And the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for International Journalism goes to…
Westminster Politics
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to talk about United's dreadful home defeat at the hands of Big Ange's Tottenham Hotspur. Should this have been the end of Ten Hag? How long does he actually have left? And does Nik finally want ETH out?!
£290k a year.
He's clearly been massively underwhelming at best as leader, but I think it's odd to say it's lucky that after more than a decade in power, the Tories are becoming ever more morally bankrupt and bereft of ideas.
Another day, another sleaze story..
I mean we knew this was going on last year but to see a light shone on it so blatantly makes me sick. Everyone should be furious about this.
I mean we knew this was going on last year but to see a light shone on it so blatantly makes me sick. Everyone should be furious about this.
I try not to hate things/people but I really do hate these shower of twats
Seriously .. wth ...
Labour should be hammering this at every PMQ and at every interview. I don't know why they aren't. Do they think they're vulnerable themselves? Are they very cleverly waiting until closer to the next election? Are they completely useless? Is it coming from Starmer deliberately, or is he just completely useless? And if it is just him, what are all the other feckers doing, because there's still quite a left contingent in parliament and they don't seem to be doing anything about it either.
edit: You're right Elver, they're a shower of twats. If it ends up with a guillotine on the streets they would only have themselves to blame.
The slightly strange thing about this sleaze narrative is almost nothing's changed but suddenly it's a national story. There were literally weekly if not daily stories about this before and it just never cut through. The only reason it cut through this time is because they were stupid enough to try and defend it in fecking parliament. But you really have to question the population if they need it to be hammered home to that degree for people to actually care about the fact this government has been particularly corrupt and particularly lazy about keeping that a secret. I don't know how anyone can think all the prior stories about millions being handed out to their mates round the corner wasn't enough to outrage them.
Being paid market rate is greed? Do you think Ronaldo should be paid £80k a year and be OK with that? Tell him anything more than £80k a year is just greed. Run a PL team like that and see how they fare over the next 5 years then compain when they've had 5 relegations in a row. That's how we run our government.
We pay sports people, musicians, actors, TV presenters, doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, CEOs and so on 100s of thousands, or millions, a year. Yet the people who literally run our country we pay 80k and wonder why the quality is so low is that paying them anything more is 'greed'. Sorry, but 80k is exceedingly low for an extremely competent person, which is why we have so few of them in parliament and so many that are independently wealthy and so can afford it.
The fact is that MPs are demonstrably underpaid compared to the market rate, they get paid a lot less than the top members of the civil service who work for them, but no party could ever say this because its a huge vote loser with the working class.
I'm sure your position is more open to change?
The two things are not related. You could argue "the government has decided it cannot afford to pay for <insert anything>" and therefore they don't deserve a payraise. The cost of paying MPs a market rate would be absolutely negligable, and actually my position would be to reduce the number of MPs to pay for it. We have 650 MPs, in the US there are 535 member of congress. We should halve the number of MPs and double the salary as a start.
He really is. I'm glad he more or less works in the background and let's these stories circulate through the media or at lot of them would fall prey to the culture war.
In reality, there is only ever one pot of public money, as the Chancellor knows full well.
It is then down to choice as to where our money is allocated.
MP salary, state pension etc.
However, I don't disagree with you in principle about the number of MPs.
They're excellent and it feels like they're about the only check and balance we have with this government right now.
Until the government reforms Judicial Review to the point of having no teeth.
Nah, the reason why the UK's PM is BoJo instead of a reasonably competent, decent human being in not this, and you know it as well as I do.
The civil servants are the ones who actually do most of the work and across multiple governments, so I have no problem at all with them being paid more. MP's are elected representatives, they're not just high level employees. You could give them 250k a year and still have fecking morons elected.
The chancellor has no say in MP salaries, they are set by an independent body.
The MPs salaries repesents approximately 0.007% of the governments budet. Its vanishingly small. In fact, its less than half of Manchester United's wage bill. Just think about that for a second. We pay the group responsible for running the country less than half of a single football club.
I would also argue as well increasing MP salaries could represent massive value for money, if you can raise the quality of MPs and therefore drive better public services and tax value for money from such a tiny investment. For example, the UK Govenment budget is about £850bn. If some better talent can drive a 0.01% efficiency improvement, that would more than fund doubling salaries. From a business stand point, MPs salaries are a massive problem.
If politicians were paid £250k a year they would still be doing what they are doing, in my opinion.
It's about principles, not money.
It's about principles, not money.
This I agree, but you don't think that there are more competent people out there who would have stood a better chance against his populist crap than the shower we currently have?
This is true, but the MPs ultimately set policy and legislation and the civil servants, who the MPs appoint, implement. Its not much different from companies and CEOs.
This is also true, but using the same logical why not then pay them £30k? The point is the pool of people who choose to stand. Right now very few highly capable people would chose to be an MP, unless they're already independently wealthy (in which case they're unlikely to be a great MP anyway) or see politics as a genuine calling.
I am well aware of the MP pay review body.
But I was simply pointing out the very fact that there is only one pot of public money from which to allocate.
And how actually could paying MP more money drive efficiency?
It is a fallacy.
In my opinion, we should only want people who see politics as a genuine calling and are driven by a desire for public service.
I prefer this to people in it for the money. I also don't agree with your proposal to halve the number of MPs. It would be popular, but also wrong, as the governing party now only has a three or four hundred pool of people to fill all it's ministerial positions. Halving that would be emotionally satisfying for the shallow, but doesn't make sense.
Are we going to use the same logic for teachers, nurses, doctors etc?
You don't think better quality people would be better at doing certain jobs? Give me the United job then.
This would be nice, but whether or not that's realistic or not I don't know. Also, if someone who is called to it and has a desire for public service is not competent its fairly moot.
I don't agree with this at all. We have a population of 65m and 650 MPs and 783 lords. The US has a population of 330m and has 435 representatives and 100 senators. By my rough count there are around 100 ministerial positions. To suggest we need 650 MPs is nonsense as it suggests to me that you believe you need ~350 people (in the governing party) to find 100 competent ones, which brings me back to my original point of reducing the count, increasing the pay and getting better people in.
Sorry, but teachers, nurses and doctors don't run the country.
Its worth mentioning by the way that this isn't a UK specific issue, its a universal vote loser to suggest paying politicans more.
Wonder why?
You prefer having 175 MPs to pick from to having 350 MPs and I do think that's wrong, considering the number of feckwits there are, however much they're paid. I'm sure we will all have a different number in mind as ideal, but yours is too low for me.
I'm surprised anyone is putting the US forward as system we should copy to be honest. I wonder how much US politicians make out of their positions, and not just in salary, anyone know?
I would abolish the Lords tomorrow, and somewhat unusually would not replace it, but that might be going off at too much of a tangent.
A wage increase is probably justified unless parliament is moved to a regional city. Ultimately, though, the temptations will always be there and the best protection for voters is having a powerful watchdog backed up by public censure of such behaviour. The UK and a few other places are the exception to the rule that politicians routinely graft and I don’t think it’s down to purer principles.
Sorry to be rude but bollocks to public censure, put them in prison I say.
I would abolish the Lords tomorrow, and somewhat unusually would not replace it, but that might be going off at too much of a tangent.
It may be a tangent, but that interests me! If it wasn't replaced at all surely a mechanism of balance would be lost? One that worked quite recently in numerous Brexit votes where Lords vetoed the government trying to get away with pushing motions through.
I agree with it being replaced by a truly independent body as Lords is becoming less and less independent, but not replacing it seems dangerous to me? The courts wouldn't have time to be looking at governmental motions constantly, which is where the idea of the Lords works as only extreme policies potentially go to court.
I'm not sure how you get the Lords is becoming less and less independent, historically it has been an arm of the Conservative party, with an inbuilt Conservative majority.
I wasn't aware the Lords did save the courts looking at government motions, my ignorance of course, but if it is procedural then civil servants reporting to committee might be more efficient at doing that anyway.
In general it boils down to whether you think 'there are too many laws' or not, that is the popular view but I think the opposite, there are not enough! There are loads of things that could be achieved by making it easier to pass laws, there is just never enough time in parliament to do them.
You prefer having 175 MPs to pick from to having 350 MPs and I do think that's wrong, considering the number of feckwits there are, however much they're paid. I'm sure we will all have a different number in mind as ideal, but yours is too low for me.
I'm surprised anyone is putting the US forward as system we should copy to be honest. I wonder how much US politicians make out of their positions, and not just in salary, anyone know?
I would abolish the Lords tomorrow, and somewhat unusually would not replace it, but that might be going off at too much of a tangent.
It's not like the pot of MPs is just a random allocation. MPs are chosen by the party so it isn't a limiting factor to available talent at all.
There are far too many MPs you wouldn't lose anything by halving them in truth. I'd probably go further to be honest and have a greater role for civil experts.
I just made an assumption on the independence as all I hear about is the Tories putting some more of their mates into Lords, but that's probably normal then
The supposed function of Lords is to check the laws from parliament and help shape the terms. The important bit is that they are there to challenge the motions and can stop them if necessary to act as a balance on a majority government doing what they want. This happened during Brexit a couple of times, but with the Tories doing what they want with an overwhelming majority I think that balance (or the idea of it) is more important than ever.
Ideally it would be independent, but I would definitely be worried about giving parliament (more a majority government) free reign.
I agree about the amount of laws being created, but you still need a filter as the best case scenario is that we end up with everything being reversed when an opposition party gets in.
I was referring more to a climate where such behaviour is frowned upon rather than actual legal penalties. Sadly we seem to becoming tacitly accepting of corruption. That for me is the real worry. Just as we “price in” the fact that Johnson lies all the time, we now seem to be nodding our heads at corruption on a “well, what do you expect?” basis. It increasingly reminds me of the country where I used to work.
I agree it is a very disappointing trend. There has always been a degree of corruption and nepotism of course, but at least most people thought it was wrong, now it's becoming accepted as normal. I'm quite serious about prison for corruption anyway, and if ineffective I'd ratchet up to the guillotine if necessary.
I think you mean allow the police to conduct an investigation, send findings to the cps and if they decide there is a realistic chance of conviction and that prosecution is in the public interest then proceed to a fair trial on the principal of innocent till proven guilty and if proven guilty a judge will determine the appropriate sentence ... or are you just skipping those steps?