Saturday, March 15, 2008

Just say no to MPs pay rise

One of the great problems with the public sector is there is no effective market for their employees - hence sdalaries are set based on dusbin men being seen as equivalent to dinner ladies.

You could just pay the right amount to supply yourself with dinner ladies or dustbin men - which is what happens in the world that has to pay its way.

So MPs was £40k more ( that's £80k to the Balls family ) not to fiddle their expenses.

At the same time we have party leaders (all three of the main ones as far as I can see) arguing that the main qualification for your post should be your genetic make up (male/female, black/white ) - apparently you can determine to fill 1/3 of your cabinet on that basis. Skills and experience are unnecessary or not relevant - so why not reduce their pay until we get problems getting any MPs ?

Frankly its time MPs and civil servants share the dire financial world of destroyed pensions, unbearable taxation and th prospect of being crushed in the future by Gordon Brown's failure to reform and reduce the state sector.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is no need to raise salaries - how about they just sort out the crooked expenses system to weed out the crooked MPs and let the rest of them get on with their jobs?

Vindico said...

Hmm. I agree with your sentiment but not sure MPs should stay on their current pay. If some MPs expenses were scrapped I would be more than happy to see their salary increased, so long as the net cost to the taxpayer does not increase (i.e. the change should at best cut costs and at worst be neutral).
For example if we scrapped MPs pensions but paid them a bit more they could buy a private pension and not leave the taxpayer with liabilities to protect their inflation protected pension.
When people spend their own money they are also more careful in how it is spent, but when it is someone elses (i.e. expenses) they will be more cavalier. So long as their salaries are increased by less than the cost of the expenses then it should be good all round. A more simple system and less cost to the taxpayer.