he said he was getting up at 5-30 to garuantee being in by 9-30
unless he had to travel by mule he was lying out his huuuuge ass
plenty of my workmates are in by 9-30 from as far or further afield, i commuted in for a year from just as far and no way did i get up at 5-30!!

dimbleby also pointed out the mps no longer sit late into the night and no mps disagreed with him

My MP finds the time to earn lots of extra cash doing other jobs. He also manages to live further from his constituency than that guy lives from Westminster. The fact that he seems to do very little speaking in the Commons and gets around all that pesky thinking about stuff by voting however his party tells him might explain how he has the time to do this.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/alan_milburn/darlington

BTW, MPs get paid less than the average company lawyer or city broker.

Do you have any evidence of that? I’m not disputing it, just would find it very surprising.

Well I have now that you’ve made me dig it out.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/best-paid-jobs

“City brokers came second to directors, earning on average £94,293 a year, an increase of just 0.9% on last year.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article3224050.ece

“The average salary for an in-house lawyer is now £114,000, the report said.”

Still, I guess they don’t have to do anything important such as passing laws, or worry about the smooth running of financial institutions.

Indeed not – most of them don’t. Those that do tend to get paid extra.

Paying MPs a wage, was one of the great reforms of British democracy

I don’t dispute the need for a wage for MPs. Just like I don’t dispute the need for a wage for Starbucks baristas

I just think that they should be subject to the same economic principles

No shortage of applicants for Starbucks baristas = low pay
No shortage of applicants for MPs should also equal low pay

When the low pay starts acting as a deterrent to applicants, then it has to be raised to a level where people are once again attracted by the money

This is called market forces

Our MPs are very keen on these

I think you’ve missed the point, eldridge. There would almost certainly be sufficient applicants if you paid them nothing as they used to. How would market forces work then – would you have to see how much they’d pay to do it? You’d probably not get anybody working at Starbucks for nothing though.

Unfortunately having said that, it doesn’t seem to work particularly well. The theory usually trotted out being that you have to pay equivalent wages to top lawyers, managers etc. to get the right caliber of people in – when in reality you seem to get plenty who aren’t actually capable of doing anything else as remotely high paid as being an MP.

No shortage of applicants for MPs should also equal low pay

There seems to be a shortage of applicants with any kind of principles, scruples, ethics or morality.

Grizzlygus – That’s a real eye opener, I guess a “company lawyer” must be the top legal figure in an organisation?

It’s not a term I’ve come across before, you don’t think it means any (qualified legal) staff in a company’s legal department?

Eldridge – I know £64k sounds like a lot of money, but I know plenty of middle managers on similar sums. I think MPs’ basic salary is quite low in comparitive (and London) terms.

Still, it is time they sharpened up their act on expenses.

Well I have now that you’ve made me dig it out.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/best-paid-jobs

According that Dentists earn £31k which is ludicrous, NHS figures say £80k plus:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/FreedomOfInformation/Freedomofinformationpublicationschemefeedback/FOIreleases/DH_4131670

So I wouldn’t put too much faith in the figures thisismoney quote.

“The average salary for an in-house lawyer is now £114,000, the report said.”

Top flight lawyers with a decade of experience, working 60->70 hours weeks are on around that though according to my SO (who is an ex-city lawyer) but who want to have to use sleeping rooms at work most nights of the week.

Indeed not – most of them don’t. Those that do tend to get paid extra.

WTF ? They get paid extra when it comes to making decisions and voting ? Now that sounds a right fiddle 😯

.

So I wouldn’t put too much faith in the figures thisismoney quote.

Don’t like thisismoney quote ? Sure you could this yourself, but :

http://www.careerbuilder.co.uk/Article/CB-126-Job-Search-Britains-Top-10-Salaries/?ArticleID=126&cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=875ba652961e41cbb360da5abbd62c87-291905754-w6-6&ns_siteid=ns_uk_g_average_stockbroker_s_

“3. Brokers – Average Salary: £94,293” (2007)

http://www.salarytrack.co.uk/average-stockbroker-salary.html

“stockbroker £100,000” (Jan 30, 2009)

.

Top flight lawyers with a decade of experience, working 60->70 hours weeks are on around that

So that will be the “average in-house lawyer” then.
According to the Times Business Desk.

I can’t see how any MP can justify being able to comfortably afford to BUY a decent size house with an allowance intended for them to stay in London 2-3 nights a week. It would be cheaper for the money to be used to build an estate of studio flats, furnished by Ikea at reasonable expense and let all MP’s use one when they are in London. They don’t need a 3 or 4 bedroom second home if it is intended for use as overnight accomodation and they certainly don’t need to own it outright when they are no longer in a job. The fact that the ALLOWANCE is around the average wage (and nearly double my wage) is disgusting.

Here’s the spreadsheet of expenses: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=phNtm3LmDZEObQ2itmSqHIA

Struggled to scroll easily on my laptop, so probably easiest to use if you export as an xls file.

They get paid extra when it comes to making decisions and voting ?

Voting, no, but then that’s hardly demanding – I think I might be able to manage that one. Making the decision about which way to vote, yes.

If you don’t mind chrism, I would rather my MP made informed decisions rather than just turned up to vote.

The irony of complaining about the alleged lack of proper and diligent representation, whilst at the same time being apparently satisfied with nothing more than a cursory commitment to the democratic process of Parliament, and resentfully denying MPs the correct tools and conditions (A studio flat kitted out by IKEA 😀 ) to their jobs; isn’t lost on me.

Make your minds up. What sort of MPs do you want ffs ?

Gotta say – I’m bleeding glad some of the divs on here ain’t running country 🙄

Why do they need use of more than a studio flat? It’s better than a hotel room as they’d have a kitchen and more space

If you don’t mind chrism, I would rather my MP made informed decisions rather than just turned up to vote.

Yeah, me too – how do you suggest we make that happen?

MPs don’t get paid extra to make the decision on which way to vote. Those with extra duties get paid extra – leader of the party, minister, etc. but bog-standard MPs get paid the bog-standard rate.

MPs don’t get paid extra to make the decision on which way to vote.

MPs get told how to vote by the party whips so it’s not like they need to spend any time thinking about such matters.