have a third choice that you believe could actually run the country.

I suppose there's always the option of spoiling the ballot paper...

[EJG1980]

It is disgusting really. I have seen the odd politician on telly sticking up for him and saying that he was just being used as a scape goat, but most of them have been sticking the boot in.

The hilarious thing is that most of them are saying that Michael Martin was a "roadblock against change", despite the fact that nearly all MPs have voted against any changes to the expenses system whenever it's come up in the past.

The also used the fact that he tried to block the freedom of info act applying to MPs expenses to show how much of an obstacle he was. Yet none of these MPs (aside from a few Lib Dems I think) complained when he was actually doing it!

I don't think it's going to help though. I very much doubt the average person on the street will give a flying fart that the speaker has been forced to step down.

I reckon that someone needs to form a new political party and call it the "None of the above" party.

Then when people come to vote they'll look at the ballot paper and think "Hmm, none of the above? Good idea, I don't like any of 'em!" and you've got instant sneaky election success.

[abigsmurf]

Anyone got £5K to spare so I can set up the "None of the Above" party?

[Widegoat]

5k? Is that what you need to set up a political party? Also - how do you ensure that it's name appears on the bottom of the ballot paper?

Maybe you should call it "!!!None of the Below".

[abigsmurf]

Ah the deposit is £500, not £5000.