11% pay rise for MP's! Tragegically and laughably out of touch but then see also my post on salaried MP's!
A minus 5% decrease would be a start to bring them a whiff of reality. But only if it came with a fresh contract ultimatum. Resign, thereby losing all rights to insurance and benefits, or accept a new, (that so popular and well supported), zero hour contract. Each weeks continuation of employment subjected to renewal by their electorate. With their role open to anyone to claim it who speaks a form of English, will toe the Party Line and is prepared to work for less. Of course as they are now self-employed consultants there is no holiday pay, no pension plan and naturally any expenses come out of their own pocket.
With this new contract there is just a chance our MP's will emerge from their protective bubble of privilege and get a taster of the conditions they are instrumental in setting up for us ordinary folks, that is everyone else that is not part of the super rich elite. When their feet are fully grounded in reality maybe our MP's might be trusted then to legislate for us again.
Showing posts with label salary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salary. Show all posts
Monday, 9 December 2013
Friday, 5 July 2013
Salaried MP's
I have no axe to grind whether MP's get a salary increase or not. What really worries me is the idea that an MP is in salaried employment. A career MP! Old fashioned as I maybe I thought politics was all about being driven by some principal, some sense of social well being, the desire to serve the Nation and to its citizens. I cannot square these two views. If you are salaried, your career depends on you hanging on in there, going with the flow, keeping hold of your job by finding the middle non-contentious ground so you are always in employment. Surely this is the exact opposite of what our MP's should be doing?
The vary last comparison I would want to make with an MP is a Bank employer or even a Doctor or Teacher. A career requires you to compromise, to fit-in with the aims of your current employer, to subsume your own aspirations and get behind what ever is the current corporate objective, no matter what your personal views. I really do expect an MP to have ideals, to believe in and standby those ideals, to argue and fight for those ideals and to be prepared to stand-down if those ideals fail to win majority support.
Everyone should be eligible to stand as an MP, irrespective of background and certainly not restricted only to those of independent means. Therefore so that those in the lowest paid sectors of society too have the real option I can agree that a non-discriminatory income needs to go with being elected. Clearly the cost of representing a northern seat is of a different order to the cost of that in one of the Home Counties. The incurred costs of representing your seat should be funded by the Nation. Why does a healthcare worker on or near the minimum wage need to put on a salary scale on par with a Doctor, Bank Manger or Teacher just to serve as an MP? If you are not on the minimum wage you can afford the gamble, if your passion to serve is strong enough, to resume your career if the gamble fails. You are sufficiently well cushioned that you do not need any state intervention to be able to stand, if chosen.
Being an MP opens many doors of opportunities. It gives you an unparalleled access to a wide network of contacts that would never be possible without serving as an MP. Many perfectly legal opportunities open up, during and subsequent to your seat as are very many more totally unacceptable and highly dubious opportunities to cream off the top. That is why we want our MP's to be driven by principle and not by greed. So an income just above minimum wage, sufficient to ensure all can serve. The running costs actually incurred and verified to be reimbursed. If gifted person are thereby discouraged from offering themselves because they might lose out on the deal then the Nation does not need them and is far better off without their opportunism. So principled persons with a desire to serve, roll up roll up!
Postscript. Should MP's use First Class travel? No, no, no special privileges to set them apart. They must live the lives of all other citizens who have to cope with the rules they pass through parliament. If anything their lives should be made more onerous, be wide open to the full wrath of the state against the citizen. I would like to see MP's sign on weekly and then have to justify that they were working full time as an MP and did attend parliament session before they could claim their wage and expenses.
The vary last comparison I would want to make with an MP is a Bank employer or even a Doctor or Teacher. A career requires you to compromise, to fit-in with the aims of your current employer, to subsume your own aspirations and get behind what ever is the current corporate objective, no matter what your personal views. I really do expect an MP to have ideals, to believe in and standby those ideals, to argue and fight for those ideals and to be prepared to stand-down if those ideals fail to win majority support.
Everyone should be eligible to stand as an MP, irrespective of background and certainly not restricted only to those of independent means. Therefore so that those in the lowest paid sectors of society too have the real option I can agree that a non-discriminatory income needs to go with being elected. Clearly the cost of representing a northern seat is of a different order to the cost of that in one of the Home Counties. The incurred costs of representing your seat should be funded by the Nation. Why does a healthcare worker on or near the minimum wage need to put on a salary scale on par with a Doctor, Bank Manger or Teacher just to serve as an MP? If you are not on the minimum wage you can afford the gamble, if your passion to serve is strong enough, to resume your career if the gamble fails. You are sufficiently well cushioned that you do not need any state intervention to be able to stand, if chosen.
Being an MP opens many doors of opportunities. It gives you an unparalleled access to a wide network of contacts that would never be possible without serving as an MP. Many perfectly legal opportunities open up, during and subsequent to your seat as are very many more totally unacceptable and highly dubious opportunities to cream off the top. That is why we want our MP's to be driven by principle and not by greed. So an income just above minimum wage, sufficient to ensure all can serve. The running costs actually incurred and verified to be reimbursed. If gifted person are thereby discouraged from offering themselves because they might lose out on the deal then the Nation does not need them and is far better off without their opportunism. So principled persons with a desire to serve, roll up roll up!
Postscript. Should MP's use First Class travel? No, no, no special privileges to set them apart. They must live the lives of all other citizens who have to cope with the rules they pass through parliament. If anything their lives should be made more onerous, be wide open to the full wrath of the state against the citizen. I would like to see MP's sign on weekly and then have to justify that they were working full time as an MP and did attend parliament session before they could claim their wage and expenses.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Tax, salaries and rewards
Money, we all need it, some more than most. So whilst we are talking about £45M winners its time to think and draw four strands together.
Thread 1
Success has to be rewarded and we all need aspirational dreams, dreams that can take us out of the drudgery of every day life and gives us the hope of escape. At what point does a salary or bonus become unacceptable, £1M or £2M or £5M what about £10M how about £50M pa, so excessive as to be condemned by everyone as too ludicrous to contemplate?
We want rewards, we need to dream but where to draw a line, a line which supports a cohesive society and where those without are tolerant of those with an excess. No one wants a polarised society, even the most rich need those without to provide for and give support to their beyond dreams lifestyles and those without have to have the hope that they too can get rich or else they will abandon hope and just take what they don't have.
So, how many second homes, how many luxury yachts, how many private planes, how many private islands, how many years without toil are necessary to justify, adequate reward? When one man (eg Bill Gates) has greater wealth and freedom to dispose of it without scrutiny than a Nation State then we are in a very sick place.
Setting aside the historical origins that gave rise to inherited wealth, another subject for discussion later, reward used to be related to value. Those that worked extra hard, those who took risk, those that had exceptional skills, they were rewarded proportionately. Nowadays a footballer or a 'celebrity' with media ranking can claim silly monies whilst the A&E nurse, the scientist with ten years research, the craftsman with a life long skill, the soldier, the Brain Surgeon are paid, in relative terms piffling amounts. No fair rewards here. Our core values have been turned topsy-turvy by international financial backgammon, betting on south-sea bubbles of huge proportions. How do we get a reality check?
Thread 2
The theory goes that in a free market, supply and demand will level out salaries, so the most numerous tasks with large numbers of people able to carry them out will be paid least and the tasks where there are few specialists persons able to carry them out will become the best paid. So why aren't we inundated with would be footballers, stock market traders and TV presenters and why are science teachers in such short supply? It is not, probably never has been, a free market. For many good reasons, pay restraints and thresholds or freezes, union or public service comparability, market norms and a host of other well intentioned interventions have removed the self-correcting mechanisms that were supposed to work. We ineptly fix salary levels bolstered by claims of fair pay. Plus 'funny money' generated by share values or media ratings have totally distorted beyond any rationale, the right price for the job. We need a re-think.
Thread 3The stroke of genius was PAYE! The huge working underbelly of society was locked into a system that scrupulously, ruthlessly and efficiently took money at source and paid it to the state. There was no escape, if you were salaried, as most were. A large income without effort was guaranteed to the State, leaving it time to go the merry-go-round with those not on PAYE stopping off one tax avoidance bolt hole before stopping off the next in an never-ending cycle. Those with payed little tax, those without paid in full.
Times are changing, those in employment, those receiving regular full salaries are ever diminishing proportions of society. Employed work as a main source of State tax revenue has to be re-thought. Even VAT, the tax on already taxed income, is due a re-think when goods can be sourced with ease from around the world. National boundaries are fast becoming meaningless.
Thread 4
We must stop apologising for having lost our Empire, for having been brought to our knees by USofA, for having been a colonising nation for once having been a world player.
We are a great tolerant and inclusive nation, densely populated from richly diverse origins and offering a wealth of talent and commercial opportunities. Those that want to live amongst us are most welcomed but must pay their way, those that invest with us are will be shielded from payment proportionate to the degree and length of their investment and those that want to just sell into our market are welcomed but will have to negotiate an access to our market relative to the profits taken out of it.
We must learn to have confidence in ourselves as a Nation and to capitalise on the benefits of being such a great trading opportunity for the world. The free-booters can live elsewhere, we can manage just fine without them. Those that do have a rare ability or bring special honed skills or expertise and generate income or investment in the Nations future shall be rewarded proportionately above their fellows at the expense of those that generate large incomes for a narrow sector of society by using few skills or investment in our future.
Thread 1
Success has to be rewarded and we all need aspirational dreams, dreams that can take us out of the drudgery of every day life and gives us the hope of escape. At what point does a salary or bonus become unacceptable, £1M or £2M or £5M what about £10M how about £50M pa, so excessive as to be condemned by everyone as too ludicrous to contemplate?
We want rewards, we need to dream but where to draw a line, a line which supports a cohesive society and where those without are tolerant of those with an excess. No one wants a polarised society, even the most rich need those without to provide for and give support to their beyond dreams lifestyles and those without have to have the hope that they too can get rich or else they will abandon hope and just take what they don't have.
So, how many second homes, how many luxury yachts, how many private planes, how many private islands, how many years without toil are necessary to justify, adequate reward? When one man (eg Bill Gates) has greater wealth and freedom to dispose of it without scrutiny than a Nation State then we are in a very sick place.
Setting aside the historical origins that gave rise to inherited wealth, another subject for discussion later, reward used to be related to value. Those that worked extra hard, those who took risk, those that had exceptional skills, they were rewarded proportionately. Nowadays a footballer or a 'celebrity' with media ranking can claim silly monies whilst the A&E nurse, the scientist with ten years research, the craftsman with a life long skill, the soldier, the Brain Surgeon are paid, in relative terms piffling amounts. No fair rewards here. Our core values have been turned topsy-turvy by international financial backgammon, betting on south-sea bubbles of huge proportions. How do we get a reality check?
Thread 2
The theory goes that in a free market, supply and demand will level out salaries, so the most numerous tasks with large numbers of people able to carry them out will be paid least and the tasks where there are few specialists persons able to carry them out will become the best paid. So why aren't we inundated with would be footballers, stock market traders and TV presenters and why are science teachers in such short supply? It is not, probably never has been, a free market. For many good reasons, pay restraints and thresholds or freezes, union or public service comparability, market norms and a host of other well intentioned interventions have removed the self-correcting mechanisms that were supposed to work. We ineptly fix salary levels bolstered by claims of fair pay. Plus 'funny money' generated by share values or media ratings have totally distorted beyond any rationale, the right price for the job. We need a re-think.
Thread 3The stroke of genius was PAYE! The huge working underbelly of society was locked into a system that scrupulously, ruthlessly and efficiently took money at source and paid it to the state. There was no escape, if you were salaried, as most were. A large income without effort was guaranteed to the State, leaving it time to go the merry-go-round with those not on PAYE stopping off one tax avoidance bolt hole before stopping off the next in an never-ending cycle. Those with payed little tax, those without paid in full.
Times are changing, those in employment, those receiving regular full salaries are ever diminishing proportions of society. Employed work as a main source of State tax revenue has to be re-thought. Even VAT, the tax on already taxed income, is due a re-think when goods can be sourced with ease from around the world. National boundaries are fast becoming meaningless.
Thread 4
We must stop apologising for having lost our Empire, for having been brought to our knees by USofA, for having been a colonising nation for once having been a world player.
We are a great tolerant and inclusive nation, densely populated from richly diverse origins and offering a wealth of talent and commercial opportunities. Those that want to live amongst us are most welcomed but must pay their way, those that invest with us are will be shielded from payment proportionate to the degree and length of their investment and those that want to just sell into our market are welcomed but will have to negotiate an access to our market relative to the profits taken out of it.
We must learn to have confidence in ourselves as a Nation and to capitalise on the benefits of being such a great trading opportunity for the world. The free-booters can live elsewhere, we can manage just fine without them. Those that do have a rare ability or bring special honed skills or expertise and generate income or investment in the Nations future shall be rewarded proportionately above their fellows at the expense of those that generate large incomes for a narrow sector of society by using few skills or investment in our future.
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