Bizarrely Adam Afriyie is right to advocate Members of Parliament being paid the not so insubstantial sum of £225,000 per annum
A Conservative MP named Adam Afriyie recently claimed that Members of Parliament should be paid £225,000 a year. Bizarrely, all at The Steeple Times agree with him: This rich politician actually is bang on the nail.
Afriyie argued that “it is almost impossible to operate on the salary that is given to MPs if you come from a middle income family” and suggested that “in 1911… MPs were given an allowance of £400 per year. If it had been uprated according to various different indexes, guess how much that figure would be today? £225,000”.
He continued:
“In my dream world of the future we’ll have, again, a simple members allowance which is substantially higher than it is today… We started at that £400, so let’s work out what that means today”.
Adam Afriyie has a point. We would advocate axing half of the liggers at Westminster in order to create a system whereby we have Members of Parliament who represent larger constituencies. If we paid elected politicians double what they get now, banned expenses and bought an accommodation block capable of housing them all in Central London, there’d be no more financial scandals. Bring on Adam Afriyie’s proposal and bring on a return to decency in politics.
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Are we looking at the future 1st black prime minister of Great Britain?
Matthew,
I think you’ll probably find the opposite is true. Politicians should do the job because they want to be involved in policy change and effective government, not because they need a wage. If the pay is too good, they will say whatever they have to in order to keep their job (This is the current state of US politics at the moment unfortunately). The last thing the world needs are more career politicians.
I think the fix is to create a per diem for their service. If they can do their service for less than that, then they can pocket the difference.
R
Trust The Steeple Times to side with the elite in society. Up the wages of the elite. You are are all cretins.
Denis,
Why the bitter comment, a point has been made which at least deserves a considered opinion.
Do you really know what senior Politicians do.
I am all for higher pay, and was advised by my first boss, when I was a stubborn teenager, “Don’t try to get other people’s Salary down, try to get yours up.” It has carried me quite successfully through to middle age.
For this to work the calibre of MP’s needs to dramatically shift up. You can’t have useless idiots earning this sort of money.
That is my point exactly: Pay better, attract a better class of candidate.