....Leading politicians have come under more scrutiny than ever today with the publication of expense claims for key individuals. Amongst them Blair, Kennedy, Howard, Cameron, Brown and Prescott have all been highlighted by the press in some tiresome quest for muck to sling. £4k here £20k there, council tax, TV licenses, mortgages and even food (to the delight of the anti-John Prescott-brigade).
I was also in the car listening to
LBC and a debate about
MP's salaries and how they wanted to raise them. Putting expenses aside for a moment, our
MPs get paid somewhere in the low £60ks a year and they are complaining and suggesting that it should rise to £100k or in that region. Predictably the media was adamant that this was extravagance to the extreme (bearing in mind that the media knows nothing of extravagance itself). Even I started off feeling anger at the prospect that these loafers who hardly ever actually go to parliament anymore and appear simply to do no more than mince about for the cameras in an attempt to persuade us that we've never had it so good, could be suggesting that even more public money be diverted to their pockets.
Then I started to think about it. Perhaps the reason why it seems like all our politicians are fiddling expenses and /or in bed with dodgy businessmen and doing shady
ppp/
pfi deals or worse (if there can be any worse) is because they don't get paid enough to deter them from corruption. When you consider what these people actually do for the country.....they run it! I think they actually get a very bad deal considering the reason why a lot of these people go into politics in the first place is because they are idealists wanting to make a
positive change to the country and possibly the world or even the galaxy perhaps Mr Blair? You could almost suggest that as tax payers we even exploit our
MPs to a certain extent, expecting them to run the country for £60k a year when you consider what some of us get paid for doing much less important and
mundane jobs and I have found a couple of examples from both the celebrity and non-celebrity world to
exaggerate my point
JK Rowling according to Forbes in 2006 was earning over £100k per day.
CatwalkQueen.
tv claims that Kate moss earned £4 million in 2007 (up to £15million in previous years).
According to the Times in 2007 David
Beckham is earning £70k a day
However I very quickly want to mention that poor Leona Lewis is only earning enough to survive (see previous posts).
Leona and
JK aside, I probably wouldn't want either
Beckham or Moss anywhere near to
positions where they would have an atom of the responsibility it needs to run a country. David
Beckham managed to achieve nothing as captain of England other than
unmitigated failure for years. Kate moss is a Drug user who take off her clothes for a living (or puts them on? I can never remember), yet they manage to command much bigger salaries than our politicians.
JK has amassed her
fortune writing
children's books for Christ's sake. Now I want to make it clear that I am not knocking any of the people I have mentioned for having made money or even how they have made it (I would love to make it too after all) however I am trying to make the point that considering what these people earn and the ultimate importance or what they do do, we pay our politicians very poorly in deed for running the country or if you look at it another way our lives.
Kate Moss doesn't model because she enjoys putting on and taking off clothes only. She does it because she knows she can earn £4million a year doing it. Similarly, David
Beckham isn't playing football for a living for the love of it alone.
JK certainly isn't writing her books solely because she wants to entertain the children of the world. They are all arguably the best at what they do, but they're all doing it for cold hard filthy
luca. If there's nothing wrong with that, then why can't
MPs expect to be paid more for the job that they are doing. Presumably they are also the best at what they are doing, or maybe they are the best for the money we are offering.
On the other hand, perhaps if we were to offer more, or even a lot more, then we would attract a
different caliber of politician. Imagine a country run by blue chip CEO calibre politicians. We would probably be much better off in the long run. We would probably have to speak to people in India if we ever had occasion to call government departments and it would probably take over 30
mins to get through to anyone (hang on a second that already happens!!!) but at least the country would be profitable. Who knows....even I might put my name in the hat if that were to happen.
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