Are our MPs a good value for money?

Let’s see!

The eagerly anticipated ‘widely expected to be painful’ and cause loads of trouble boundary commission report is out – for some it seems worst than they expected it to be.

Many people, me included, understand the fairness in equalizing constituencies while at the same time making our parliament cost effective. Also, by reducing its size from 650 seats to 600 the tax payer will save £12 million a year. Add to that, many think we already have too many elected representatives who more or less do the same job – however, I still can’t help but feel sorry for many today.

As a child of autocracy who was not so lucky to enjoy an ‘Arab Spring’ I used to look at the mother of parliaments and it’s members with awe, respect and great admiration – that’s one of the reasons I’m so drawn to front line politics today – the feeling of selfless service and bettering all that’s around you must be intoxicating. It’s also why it pains me hearing some of the thankless remarks and comments. As for the pay, well, despite of what some might think, by many standards its just low but our MPs go into public service knowing that fact.

For argument sake, let’s do a simple calculation and round up their salary to £70K – that gives an MP £3935 per month approximately – most MPs (Stewart Bell not included) average a 70 hours week and many work 6 – 7 days a week – at £130 a day……I ask you again, are our MPs good value for money!?

Lately, our attitude about MPs has been very schizophrenic – with the one hand we want them to reflect our society, be diverse and represent all walks of life. But on the other, we complain when a few are privileged (when a good segment of our society is very privileged) or when someone who while living a normal life have an indiscretion (and conveniently forget that normal people make mistakes all the time and change, criminals get paroled, society and family daily forgive people their slip-ups) except of course for our politicians. We expect them to be of higher, divine caliber people who work hard for little pay.

Today is a tough day for 50 MPs who know they are out of a job come the next election if these changes are passed – which will make the reminder of this parliament a rough ride. This post is my way of saying you are great value for what we pay you – chin up, no one knows what tomorrow holds, keep up the good work and Good Luck!