X201
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Post by X201 on Feb 8, 2024 23:58:49 GMT
At least I've got confirmation that my local MP will say anything to keep his job at this point. Smallest majority in the country
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zephro
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Post by zephro on Feb 9, 2024 0:30:19 GMT
I sometimes wonder how different the tory party cohort of MPs would look if they banned MPs from having second jobs, had to divest all business interests, and set a minimum number of parliamentary attendance days a year + minimum number of days spent in their constituency meeting constituents. This discussion is always paired with paying them more because 80 grand or whatever it is plus a second home can’t get you a quality person. Or that you want a businessperson running the country. I personally want it run like a not for profit rather than a business but what do I know, I only earn naff all. I’d suspect it’d look more like the 80s though. When exactly did the additional interests thing become common do we think? It's always been common, probably more so in the past than now even. We just have far higher standards than the Victorians. They should probably get paid more, but it's more in the sense that the person entirely responsible for the whole (education/policing/foreign policy etc.) of the country gets paid less than a fancy barrister, a consultant doctor, various head teachers at schools or just some crypto twat working as a developer at Google. In every day life one would usually think taking on so much responsibility would come with equivalent compensation. Long way around but people's salaries being entirely pegged to Capitalism isn't normal. We very much used to pay teachers and nurses enough to have a home with a garden, not mega bucks or anything but enough to have a good life and a respectable retirement. They weren't producing profit (directly) but social good and we used to respect that. I may be jaded by living where I do in London where a garden is 800K-1mil, but the price of that comfortable life has shot way past any vaguely normal job in the last 20 years. To pay for that relatively boring and normal baby boomer home, nowadays you do actually need income like that. Or inherited wealth / trust funds etc. Which is where the pernicious state of politics comes in, as it's that latter group that have wealth not income occupying all these positions. People do those worthy jobs (teachers) because it's a "good", not to get rich etc. But there did used to be a basic social contract that people who did good at least got a decent life out of it. We never expected them to live off of the fumes of their own self righteous farts. Except the Tories kind of do, all these salaries have fallen so far behind both inflation and the housing market they are basically asking anyone in these jobs to work for charity. It's not really a surprise that there are massive staffing shortages in all of them. I don't think increasing MP pay would necessarily bring in the best and brightest like suddenly investment bankers (who aren't the best or brightest), but it would renew some basic social contract that taking on hard work in society isn't fucking futile.
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technoish
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Post by technoish on Feb 9, 2024 1:20:51 GMT
When my wife and I both started work - me in civil service, she at a consultancy, our starting salaries were like within 20%. Starting salaries now for our orgs the differences is more like 100%.
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Post by Saul1138 on Feb 9, 2024 3:04:39 GMT
I don’t get the argument that MP’s should be paid better for the amount of responsibility that they have. There is no penalty for fucking shit up. Pay them half a million a year, but they pay back any money wasted or lost by the nation. Fuck their wages.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Feb 9, 2024 4:22:42 GMT
The majority of them also don't really have any performance metrics or targets or anything. I'm sure some of them work hard, meet lots of constituents, argue for their constituents needs in the chamber, sit on select committees, etc.. but there doesn't seem to be any actual requirement to do any of that.
I don't know many high paid jobs where you could do a Dories and basically just sit at home collecting a pay cheque while doing nothing.
A decent wage is fine, but with a ban on second jobs etc.. and with some actual minimum requirements for what they should be doing.
Tbh, one of the things that makes me trust Labour more than the Tories is that a lot of their MPs seem to actually want to be MPs in order to make things better for people, whereas it seems like a lot of Tory MPs want to be MPs just because it's some kind of cushy high-status job that's kinda expected of them.
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 9, 2024 5:54:46 GMT
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Post by Chopsen on Feb 9, 2024 8:45:37 GMT
I'll admit I'm not following this story that closely, but I thought the issue was importing blood products nationally was the issue and it's the action taken by the department of health that is under scrutiny and not any one individual trust.
The inquiry is still ongoing isn't it? Nobody has actually been found liable of anything.
The thing that I feel doesn't get much attention is that most of the people who get infected with HIV and Hep C were received blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. Hep C wasn't identified till the late 80s and HIV was in the early 80s. The assessment of liability is going to be complicated, and it's an unfortunate feature of our adversarial legal system that to gain compensation you need to attibute blame. Also these people would have bled to death without blood products.
It's a tragedy, but I'd imagine the outcome of this is going to be the state paying compensation to people because an awful thing happened.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 9, 2024 9:01:35 GMT
I don’t get the argument that MP’s should be paid better for the amount of responsibility that they have. There is no penalty for fucking shit up. Pay them half a million a year, but they pay back any money wasted or lost by the nation. Fuck their wages. I think the argument is more that you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. You either get numbskulls like the 2019 intake or people so wealthy they treat it as a hobby. People like Nadia Whittome who do the job because they actually give a shit about serving the community are complete unicorns.
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Post by Dougs on Feb 9, 2024 9:41:06 GMT
MPs should be subject to the same conditions and restrictions that other public sector employees are. Boggles my mind that we've let vested interests properly take over - I mean, they were there before but never so blatant. Having some objectives and KPIs for your constituents should be the bare minimum.
Whilst on public sector pay, agree with Zephro (?). Most people work in the public sector to make a difference and understand that you could be paid more in the private sector. The trade off was always that conditions were better/more flexible and that there was a good pension at the end. The lack of pay rises has undermined that, and the increase in pension contributions and age mean it is is no longer the deal it once was for new joiners.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 9, 2024 10:01:48 GMT
I was watching Politics Joe the other day one of their guys was interviewing an Express (formerly a Guido staffer) outside the PopCon launch and even he was saying that they are lazy bastards. All they ever do is stand around talking and complaining and never actually do anything and how, when he started at guido, they would turn up from their constituencies on Monday and leave on Friday after a full shift but now they tend to rock up on Tuesday and fuck off Wednesday lunch time.
As you say, we need KPIs, time tracking and all that shit out of them. If they are drawing a salary, fucking work for it.
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Post by Chopsen on Feb 9, 2024 10:06:26 GMT
You get the politicians you deserve.
Any constituency can end the career of their MP should they feel they're just being a grifter. They don't because most people are disengaged from politics. So they get grifters.
If we had KPIs, you think people would vote different?
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sport✅
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Post by sport✅ on Feb 9, 2024 10:16:09 GMT
I'd love to know how my MP is tracking.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 9, 2024 10:31:46 GMT
If we had KPIs, you think people would vote different? Maybe. If we actually tracked how useless they are if could at least affect there re-election eligibility. But I am meaning more for just holding them to account, make their 'boss' do something. Something has to change and I don't think its the worst thing in the world to at least attempt to extract some value out of the useless arseholes.
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Duffking
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Post by Duffking on Feb 9, 2024 10:38:26 GMT
Today's curiosity for me is why Labour actually bothered to u turn on the climate promise stuff when they could have just done what the tories do and lied that it was the plan and then just not do it when they're in power
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 9, 2024 10:42:35 GMT
I suppose they wanted to rip the plaster off and avoid a campaign trail of constant 'Wheres this 28bn coming from, then?' questions. Presumably a strategy person thought it was the least worst option just to get it out the way.
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Rich
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Post by Rich on Feb 9, 2024 11:06:15 GMT
I guess doing it now gets the 'u-turn' headlines and 28bn price tag out of the way. They still have plenty of time too detail exactly what they are going to do, and it kicks off their 'don't blame us if we can't do it, the Tories fucked the economy' campaign.
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Post by Matt A on Feb 9, 2024 11:06:43 GMT
Channel 4 news interviewed a guy who runs a green energy power company about this last night. He basically said that the economy has tanked in the time since the pledge was made in 2021, and that he still thought that Labour presented the best option for the future relative to environmental policy. They still plan to invest, just not at the same rate.
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Post by Saul1138 on Feb 9, 2024 11:40:20 GMT
I suppose they wanted to rip the plaster off and avoid a campaign trail of constant 'Wheres this 28bn coming from, then?' questions. Presumably a strategy person thought it was the least worst option just to get it out the way. And now they’ve done it, why aren’t they ripping into the tories, saying it was your fucking mess that brought this about? We’ve had thirteen years of constant lies that the world wide economic crash was the Labour parties fault, that austerity worked, and cunts saying that national beat and deficit are interchangeable. Labour should be lambasting them with cold hard facts about what a mess of everything we have had. Also, yes to KPIs and standards. Is it too much to expect them to be present at votes? Abstentions shouldn’t be allowed, except where it doesn’t affect the constituency.
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Post by Vandelay on Feb 9, 2024 11:46:07 GMT
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Post by Saul1138 on Feb 9, 2024 11:58:49 GMT
Nice, I don’t usually look at ring wing rags*, but that is what I want to see. * I jest slightly, their TV reviews are generally awful. I am sure that they only watch one episode, or read a synopsis.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Feb 9, 2024 12:05:39 GMT
Technically, this isn't really a U-Turn, right? They're still going in the same direction, just at a slower speed. It's a gear change.
Even the BBC online coverage is all headlines about 'U-Turns' though.
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Post by Saul1138 on Feb 9, 2024 12:08:59 GMT
Why let facts get in the way of objective reporting?
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 9, 2024 17:11:25 GMT
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X201
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Post by X201 on Feb 9, 2024 17:58:13 GMT
Radio presenter more clued up on the economy than treasury minister. I’m not surprised. Laura Trott interview: Fact-checking Treasury minister's claim on debt www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68250020
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Post by Dougs on Feb 9, 2024 19:06:50 GMT
Saw that earlier. It's utterly fantastic.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 9, 2024 19:19:06 GMT
‘Evan, I’m not here to talk about GDP, I’m here to talk about whether or not Wesley Crusher knows you have raided his wardrobe’
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JonFE
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Post by JonFE on Feb 9, 2024 19:33:15 GMT
'Evan, you should know better than to question those that pay your salary...'
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Post by stuz359 on Feb 9, 2024 21:07:40 GMT
Reminiscent of Matt Hancock's 20K more nurses pledge. There will be 20k more nurses in the NHS because we will retain them and stop them retiring. No new bodies on the ground, the same level of staffing but 20k more than there would have been.
The mental gymnastics were amazing.
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Post by Vandelay on Feb 9, 2024 21:54:24 GMT
Laura Trott should stick to the cycling.
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Post by Whizzo on Feb 9, 2024 22:03:52 GMT
The Tories have even managed to lose the pensioners now.
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