Low status and mediocre pay: no wonder we get the worst MPs
Top 10% of household incomes. That’s before perks. 80k is about that.
Status? Given who is there currently grossly too high. But then I’ve met a few.
Low status and mediocre pay: no wonder we get the worst MPs
Top 10% of household incomes. That’s before perks. 80k is about that.
Status? Given who is there currently grossly too high. But then I’ve met a few.
You get what you pay for. I have considered standing in the past, but the thought of all the potential intrusion into my personal life from the press and activist groups, potential death threats against my kids, and (if you do the job properly) long hours, it just doesn’t add up. In a previous job I had a manager who I thought would make an excellent minister but why would he give up £120k plus perks from Cisco for a significant pay cut plus all that crap?
Status is rather due to allowing themselves to become glorified social workers as they largely forgot about holding government to account in their eagerness to become part of government. TBH I would support higher more transparent pay and less perks but would want it linked to economic performance say a multiple of median pay or similar.
Chris is right there.
Too many are just lobby fodder, the public look at them and think “What a bunch of idiots, can’t think for themselves.” My MP is a buffoon and has shown himself on telly to be one.
So it boils down to “what really is their job?” With Brexit I had hoped for more engagement from them, because they were not now required to nod through EU directives but actually scrutinise laws.
They have become social workers with no authority to change things, earning 80k + 200k expenses.
but would want it linked to economic performance say a multiple of median pay or similar.
Better still, a multiple of the lowest decile of those in full time work. It would incentivise doing something about productivity and the real economy.
The low status is entirely deserved.
As for low pay, being an MP should be an unpaid part-time position. We don’t need “professional” (in the sense of a profession, not with any connotation of competence) career politicians, which is what we have now.
Pay them nothing and make parliamentary sessions much shorter. This would remove parliamentary politics as a career and parliamentarians could make a lot less mischief. Reduce the size of the state, cut the civil service by 75%, wind up the departments of education, health and then consider the next steps.
There always seems to be some journalist advocating higher pay for MPs. I suspect discretely passed brown envelopes, bearing in mind the sort of crooks under discussion.
O/T But almost all the adverts on the right hand side of my page relate to solar panels. Either having them installed on one’s house or leasing one’s land to solar power companies. Since I haven’t looked at any pages about “green” energy I presume that’s not Google throwing them up.
I sense another scam in progress down in Dagoland. Last time the Spanish got sold on benefits from solar feed-in tariffs the law got changed after the fact & they all found themselves stuffed with no tariff money & the loans they’d taken out to buy the things. Presumably someone’s thinking memories have have faded & worth having another crack.
Agree with Bloke in Wales. No need to pay MPs. I’d add that their quality was probably highest when they weren’t paid at all…
I’m taken by the idea that our MPs are of lower calibre than, for instance, President Lezgo Brandon or Senator-elect Fetterman.
“There’s always someone worse of than yourself” the auld biddies used to say. And they were right.
What TMB said.
DoE – A few cashiers/book keepers (to manage the tokens & cash) and an MI5/6 chap, very little else needed; and incorporate it into a broom cupboard on Marsham Street. That could only improve standards.
Would governance really be improved if it was limited to only those rich enough not to need an income in order to stay alive?
jgh,
The labour party used to pay their MPs themselves. The Tories were of course all rich bastards. Seemed to work.
BiW,
“As for low pay, being an MP should be an unpaid part-time position. We don’t need “professional” (in the sense of a profession, not with any connotation of competence) career politicians, which is what we have now.”
The problem with that is that you’re not going to get people who care about what you want. You’ve locked out people who care about delivery. People who want a job where they can earn the sort of money to get a trophy wife and own a Porsche. You either get thickos who can never reach trophy wife levels, or you get the sort of rich boys who don’t need to earn. The first group are going to do a shit job and the second group don’t really care if they fail (because they don’t depend on the job to replace the Porsche).
Look at MSM journalism for this. It used to pay good money and it generally doesn’t now. So it’s full of absolute weirdos who are more activists than giving the people what they want.
Lock out people who just care about the job, nay, depend on the job for quality pussy and sports cars, and you get people who care not about you, but about their own agendas. Pet projects they’ve always had in mind that they think would be good, monuments to their greatness. HS2 is going because these people just want to “leave a legacy”. HS2 destroys their career? Doesn’t really matter because they don’t depend on it anyway.
M4,
I disagree. If we weed out the status-seekers (because there isn’t any in being an MP) or the gold-diggers (because we aren’t paying them) that leaves those that see it as a service. The charity workers, from when charity was a good thing worth doing and not a “profession” (see above).
I really don’t care if we get the on-a-mission types. They’d have to persuade at least half of the other MPs to get anywhere.
As for not representing the electorate, if I was redesigning the governance system here I’d have a third stage for legislation: in between parliamentary approval and Royal approval, I’d have a popular approval stage. Once a year, every bill that gets parliamentary approval would go on a list in a referendum and everyone can vote yes or no on each item. Those that gain popular approval then go to His Majesty’s rubber stamp.
At the moment we have a representative democracy that is not at all representative, and not especially democratic either. It dates from when communications technology meant that we had to choose our representatives to make the decisions on our behalf. That no longer applies, so far more direct democracy is both possible and needed. Of course, the turkeys in Parliament are never going to vote for Christmas so nothing is going to change without pitchforks or gunpowder.
You’re perhaps a little pessimistic, BoM4, though given the newly unveiled plaque commissioned by Swindon Borough Council you have every excuse.
There will still be a selection process for candidates which will devolve far more to the local constituency level because there will no longer be the hoards of young political neophytes buzzing around Westminster looking for preferment and a parachute.
Consequently, the candidates will be local individuals who already have a well-established career from which they can take leave of absence while Parliament is sitting.
Those who achieve cabinet ministerial rank will need some sort of salary because government continues to operate even during recess but there is no need for so many government departments and none of them need the bevies of junior ministers who own their positions not to the useful functions they fulfil but to the need to maximise collective responsibility on the government benches.
My M.P. is a Nigerian lady who has never, to my knowledge, troubled the Parliamentary clerks. A prime candidate to be the ruler of the King’s Navee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw
Here in Texas we seem to have solved this problem. The state legislature is limited to a term of 120 days in every odd year. Pay is about $45k inclusive of per diem. The Governor can call a special legislative session limited to 30 days for a specific purpose.
The governance here seems to be working out. Legislators have to go back into their communities for extended lengths of time instead of being borged in Austin.
Trouble is, the pay is too low for most capable people to be able to afford to become an MP, but also too high in that it looks too attractive to third-rate numpties.
What I think we need is not pay for MPs, but compensation for loss of outside earnings – whatever they earned before being elected. That way no-one gains from being elected, no-one loses, and there’s a big incentive to succeed at another career first to get the compensation up.
On the other hand:
‘A Pennsylvania state representative who died in October was reelected during yesterday’s midterm elections … Anthony “Tony” DeLuca, 85, died Oct. 9 “after a brief battle with lymphoma”‘
MPs are effectively the “owners” of a micro business, in the services sector. They’ve got a staff, employees, of about three to five. Those employee wages are set by whatever parliamentary body, and paid by whatever body.
The MP’s wage, 80 large or thereabouts, doesn’t strike me as being too far out of whack for a similar size services firm that is properly private – actually owned by the equivalent of yer MP.
The problem about “quality” of the “business owner” is down to internal party dynamics – of all parties – given they prefer to parachute candidates into constituencies these days.
There’s most likely a shit load of cronyism going on, by the time some muppet actually manages to win a seat.
@Dearieme…
That’s novel. Weren’t we led to believe that it was the electorate that was composed partly of the dead, not the candidates.
Well, some unknown proportion of Democrat voters is dead, so like the Hispanic and negro voters it seems fair that they vote for one of their own.
If the salaries are reduced, the greedy bastards, even the millionaires, will make it up in expenses. Duck moats, or membership subscriptions to PIE, don’t come cheap, you know.
The basic salary is £84,144. Plus a selection of generous expense allowances. All for walking through the correct lobby every now and then. And that is before you tot up the various payments received on being kicked out at an election, including what must be the most generous pension scheme on the planet. And not forgetting the junkets. And provided you keep your head down and don’t do anything stupid, no one will even notice! But if you do take the celeb MP route then there are plenty of media opportunities, even whilst you are still a member of the Commons! What is not to like?
we weed out the status-seekers…
It’s a curious thing, but in an ideal world those are exactly the people you’d want as MPs. The sort of person who crowns a successful career by bringing their experience to doing a stint as part of the governance of the nation. Not for the money but for the status. Of being one of a select group renown for its probity & selflessness.
OK, now you can all stop rolling around the floor & get to clearing the coffee out of your keyboards.
I did say ideal.
BiS has been watching Upstairs Downstairs again.
Don’t forget that our current Prime Minister had a much higher paying job in finance before entering politics. So we can see what sort of person we get who is not motivated by money.
Unfortunately, a previous PM also had a much higher paying job as a journalist and we saw how that turned out.
BiW,
“I disagree. If we weed out the status-seekers (because there isn’t any in being an MP) or the gold-diggers (because we aren’t paying them) that leaves those that see it as a service. The charity workers, from when charity was a good thing worth doing and not a “profession” (see above).”
Which is then only going to be rich people who can afford not to work much (e.g. Blair, Cameron, May, Corbyn types) or total nutters who don’t mind being skint. You’re not going to get smart, talented people with skills, because it means them choosing to be skint.
Ducky,
“MPs are effectively the “owners” of a micro business, in the services sector. They’ve got a staff, employees, of about three to five. Those employee wages are set by whatever parliamentary body, and paid by whatever body.
The MP’s wage, 80 large or thereabouts, doesn’t strike me as being too far out of whack for a similar size services firm that is properly private – actually owned by the equivalent of yer MP.”
That’s not the right way to measure it, but by the budget MPs are responsible for and the level of spending they can agree or disagree to, divided by 650 of them. Currently around £1.1 trillion, or around £1.5bn each. Think about votes for or against HS2, The Olympics, Connecting for Health, the war in Iraq. That’s £100bn of spending that these dumb fucks got wrong, or £153m each.
The key issue here is incentives. High pay is an incentive for people who want to get rich, so if MPs are highly paid then that’s the kind of people you will attract. If being an MP delivers high social status and access to the fashionable set, then you will attract the people who want that. If it comes with a free penguin, you will attract the people who really like penguins.
So we have to start with the kind of attitudes and behaviours that we think MPs need to have, and then work backwards from that to determine which incentives will attract the right kind of people. The right position on this issue is to say what you want MPs to be, then decide what incentives would motivate that kind of person to take on the job.
‘A second dead Democrat candidate has stormed to victory with a landslide win in their election.
Tennessee state Rep. Barbara Cooper, a Democrat, died on October 25 at the age of 93, two weeks before Election Day.
According to WATN, election officials were unable to remove Cooper’s name from the ballot following her “unexpected” death.
Despite her well-publicized death, Democrat Cooper crushed her opponent, independent Michael Porter, by 7,999 votes to 2,942, according to WHBQ.’
from What Really Happened.
Or the people that have been successful in their careers, made their pile, and no longer need to care about money and feel like contributing to society. The sort of people that might have become a local councillor before that became a “profession”.
AndrewZ,
“So we have to start with the kind of attitudes and behaviours that we think MPs need to have, and then work backwards from that to determine which incentives will attract the right kind of people. The right position on this issue is to say what you want MPs to be, then decide what incentives would motivate that kind of person to take on the job.”
People who chase status are invariably useless. Because they don’t care about doing the job, just getting the job and showing that fact off. You can observe how much status chasing there is to parliament by all the wanky, unnecessary dressing up and ceremony like the queen’s speech, or working in a dysfunctional old palace.
BoM4,
Sorry, that’s not the right way to measure it either – given any specific vote, there’ll be those for or against, so dividing some number by 650 doesn’t work. The group membership shifts over time.
The other issue is that of the 650, the number of MPs who get to propose or deny spending issues, before it gets to the House, is very small. So using 650 is wrong again.
Assume for a moment that HM’s Loyal Opposition consistently vote as a block, against any and all HMG proposals. They alone can not win any vote, as they don’t have the majority to do so, by definition. The risk of any vote passing or failing, is almost entirely down to the governing party’s backbenchers.
How does the front bench (or “senior party figures”) keep those bastards quiet? By controlling the selection process at the candidate stage.
Pissing about with wages, or attempting to re-design incentives, is utterly bloody pointless if you can not influence that selection process.
On the face of it, there would be an argument for primaries. Minor technical hitch, turnout in GEs is quite low, and party membership is low.
Back to the 80k wage – there is something missing. There is no scenario where a sitting MP can fail to make payroll in any month. There’s limited to zero risk in that system, for the MP, and their staff.
Oh, and what’s the pool of staff like?