Pay MPs £150,000 a year, no problem BUT - having second jobs including consultancy work gets the whip withdrawn. P.A.Y.E. and N.I. to be paid like 'normal' folk. Basic functional constituency office provided, and if the MP wants new carpet or whatever they pay for it themselves. No expense account claims for anything but 2nd or 3rd class train travel (if indeed 3rd class still exists) or a 50p a mile petrol allowance to and from constituencies. Employing family members gets the whip removed. MPs to have between 2 and 10 assistants allocated (depending on the MP's position) from the civil service pool. All constituency MPs should have a clinic every two months where they ONLY see constituents who support parties other than the one to which they belong. If they are not in ministerial posts they must have at least one consituency clinic per week. If it's possible for Parliament to call by-elections where the whip has been removed from a member (for either of the two reasons stated above) then let that be done. Parliament could be clean if it had the will to clean itself.
I don’t see why the govt doesn’t provide a fortified Travelodge for the MP’s to stay in while in London on parliamentary business. It would avoid all the flipping and security issues in having MP’s stay in their own flats in London.
If it costs as much as immigrant accommodation does in private hotels with private security it wouldn't be much cheaper. Unless they had a nationalised hotel. @@paulmaggs3212
I recently had an interview for a job paying a fraction of this salary. To get to the interview stage I needed a PhD in a relevant discipline plus extensive professional experience. In addition I was assessed with a series of cognitive reasoning and personality tests. Might be “interesting” to be half as selective with our MPs….
How can an MP work '90 hours a week" but yet have multiple board memberships and other jobs? That is the issue. Most people only can cope with 1 job but yet we are lead to believe we have 100s of super human people in parliament?
Because the pay for MP’s is poor and they need to therefore supplement their income with other jobs. Also because the inherent pay is poor, they don’t attract superhumans
I’m 73 former Conservative and all I see is everything being cut and we saw the issues that the cutting of social services in covid, but it’s every single thing that has just been cut, underfunded, cut more, police, Army or forces, NHS, On every level, transport, roads, social services, it’s just disgusting and the incompetence and liars that are still in government is just unbelievable, there is nothing to be proud of, the fact that we’ve had five failed PMs and they just walk away!
I think of the charlatan Johnson sitting in his little moated mansion,living the comfortable life while the country he governed(?) crumbles. Rewarded for nonchalant failure.
At £91,000 a year paid by us. We should expect our employees not to lie to us and I would not expect my employees to be moonlighting with second jobs. If they have time for second jobs, then they are not working hard enough for us. It needs to be a criminal offence with a custodial sentence to lie to the public if an MP or a news outlet. Any MP that wouldn't agree to that should be unelectable.
I worked in IT at the time (Y2K) at Sedgwick, 3rd biggest insurance broker in the world. The reason for the prevention of problems was nothing to do with government but companies providing updates that dealt with potential Y2K problems. For instance at Sedgwick we had extensive lists of systems and their parts and if this or that was either certified for Y2K or had been updated for it. Government was not involved or important in any way at all nor useful either. Potential risks were dealt with by techy people doing boring systematic check work that's invisible apart from the overtime bill! Hardly any wonder the perception is it was a myth of a problem... did you see that episode of the IT crowd where Jen has the Internet in a box...
I'm fine with politicians getting a pay rise but I think it should be a % that matches the LOWEST they are awarding to public sector or universal credit - whichever is lowest.
Perhaps those individuals are the least suited to governance. After all running a country is not the same as running a business. It is also not generally the best minds that rise to the top in the private sector, but those with the least scruples.
@@Loot4Students "you get what you pay for" is one of the greatest trick the private sector ever played on it's customers. Dear reader, I give you branded fashion, haute couture, and Teslas famous build quality. Or UK water companies. Or UK bus companies. Or... Well the list goes on. And on and on and on. You don't get what you pay for. You pay for what the market will bear. Which is why it's long past time we stopped agreeing to borrow more than 3x salary to buy houses
I was one of the analyst programmers who worked on our Y2K changes on the companies IBM AS400 Finance, Distribution and Manufacturing packages. It took four years work to make the changes to fix the issues. Many systems did have issues but the millions of programmers stopped at least 99% of possible problems occurring. Many other changes are forced on software houses due to government changes being forced on companies with minimal notice. The IPT changes we were given around eight weeks notice ad this also involved writing to millions of policyholders.
A programmer said that 2000 (decimal) was just another number to binary systems. If there was going to be a problem it would happen in 2024. Well, we've survived this far. A tribute perhaps to all your good work, or maybe it was just all BS in the first place
I worked in a global Banking organisation and the Y2K issues were very real. Microsoft and Unix based operating systems did not work past the year 2000. The operating systems were updated to fix this, and ALL developers had to analyse the impact on their software and fix it - the scale of this was NOT trivial. Most payments systems used in international banking date back to the 1970s and most of these institutions are still trying to work out how to modernise them. What you see as a customer is a pretty, modern front end, but the back end services are pretty grizzly.
@@canonbangpowellnot quite. Its not about 2000 being just another number. When I started writing software disk space was extremely expensive. For example, the first hard disk for a micro computer (the 8 bit forerunner to a pc) cost about £5k for 5 MEGABYTES (no, that's not a typo - I meant to write megabytes). However, it was / is possible to save disk space by compressing data. For example, a four digit integer can be compressed into 2 bytes. Similarly a date can be compressed and stored as 2 bytes PROVIDED the century is omitted.... so this is what was done. The absence of a century in the data only became problematic as year 2000 approached. Up until this time it could be assumed that every date in a database was in the 20th century ie 19xx (ok - there were a few exceptions, eg dates of birth, the date of the battle of Hastings etc). However, after 2000 this could no longer be assumed and action needed to be taken to address this.... Hence all the work to address Y2K issues. I hope this rambling explanation made sense!
I don't know why this hasn't been a story in the news but all free tennis courts in London's parks at the same time have been locked and given to private companies to run and manage bookings for up to £8 per hour. Please can you shine a light on this?
I believe they should be paid more. We should be rewarding people who stand up to lead the country accordingly. But I would also introduce two other things alongside that. Firstly, no other jobs are allowed while serving as a politician. The salary is the salary. Take it or leave it. Secondly, term limits. Politicians should be paid very well because they are doing a vital job. But nobody should be a lifetime career politician. Serve a maximum two terms, so 10 years? Then you're not allowed to stand again. This would generate new thought and energy into the leadership of the country and not allow us to get stuck with the same people for decades whether they are popular or useful or not.
There does also need to be some stability. Having radically different parliaments every ten years could mean we continuously change our trajectory. Sometimes that's a good things, other times it's not. Ten years isn't really that long to master any job let alone running a country.
I doubt anyone would sign up to stand as a candidate if they knew it was time limited. It would prove a disincentive especially if you’re not already wealthy.
I doubt anyone would sign up to stand as a candidate if they knew it was time limited. It would prove a disincentive especially if you’re not already wealthy.
I spent years working on Y2K changes and get very angry about how so many with little understanding dismiss the issue. Almost to the level of a conspiracy theory! At the time, I was working for an 'in-house' IT department for a major insurance company, so the often banded around accusation that Y2K was just another cash cow for the unscrupulous did not apply. Doing no more than was necessary at the minimum cost was our mantra. In the main, development resources were diverted, so the horrendous costs were not over-inflated. A few years before 2000, we ran a test where the date was moved forward just to see how big of a problem we had. To describe the issues as catastrophic would be an understatement! In many cases the programs just crashed and refused to run, while others just passed incorrect data forwards. Did some jump on the bandwagon and make excessive profits? Of course they did, but to use the lack of a major catastrophe as 'proof' that the issue did not exist, or was at least overhyped beyond reason, just demonstrates a level of ignorance, often accompanied with a degree of arrogance. Unfortunately, this myth is perperuated by respected commentators who should know better. Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again!
They should be paid the "average wage" so that ... (a) they know what it is like to live on the average wage, and therefore how most people live, and (2) so they don't get into politics for the money.
@@andrewgrillet5835If their pay were that low they'd just end up being more corrupt in order to make more money and you'd have lower quality candidates because the sensible ones would just find higher paying jobs elsewhere
The reason Y2K wasn’t an issue was that most software teams worked like crazy to stop it being an issue. It was a real issue that cost a lot of money to fix but was fixed before the poo hit the fan. As someone who actually fixed systems with the issue I find the myth of it not being an issue really sad and for Rory to think 10% carried on with no issue without a fix is a disservice to the engineers who sorted it out. It was as ever the press that blew it up to something different from what it was. Real problems existed in hardware that would give erroneous results after Y2K, non updatable firmware and old software with no existing support.
I worked as an MPs assistant. an MP job is like a very cushy, part time job where they don't really have to deliver anything of value. He focused on Westminster 'projects,' and ignored his constituents entirely.
@@aking-plums6985 That is extremely idealistic. manifestos are misunderstood. They should really come with a massive caution, as implementing them fully or parts of them depends on the political climate at the time. Policy need to be flexible to reflect the changes in economy
Minimum wage has increased by 31% in the last 4 years (£8.72 in 1 April 2020, rising to £11.44 on 1 April 2024). If MP salaries had increased at the same rate as this, then as of 1 April 2024 they would increase to £107,500. (From £81,932 on 1 April 2020). I've picked a arbitrary period to illustrate the point but based on a standard 40 hours week, minimum wage pays ~£23,860. If we maintain the current 2023/24 ratio of 3.98 times for MP salary this still means an increase on 1 April 2024 to ~£95,000. Either method shows that MP salaries have not kept up with the increase in minimum wage in either the last 5 years or the last 12 months, so I have to ask are you arguing for greater increases in salary for MPs, or is linking to minimum wage level too simplistic a mechanism?
I am both politically engaged and an avid listener to the podcast. I have watched this episode twice and on both occasions I couldn’t remember Ed Davey’s name until Rory said it. Surely that’s a bad sign for the Lib Dems.
I've looked up the leader on multiple occasions because I keep on forgetting who he is, and I too am pretty politically engaged. So yeah, I think they've got problems.
I live in an out suburb and the problem isn't generally permission to build up, its that developers wont build up unless they can build 30+ floor buildings.
It is a tad irritating because if they weren't involved with the compatibility checks that were carried out they should not need to speculate about things they don't understand. And yes I was in local government and ran some of the checks, distributed as a simple tool run on each workstation, and a sticker to apply to checked systems (no more complex than with routine PAT electrical tests). The mainframe/unix systems and application support teams respectively will have had more detailed work to check where dates were stored and passed. In some cases for example an interim solution was to re-interpret 2-digit dates as 1950-2049 which provides some wiggle room. While flights and power grids were often talked about as high profile risks in headlines, things dealing with long term accounting such as pensions systems are more likely to span a longer period and depend on past / future dates.
@@UKprl I agree. I have worked with a bunch of IT professionals that spent years testing, developing fixes and rewriting code for nuclear and banks and other industries. It shows the utter disconnect between politicians and actual work. I think Alistair to his credit didn’t belittle the work done, Rory with his humanities degrees clearly doesn’t have a clue though.
I think much of the issues came from companies who had no idea if their systems would have a problem or not? They had no records of how the dates would be handled and what issues might come from it not running correctly? There was then a big volume of work in checking things that were probably going to be ok and were probably not high risk, but nobody actually knew for sure, because things were all a bit cobbled together/systems that were never expected to run up to 2000 without being replaced. That big volume of "dunno" work maybe drowns out the smaller but more critical work that was done? This sort of general theme goes back a few weeks to Rory and Alastair's discussion on who does long term planning in government, the agreement nobody really did it, and the seeming acceptance that was fine because it all worked out somehow in the end......
I would welcome a 100k a year salary for all MPs. However, no second jobs, consultancies or any form of moonlighting should be permitted. I’m willing to permit the writing of books on the grounds that it may exercise their literary muscle and improve the eloquence of debate.
@@hannahb950 That’s what I am saying. They will be using all avenues to increase their wealth anyway. (most of them are politicians for that reason alone) Why rewarding them even more…
They need to be barred from accepting money from any source other than their government salaries. All else is corruption. You cannot allow an MP to financially profit privately and reasonably expect him not to vote in his own financial interest. But as it is the MPs who would vote on any law limiting their private income, it will never happen. Reform needs to be forced on the MPs without them having a vote in the matter. If you don't like surviving "solely" on your MP salary, don't run for office next election.
How about means testing MP pay? Have a sliding scale. We could increase the pay but have it reduced according to any other income (importantly including income from assets and investments). Anyone who solely works as an mp gets the full amount, and anyone earning above a threshold from other work gets nothing. With pay tapering in-between.
Dont pay them anymore. Abolish expenses. Its about time they learned about real life. They expect me to live on £ 13000. I`m 77 and still go out to work to make ends meet to avoid groveling to benefit office.
And what happens when the only people that can afford to become an MP are those that have "alternative" avenues of income, and/or are even further out of touch with the real lives of the average people?
Not sure abolishing claims for expenses is the answer. Normal people have legitimate business expenses...they're just not trying to claim back £3000 in gardening costs for a second home.
I disagree - current layers NHS Management (led by the Political structure of NHS England) have their own agenda that is not patient safety, treatment or access to services. They often work against medical teams objectives. The admin layers need to be restructured to make NHS Trusts more answerable to the public and health outcomes - the Health and Social Care Act of 2013 sabotaged the entire NHS by changing priorities...
This just isn't backed up by the numbers. Maybe it was once true, but it hasn't been for years. We have the most minimally managed and one of the least efficient public health services. There is a link there. Actual managers are required, not doctors moonlighting as administrators.
An MP salary should be fixed at twice that of a registered nurse. This would instantly make it possible, nay imperative, to pay nurses properly. The arguments for paying MPs properly apply to every other case as well, which is often missed by folk inside the bubble….
Of course you can't believe that the Millennium bug was a real problem because you don't know enough about computers and in particular computer languages. I retired quite shortly after the millennium but my company like many others had major software systems on which the operation of the comapny was critically dependent that dated from as long ago as the '60s. There can be no doubt that had those systems not been updated it would have stopped the company's operations dead. The company spent nearly £100 million updating those systems. One might ask why those systems had not been updated long before. Updating old computer systems is expensive and fraught with risk partly because experts in 30 or 40 year old computer languages and systems are few, many being long retired if not dead. 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' is a maxim that applies in spades. A company does not spend that sort of money on a whim. It was precisely because many of such systems belonged to companies who rightly understood that they had to spend whatever it cost to protect their company from disaster that the vast majority of the potential problems were avoided.
@@garethjones9605 money normally that attracts worse candidates. Just look at Rishi and the rest of the eton brigade elected. Look how bad it is in America. Parliament needs educated working class union tied MPs
@@sunseeker9581 bad example. Rishi Sunak doesn't need the money, in fact he'd be earning WAY more in the private sector (or could just live off his and his wife's wealth). The Eton brigade do it for the power, not the money.
In the north it feels like most school kids knew who the PM was when i was going though school (3-4 years ago) but we all feel royally screwed by the tories. Young people are exceedingly liberal and all our parents were swept up in brexit and plenty of us were arguing with them about it
For the Y2K bug, I think a lot of people aren't aware that it didn't affect Linux/unix systems which are mostly the responsible for the "important" stuff. I'm much more worried about the Y2038 problem which does.
I'm a Lib Dem and agree strongly with your analysis of our woes. Part of this is a leadership problem: we haven't had a charismatic leader who could clearly articulate our vision since Nick Clegg, and because of the cloud under which he left nobody feels ready to pick up that particular baton. Nick gave a stunning defence of the importance of Liberalism after the 2015 election when he stood down, and obviously we were unabashedly pro-EU during the Brexit referendum campaign, but those were the last times I've heard a passionate or coherent national vision from our leaders. I think they're trying to rebuild with local campaigns, hopefully winning half a dozen additional seats each general election, like they did pre-1997, until we're finally in a position to influence things again. But it does leave us with no national voice, and no unifying ideology articulated. *Cut-down extracts from Nick Clegg's resignation speech:* "One thing seems to me is clear: liberalism, here, as well as across Europe, is not faring well against the politics of fear. "Years of remorseless economic and social hardship following the crash in 2008 and the grinding insecurities of globalisation have led for people to reach to new certainties: the politics of identity, of nationalism, of us versus them is now on the rise. "... grievance and fear combine to drive our different communities apart. "I hope that our leaders across the United Kingdom realise the disastrous consequences for our way of life and the integrity of our United Kingdom if they continue to appeal to grievance rather than generosity and fear rather than hope. ... The cruellest irony of all is that it is exactly at this time that British liberalism, that fine, noble tradition that believes we are stronger together and weaker apart is needed more than ever before. "Fear and grievance have won, liberalism has lost. But it is more precious than ever and we must keep fighting for it."
Nick Clegg charismatic? The rejection of Labour in 2010 was clear and if the third party is to have relevance they had to go into coalition with the Tories. They just didn't have to enjoy austerity so much! Clegg floated a policy that Grandparents should have a right of access to grandchildren. In later life my parents (now deceased) were violently racist literally wanting Hitler here for a few years! Deliberately playing the World at War holocaust episode to my son aged 11 and arguing it would be justifiable here. Posting BNP leaflets to them etc. I'd have been jailed rather than allowed them further access however my point is that the Government has no right to interfere in areas of that sort. It's just about the most illiberal thing I've ever heard of and put me off our orange friends for life! Anyone know if that's still a Libdem policy?
@@redemptivepete I wasn’t talking about policy, or our record in the coalition, I was talking about charisma and communication. I despise the policies of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, George W. Bush, and more but they are all charismatic and very good communicators. So are some of the people I’m more sympathetic to like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Justin Trudeau, and so on. Nick Clegg was no Barack Obama but he was still a good communicator, especially when compared to other Lib Dems. Regardless of whether you approve of our policies or our political history, my point was simply that we don’t currently have any prominent Lib Dems who are able to hold the audience’s attention, let alone articulate our vision and ideology in a compelling way.
To be fair to Libdems it's tricky to get much publicity and I agree about lack of charisma. Do you know the answer to my earlier question? I will be voting anti Conservative which in my current constituency doesn't involve the Libdems but I hope that you can understand my difficulty with your party?
@@redemptivepete I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question - most minor policies aren't clarified outside of manifestos, and the last manifesto was in 2019. I searched the document for "grandparent" and it didn't appear once, so I'm guessing grandparental visitation rights wasn't a policy anymore by 2019. I'll point out though that every party has policies you'll disagree with, none are perfect. I don't like the Lib Dem's NIMBYism (or pensions), nor do I like Labour's stance on the EU (or pensions), the Greens' stance on nuclear power (or pensions), etc., and obviously I disagree with almost everything the Tories stand for at the moment (including pensions). If you want to be part of a party, and obviously it's valid not to, then you need to find the one whom you agree most with, acknowledging that it won't be agreeing on everything.
Right, so people on the worst wages in the country or surviving on universal credit have Anne Widdecombe and the likes come along to patronise them and tell them to buy cheaper beans, cut all costs like mobile or tv contracts etc. But we're seeing media sympathy for people on 100k saying they're struggling to survive. Can't they just be told to downgrade from a BMW to a second hand Kia, move out of their detached house to an estate with terraces or just shop in Aldi instead of Waitrose. Ffs
The most common complaints about upward built housing is the restriction of the leasehold COMBINED with the poor documentation. No information on noise isolation, no commitment to leasehold pricing, horrible restrictions on modifications. Architects are required to create compromising solutions that allow more feeling of ownership whilst modestly improving density.
Graphic designer and comic book artist here. I think the point about "arts feature more prominently in school curriculums", there's a huge lack of details in there. It's like asking "do you think people should fund more for student to know more about Economic" (Which i think it's more important, the lack of basic Economic understanding is shockingly poor in the U.K. compared to Hong Kong, where I'm from) the answer is of course yes. "Should we know more about geo-politcs?" Yes "Should we invest more in better road?" Yes "Should we preserve old architectures?" Yes The real question should be "how". Art wise really depends how you define "arts". life drawing, understanding the beauty of human body, yes. Modern art, no thanks. So what do we mean by "arts feature more prominently in school curriculums"?
In my Swindon days the railway, car manufacturing town was safe Labour. It was Labour who as well as building hundreds of homes to house London’s overspill also oversaw the building of high quality houses for private sale to free up some council housing, a much better idea than Thatchers ruinous policy. The voters’ switch to Conservative former nightclub owners and dodgy business outsiders set them on a course of Swindon plummeting the depths in desirability and reputation. Thank god I left before the rot began, never to return. Tomlinsons treatment of Rory would be no surprise to his former wife of four years. Like many of the Boris loving Tories, integrity and honesty are not part of their gene pool.
Freeports are an enormous Tax and Regulation dodge. What generally happens is that these Zones drag investment FROM other areas. They allow companies to avoid Taxation, Environmental regulations and Employment Law... which reduces tav revenue for public services. Shenzhen zone is China allows companies to make employees work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. Question - what is the benefit of this to British Citizens?
I would love to see schools teaching our young people about our political system and how it works including a bit of history involving the MP's that have helped shape said system.
It's not so much 'how much you are paid', it's 'how much you are paid compared to'. If everyone got paid a million then a million would be entry level. We need an open discussion on how much a Dr / Nurse / Taxi driver / soldier / MP is paid, as it's the relative pay that indicates their value to society. And people at the lower end of the pay spectrum still need to be able to get by without the need for govt support.
No, they should be paid less. And they should not be allowed to claim expenses other than travel to London for gov business. I would love someone to argue that if we paid more we would get better quality while we have a shitty unelected prime minister who's salary is insignificant to his financial position.
If M.P.s were paid the average UK wage then they would have an incentive to actually raise it and level up. 91K puts them in the top 1%, way above the majority . and don't even start with the quality of applicants ( Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson )
One last thing, think about this one thing, we vote in a party and they are voted in to represent their area and so those who vote in their MP loose their representation and if you relate that to a company National company, they put the right people in the right role in the right area or region and not take however many off the assembly line or out of the department! Remember what you said Rory where did Cameron put you? Joy where your talents lay!
I will also add that I have read your book Rory and found it very in testing and quite inspiring, what aren’t we building good quality buildings and flooding and so much more that yet again we continue to get wrong , how about gardens in the sky other countries do it, using underground to communicate and commute, we used to have cellars and now with all the building standards and thermal products, yet we have substandard housing that I can’t see them being there in 150 years like the properties built in the 1880s were a knackered falling apart country and Alister’s comment is true some people like Brexit walked into it due to poor government, where was the proper advice and the government who knew that it was a disaster for both, just didn’t call out the Moggs and Johnson’s and others that were just scar3 mongering to the younger end and giving in to the stupid OAPs!
If you listen to politicians their main concern was to serve their country and constituents with money not being their main concern although the 2009 expenses scandal would certainly contradict this.
100% absolutely not. I would rather a sealing on the max they could have. No more than twice the average pay. I would also prefer a ballot system for MPs to be selected to serve for a max 3 year period which would be a civic duty.
Perhaps key workers could get £91K a year and help with housing costs and MP's could earn £60K a year because they keep bringing this figure out every time train drivers go on strike, they seem to think this is a enough to live on
No, politicians should not be paid more (their salaries are already generous by the standards of the vast majority of British citizens). Indeed, MPs should be barred from earning any additional money from outside work whilst in office, since being an MP (and even more so a government minister) should be their full-time focus and occupation. The fact that some MPs do earn outside money (in some cases lots of it) is one contributing factor - inflaming suspicions of corruption, lack of commitment etc - in the ongoing decline of faith in democracy.
No, absolutely not. We should not be rewarding MP's for the monumental incompetence, and in some ways malevolence, they've shown the populace. We've allowed them to get away with things they should never have been able to get away with and rewarding them further sends the wrong message. Especially those MP's or parties that peddled the austerity narrative should have been forced to lead by example, taking cuts in their salaries and imposing strict limitations on expenses they can claim. MP's should be made to live as the common people do so they can relate to the average person, and have an incentive to improve the overall living standards in society. We should also be penalising them for lies told. No criminal will ever admit to their crime in court unless they benefit from it, and MPs will never admit to any wrongdoing or mistakes on their part (think Johnson, Gove, Farage) so a judge and jury should make the final decision on any wrongs committed, the extent of the damage on the public and the appropriate punishment (eg prison sentences, hefty fines, community work orders and seizing or freezing of assets). Another point: we need to do away with career politicians so paying too much will attract the wrong types of people to the role (as amply demonstrated by our current poltiical state of affairs). If you want to make money, go into business. If you want to serve your country and make it genuinely a better place for the citizens to live, then go into politics.
On a tour in Australia, Guide told us about the PM visiting a nursing home. He asked one of the residents if she knew who he was. She told him that she didn't, but that Matron would know.
If you halve the numbers of MPs (which I'm not against) you should vote for MPs like US presidents. Each MP should have a vice MP. The MP is dedicated to the house, the Vice MP is dedicated to the local constituency. Split the pay 65/35. That way the local issues have a dedicated representative who can filter the issues up to the MP, who can bring them to national notice. If MPs are working 90 hours a week they are not being effective, there is a reason the concept of a 40 hour working week exists, because it fits with a healthy life.
For fucks only sake guys! The Y2K bug was a fucking bug. I worked lots of overtime to fix the system I was working on. Do not drone on about things you know absolutely NOTHING about.
Y2K was fine because we fixed it, but it was incredibly easy to fix You didnt need to be competent to stop it, you literally just needed to update software so that it wouldnt overflow
Yes, 100%. MPs should be paid a lot more. This not only widens the pool of potential candidates but also helps combat any MPs abusing their power for monetary gain.
For sure if you are being paid 100,000 to be an MP that should be your ONLY job. In the real world if you do not like the pay on offer you look for something else. Maybe then we will have the right people in government.
At the crux of the thinking about MP's "pay" is that being an MP is not a job. It's a civic responsibility, like jury duty, say (the fact that you have to volunteer to do one and not the other doesn't change the principle of the role). So when we are talking about "pay" we should be thinking of "pay" in the sense of an allowance provided to be able to fulfil the role, not "pay" in terms of a salary that is earned. Which means that when thinking of the level that makes sense, comparisons with _wages_ that people might be able to earn should be utterly, utterly irrelevant. We should be thinking in terms of what is a reasonable living allowance to enable anyone to be able to fulfil that role. Like allowances for jury duty or living allowances for students or whatever. Which isn't to say whether the amount for MPs should be lower, higher or about the same as currently. But that should be the type of thinking that helps us work out what is a reasonable number. We certainly shouldn't be humouring anyone who tries to frame in in terms of being an MP as equivalent to a job, and being a politician as a "career". It's not, it's a civic responsibility, one of the most important in our democracy!
Can you include social care in your cross party commission Rory? Also the outputs of the first stage should be fed into a citizens' assembly to get more debate before a final tidying up by politicians.
Y2K was very real. A variety of different examples. I lost a client because the software being used, originally written in the early 1970s, only allowed years 70 to 99. Software house wouldn't upgrade it. Holding company put in software I had recommended was not suitable. Company went under 2 years later as a result
I imagine a super ambassador would complicate things - one overly powerful individual split between a region, or one overseeing various others and being spread again on broad fronts, but also having the home front to be complicated with. Then you have the idea of a slight abroad, what country is the base of a regional ambassador? America's would be easier two or three (depending on central interests). But i reckon it would all be mucked up in Asia and Africa, too many go-betweens and conflicting interests vying for a slot, etc. But an interesting idea none the less.
I totally fell for this podcast because it felt like a breath of fresh air, and now, a few months later of dipping in and out, all the seams seem open, or maybe I've just been exposed to the biases here for long enough. Like columnists who have to fill too many inches in a newspaper, the topics have gotten so wide ranging that the due diligence and careful consideration that felt like a relief has been tapped out. The Y2K intro--it wasn't worse so therefore it was nothing---seems like feelings over research, what the pod used to an antidote to. No, it wasn't about planes falling out of the sky, it's more about other kinds of failures, or checks not going out. The boring stuff, that like climate change or trash in the oceans gets attention via sensational claims, but reflect real problems. This is the first episode I've returned to in a while, since the "I don't feel privileged, let me tell you about my time with Blair again" one, but yknow, maybe I'm just done.
You guys should think about doing a video on the pros and cons of compulsory voting. I personally like the idea and think it'd be a net positive, but I'd appreciate a couple of big-brained boys educating me on why it's not quite as idealic as I think it would be.
Politicians' pay should be linked to the population's average salary. That would give them a real incentive to make sure that people earn more overall.
