New parliament and the same "no shame milking" begins.....

Gerald Jones (Labour mp)....has just been elected Merthyr Tydfil mp...........Anyway there are apparently seven grades of pay for assistants from £24,000 junior assistant  to the maximum £43,000 a year for "senior" parliamentary assistant......

Hey presto his partner Tyrone Powell is straight in there on £43,000 a year of our cash ........He's just one example...

Come on Plaid Cymru get your act together.....Let's have him out..

Welsh politics????

I draw the line somewhere TRUSS

It's a joke that this kind of crapola can be allowed to continue.

I've less issue with the payrise, it's the ridiculous perks that get me.

Pay them a proper (good) wage and from there let them stand on their own two feet. Not fill their office with family members so they can boost their household income. They're public sector FFS, disgusting that family favouritism is allowed to over-rule access to jobs for others.

TopHat24/7 wrote:It's a joke that this kind of crapola can be allowed to continue.

I've less issue with the payrise, it's the ridiculous perks that get me.

Pay them a proper (good) wage and from there let them stand on their own two feet. Not fill their office with family members so they can boost their household income.  They're public sector FFS, disgusting that family favouritism is allowed to over-rule access to jobs for others.

Agree entirely - considering their responsibility, MPs pay is not particularly good (outside of those with higher positions) so it is not going to attract the best people. Even the PM is not THAT well paid, considering the leaders of several County Councils have a higher salary and Rooney is paid more in a week than Cameron is in a year...

The issues with the expenses scandal and these types of nepotism cases come from it being accepted on a nod and a wink that such things are (at least were) allowed as a means of boosting income.

Arguably the most important & powerful & responsible position in the country and he's on £145k? Pittance.

Head teachers can earn that, and maybe useless prats in local goverment and the like earn more. That revolting Shoosmith earned double FFS!!

TH

I know our County Council leader is on just over £200K a year - so is paid about 50% more for running one county (Hertfordshire) than the country.

BTW, obviously I wasn't suggesting the PM should be paid similar to sportsmen or entertainers, just using the example to illustrate the point.

To be fair, when you factor in security, lack of rent, flight costs... I suspect his "real life" pay to be three or four fold. Then there's the fact that he gets a lifetime pension. And he'll be in employment in those talk circuits at top dollar for the rest of his life. Still, mildly amusing that the prime minister of the second largest economy in Europe earns less than county of council. Whole ours has a $25 million palace... they do say that you shouldn't get people motivated solely by money in these gigs.

kingraf

In the case of David Cameron it doesn't matter that much anyway - he was a millionaire before his rise to the top of politics (mainly on inherited family money). It's fair to point out that the Prime Minister and other senior politicians are in a somewhat different position from most back bench MPs in the UK.

I accept money shouldn't be the be all and end all for politicians, but I do think their pay should be commensurate with our expectation of their quality. There are quite a few professions (medicine, law, banking etc) where a salary in excess of £100K a year is readily obtainable by competent (rather than brilliant) exponents. Why would someone choose to become an MP, with all the aggro and uncertainty that that entails, for a substantially lower salary (and having to live in or travel to London on a regular basis).

My solution would be to merge constituencies so that we have roughly half as many, but to pay the MPs at least 50% more on the understanding that they do not take on secondary roles while members of the Commons.

Are his holiday flight costs covered? Don't think they are. And you can't count his security, that's a feature of the prominence of his position and not something he'd choose as an option to otherwise pay out of his own salary.

Rent & expenses are the big wins/savings, but I doubt they equate to double his salary.

I think the PM should be paid better, but that also nobody in the public sector should be paid more. Certainly in government (central & local).

According to

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/11561593/Which-Prime-Minister-knocked-millions-off-the-price-of-10-Downing-Street.html

10 Downing is valued at £6 million.

While according to this

http://londonproperty123.blogspot.com/2014/05/average-cost-of-renting-in-every-london.html?m=1

A four-bedroom in Westminster averages £11k a month for rent. Double seems a reasonable estimation.

Of course, one would expect the most important job in the country to pay accordingly, but it's hardly a case of it attracting only the riff raff

If he wasn't PM, he wouldn't need to live somewhere costing £100k pa though, would he?

So it's a fallacious comparison.

A Council leader may be earning £200k pa but their rent (or mortgage) could be less than £20k pa.

Lol... so the benefit doesn't count because it's a benefit unique to the prime minister? So are you arguing that people won't take up the PM gig because then they dont have to live in a £130k+ a year dig? Free of charge.

My point is you're not comparing apples with apples.

We are saying that it's ridiculous that the most important man in the country is paid less than the leader of a local council.

All because the PM hypothetically saves £100k pa in rent doesn't mean it's right to add this to his salary for comparison with the council leader who does have to pay rent/mortgage.

To be honest the PM is all right............Blair makes millions a year from speeches alone as did Major and no doubt Cameron If he leaves........

Also most big companies would love having an ex -PM on board.....

Ordinary Harry Truman is the only President I know that turned down millions from coca cola and others to just go back to his little house in Independence.....

Hated the White house did Harry............His Wife and daughter wouldn't live in it with him because they were ordinary backwater folk and hated having servants and fuss....

Called it the "Great white jail"....

Worked in a shop did Harry before going into politics............

Be the last blue collar President the uSA ever has..

A reluctant President...............But a bloody good one..

Blair has done extremely well, but based on his own endeavour and private enterprise. Not due to his PM salary (which he would have earned more than anyway if he'd stayed a lawyer). His missus probably out earned him for the majority of his tenure.

Remember the Aussie con man episode over the flats.....

She denied it and then e-mails turned up.....

No time for that dog..