Keir Starmer

[Terry - Somerset]

I know it seems like a great deal to some. But it isn't. Here is the problem: bright and motivated people, who are fit and healthy, well educated and personable can and do earn multiples of what MPs earn. This is just a fact. People may not like it but salaries in the hundreds of thousands and upwards are not that unusual for people who direct and run large businesses.

We presumably want the best and brightest as MPs - but such people are not interested in £90k per annum and all the media scrutiny and public opprobrium that goes with it. Hence, as so often in life, we get what we pay for.

To be in the top 1% of income tax payers in the UK (i.e. to be among the 310,000 individuals with the highest income), a taxable income of at least £160,000 is required. £236,000 is required to be in the top 0.5% and nearly £650,000 to be in the top 0.1%..

I want my elected representatives to come from the best available talents, often (not always) evidenced by their earning capacity. I want them to be intellectually and socially adept, capable of manging complex relationships, balancing priorities, presentational and debating skills etc etc etc.

Mr or Mrs Average, however decent they are as human beings, are not close to this standard.

Asserting that an average salary will suffice will consign the UK to far, far less than average outcomes - only the inadequate, incompetent, or self obsessed egotistical will be attracted to political leadership. They would be very quickly emasculated by those around them.

 

[ey_tony]

Fear not, Starmer speaks for all of the world's sausages, no matter where they held... That guy is worth his weight in gold!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...sages-held-in-gaza-in-conference-speech-video

 

[AJB Temple]

It's not just the money though. The endless media attention that we subject our MPs to, is likely to attract mainly narcissist types. The attention spills over to spouses and potentially children. MPs can also be a target for direct abuse and harm. People who just want to live a private life, but who would be absolutely perfect for managing departments, have creative ideas, make tough decisions etc - will not even consider becoming an MP, let alone the endless doorstepping to get votes.

The system is set up to fail if the criteria is recruiting the best.

 

[Rewound]

You fault

not really, I may have wanted him to win, but I voted tory to keep the SNP out. So I can genuinely say I didn't vote for him

 

[woodieallen]

This survived so not a typo. What? Reading too much Dan Wootton deleted stuff?

Kneeler ? Two-tier? Take your pick.

 

[woodieallen]

The tories have decimated the UK health system. They've destroyed 90% of our industry, initiated brexit which was pretty much akin to cutting the country's throat

My question to you is - Where do you think the money is going to come from to fix all this ?
NHS under labour the waiting lists are very low. Tories come in and the waiting lists shoot up. Labour get back in and down come the lists again. Between labour and conservative its like a zigzag shape - up tory, down labour and so on



Not even by a long shot.
But these gifts are perfectly normal, and nothing was hidden, and all were declared.

Cleverly is the latest to fall foul. Mr Brass neck. Critical of Starmer, yet there he was at the Wimbledon with his wife and free tickets plus a very nice lunch at the presidents club, all laid on for free.
We could understand a gift were Cleverly the minister for sport, and were he there under that role it would be perfectly acceptable(if legally declared as with all of Kier Starmer's gifts, which are calculated over the last 5 years, so its not like he got £106k in the last couple of months of being in office. But not so, as Mr Cleverly was the foreign secretary at the time. So he had no reason to accept such a gift as it was well outside his official remit.

Or how about Robert Jenrick and the mysterious £75,000 paid to him by a company registered in the British virgin islands. A company with no assets, no employees, no actual offices and credit liabilities of a £1/3m
But according to Mr Jenrick, it was all above board.


Truth of it is we've allowed politicians as a whole to control the public purse strings and they just cant keep their hands out of it. But corruption in its illegal form is more rife in the Conservative party, than all the other parties put together.
How about Conservative party donors buying up land that they knew HS2 was going to have to buy.
Somehow they knew the route well before hand and decided on a whim to buy up land that a compulsory purchase order was going to be placed against, netting themselves a very tidy profit.

But you brought up Boris Johnson, so you clearly know about all the money he's received, and not just for doing up his flat.

I think perhaps you should stay away from that type of you tube gaslighting conspiracy theorists and maybe follow proper political commentators.

Oh dear...completely missing the point. Kneeler was supposed to be Mr Clean. Patently he is not.

 

[woodieallen]

Cronyism is just so engrained in this lot that they seem to think it is normal, I thought the foreign secretary handled a lot of that but obviously they needed to park old Sue up somewhere and I wonder if she retains that over sized paypacket. What is more worrying than old sue is that in times like this you need good statesmen with diplomatic skills to hold things together yet these muppets are looking to get us involved in conflict with Iran which would just ignite the middle east and then watch oil prices soar as we have no fall back on Russian oil like last time round and guess who ends up with even higher cost of living.

That's allright...not too long now and Iran will light things up with a very big bang. Or two.

 

[TRITON]

I know it seems like a great deal to some. But it isn't. Here is the problem: bright and motivated people, who are fit and healthy, well educated and personable can and do earn multiples of what MPs earn. This is just a fact. People may not like it but salaries in the hundreds of thousands and upwards are not that unusual for people who direct and run large businesses.

We presumably want the best and brightest as MPs - but such people are not interested in £90k per annum and all the media scrutiny and public opprobrium that goes with it. Hence, as so often in life, we get what we pay for.

Ahh, but for these high paying gigs they need to have qualifications in those fields. My dad was on about 80k as principle engineer at baeSema, he was a highly qualified chartered engineer.
The brother in law is head of legal at one of the councils and he gets £110k.

These 4r5eholes in Westminster believe their worth is in the hundreds of thousands. But the truth is they are part of a corrupt system who can only survive and ask huge wages if the system is as corrupt.
If we took away 2nd jobs, then the wages of the industries involved would drop considerably

Of course if we took away 2nd jobs, the conservative party, which from 90% of corruption lies would find some way to work around it.

In Romania, they initially had really bad corruption issues, but introduced a law that a politician cannot use his office or role to either enrich himself OR HIS PARTY. So they couldnt tout for lobbying contracts of have industries pay them.
Due to that law Romania even managed to imprison their previous prime minister and other mps.

Mind you the post revolution Romanian system of replacing corrupt politicians previously involved putting them up against a wall. So a couple of years in clink and loss of position they were doing far better.

Perhaps hats the type of system we need here. Where there is no personal gifts, but also they cannot raise donations from industries vying for contracts

 

[TRITON]

Kneeler

Who is Kneeler ? I dont get the reference

 

[AJB Temple]

I fear you are missing the point Triton. We want good quality politicians. We know we don't have them. The question is why.

The answer is the job is not attractive to people with ethics and intellect and who are not narcissists hungry for social media clicks. This recruitment block is because they are hounded mercilessly by the media, and it is dramatically underpaid for people who look at the opportunity cost of choosing ethical politics.

Assuming you are not being disingenuous about the kneeler reference, the answer is he jumps on every passing bandwagon. When the BLM craze for "taking the knee" craze was briefly popular, he was shown in full "marry me" pose with Ms Rayner. He's been kneeler ever since as many people thought, well maybe all lives matter equally. Two tier has since been added because it's a different law for him and his ilk with regard to policing and enforcement, and not long after that we had lots of examples of freebies, which some think are ever so similar to bribes. For a former DPP director who stood for election on the basis of ethical government, it all adds to a sense of tone deaf personal entitlement and greed.