09 May 2009

Yep, here is a way out of the mess

Drip-drip-drip.  Continue to read the revelations.  Meanwhile, Mathew Parris comes up with a viable solution:

I'd add £30,000 to their salaries (half of which would come straight back in tax) and abolish all their housing and living expenses. And I'd do it before the next election, having secured the tacit agreement of the Opposition not to make too much of it.

And do you know what? After the most almighty hoo-hah for about a week, MPs would still be paid less than many GPs and everyone would lose interest. And at a stroke we would have removed what will otherwise remain a bottomless pit of ammunition for the cheaper-minded sort of MP, for feral parliamentary candidates, for hungry journalists - and for anybody else with an itch to denigrate the honourable profession that, despite this week, politics in Britain still is. Call him what else you like, but does anybody really, really think that Gordon Brown is a crook?

If MPs have any sense they will should back this solution, or similar, and adopt it now.  Parris is right, everybody would then lose interest.  Moreover, we could all move on.

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2 comments:

  1. You are mad: they've all been caught cheating, so let's all give them more money?

    Dude, seriously, WTF?

    Properly audited, receipted expenses is the ONLY way to go. My employer does this for more than 646 people, I see no reason at all why MPs can't do the same.

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  2. I thought I'd commented on this. They get paid enough Howard, they get the same as a Lt.Col in the army. A Lt. Col has far more responsibility than any MP and also far more integrity. No they're paid enough and don't give them a penny more. Let them travel second class because that's what all the military have to do nowadays.

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